The Importance of Breastfeeding

Image courtesy of World Breastfeeding Week

Before I even start I want to say this: there are always circumstances that will prevent women from breastfeeding. I have not made it to my goal of 1 year with either child. There are some women who actively CHOOSE to not breastfeed their children when they are perfectly capable of doing so, however, and I hope to change their minds with this. I am also going to touch on what I have learned since Munch was born based on the choices I made with her that I will not make again.

Now, this is very long.  Probably a 7 minute read, which is long in the blogosphere :) I put a lot of thought into this though and included a lot of valuable information. I considered splitting it into two parts but ultimately decided not to, as although I know it will not interest every one of my readers, I hope at the very least the mothers or soon-to-be mothers out there will take the time to read this. I feel certain there are things below that you may not know - information which has an enormous chance of benefitting both you and the lives of your children.

It saddens me that the benefits of and importance of breastfeeding have seemed to fall by the wayside. Back in 1990, a declaration was signed in the US stating that of all contributors to an infant's life, breastfeeding was the most valuable. Because of this, major organizations around the world began to support natural feeding including UNICEF, the WHO and the Department of Health and Human Services. Even formula companies are stressing it's importance, but is it sticking? Really?? Ok ok I know, sometimes I can be Drama Blogger, but as I have said before - I will not touch on serious topics like this unless it is truly important to me. Breastfeeding is. So here we go...

Aside from convenience and cost, the nutritional, immunological, emotional and psychological benefits of breastfeeding should be enough to encourage mothers to want to breastfeed their newborn AND for all health care providers to strongly encourage it. 

While the nutritional aspect is hugely important, that which some think can be substituted, the psychological bonding that develops between the child and mother is unparalleled and does not offer any alternative. Unfortunately, due to numerous reasons many mothers resort to formula feeding as a substitute for breastfeeding. 

I have recently read of women not breastfeeding for fear that it is somehow linked to postpartum depression. I mean, holy smokes. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. The US Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health discusses in depth that breastfeeding is linked to a lower risk of PPD in mommies, among other things. We have breasts for one reason and one reason only: to produce milk to keep our children alive. Honestly - think about that for a second. There is a biological reason women were given breasts. This fundamental fact alone should rule out any link to PPD. 

Yes, breastfeeding is HARD work. I think the amount of time and effort it takes is severely underestimated. It is no walk in the park people, even if you have an "easy" time nursing. The difficulty of adjusting to it, in addition to life with a newborn in general especially if it is your first, can create an environment of being overwhelmed on top of being exhausted beyond belief which - in addition to the insane hormones you have going on after birth - I believe is where PPD can start. So, it is not breastfeeding itself that causes or leads to PPD. Look at other factors going on around you and make necessary changes. {PPD is something I dealt with after Squish was born, so I researched and read until I was blue in the face and spoke to eleventy billion docs and midwives, made changes, and did not have a single ounce of depression after Miss Munch was born. Perhaps more on this another time.} Know that you will get sleep again! If anything, breastfeeding should be seen as a time to bond with your baby. Happy hormones are released during breastfeeding. Have some quiet time, relax {which is a huge key to successful breastfeeding} and enjoy this new little miracle you have created. 

I can see how mothers who decide not to breastfeed in order to avoid PPD feel like they are making the best decision for everyone, so I am not blaming them or calling them terrible mothers in any way, shape or form. I hope that they are inspired to do more research so that they bring breastfeeding back to the table, as it is really best for both mother and child in every sense imaginable particularly in the early stages of infancy when exhaustion is at its all time high. The immunologic agents in your milk help fight off bacteria, parasites and viruses - they NEED this. There is a reason early breast milk is called liquid gold.

To the sweet dear mommies who are desperate to breastfeed but don't make enough milk! Since we are biologically wired to nurse, if you are having milk trouble I would encourage you to look at your diet. Think about it - no other mammal on the planet can go pick up some Similac. If they don't nurse, their babies starve to death, which is not good for the circle of life. What do they eat? No sugar. No milk from other mammals {News Flash: cow's milk is for BABY COWS}. No grains, wheat, oats, rice, soy. Even just given the surface benefits of breast milk - acting as a protective shield against allergies, asthma and obesity, higher IQ children - I would think you'd want to look into every option possible to get your milk production up to give your newborn the best start in life. What mother's milk contains is still researchable, but the little we know says that it is a complete food for the baby with ideal nutritional values. Did you know that upon touching the nipple, the baby's saliva sends a chemical reaction to your milk ducts and actually adjusts the components {more protein, less fat, etc.} of your milk to meet its nutritional needs? That is straight from my lactation consultant. I'm sorry but that just floors me with amazement. 

The nutrients in breast milk come from the food the mother eats, so the first and easiest thing to address is your diet. Read The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf. Here is a link to the book, and here is a link to a basic Paleo overview if you have missed my previous blog discussions about it.

Any mother will tell you that she has the hardest job in the world. Hard because of the TIME commitment. From the moment your child enters the world until the day you leave it, you give yourself to him or her. You give every ounce of your being to this tiny little blessing in your arms. Love. Breastmilk. And soon-to-be saggy tatas. Being a parent is total self-sacrifice, and the least of your concerns should be what your breasts end up looking like ESPECIALLY when not breastfeeding sacrifices the health of your child. Wake up people: formula is pretty much terrible. I cringe every time I give a bottle to Munch. 

Which brings me to my own stories with breastfeeding that I know you will ask about. Thankfully I never had any issue with milk production and made enough to feed a small country. I nursed Squish through month 5 when I began exercising again, and, unbeknownst to me at the time, I was not eating enough to make up for the calories I lost through working out to keep up my milk. He also ate like a horse which added to the problem of a decreased supply. I could not keep up and began supplementing, and by the time I kind of figured out what was going on it was too late. So he had milk through month 6. 

Munchkin. Now I will cry typing this. After I only made it halfway to my breastfeeding goal with Big Squish, I was determined to make it to the one year mark with her. Then I found out I had to go to Bali when she was three months old. Ok well not HAD to, but if I wanted to continue my clothing line into a second year, I had to go to create and design the fabrics, develop samples, oversee some production, etc. 

And I almost decided to stop working. I still question my decision to not take a year off.

I cannot even count the number of times Biz and I sat down on the sofa with me crying to him that yes I had firmly decided to give up my business because I was not ready to stop nursing. It was best for HER for me to keep going, so I wanted to. I was even pumping 50%-100% of the time at this point as we had latch issues {more on this below}, but I wanted her to continue to at least have the nutrition from my milk and if giving up my work was the way that could happen, so be it. 

I thought about taking a small pump and trying to keep my supply up at nights when I got back to my room and then again pumping in the morning, but I found out the electricity at the hostel was spotty, which lead me to consider a manual pump...yet with the amount of milk I made I would have been in so much pain during the day from engorgement I could not have accomplished any work or walked through markets for hours on end...so, at the end of the day, I decided to pump as much as I could before I left and went to the airport with a chest as hard as granite since I stopped cold turkey. This might have been more painful than labor, though off and on all the way to Bali I cried not out of pain but out of sadness.

I was gone for just over two weeks and still do not feel certain I made the right decision, as I put myself first. I just simply don't do that. It is not in my nature, particularly when it comes to my children. I mean it when I cringe every time I give her a bottle. I made my own formula briefly with Squish but couldn't get it to keep for more than two days. As with him, I just couldn't stand to give her Similac or Enfamil or anything with corn syrup of any sort in it, so I researched and found one I was happy with as it was whey based - kind of the least of all the formula evils - Vermont Organics. Up until two months ago, they used no corn syrup of any form, however on the new 6-pack I just got in the mail last week, organic corn syrup solids is the fourth ingredient. I was furious upon reading that. Make sure and take a look at the organic formulas also. Similac Organic captured 36% of the organic formula market in its first year of sale, surpassing the $10 million mark in sales, yet it is the only major brand of organic formula that is sweetened with cane sugar, or sucrose, which is much sweeter than other formulas. Sucrose-sweetened formulas have been banned in Europe since 2009! Sweet tastes encourage consumption in excessive amounts, which is exactly how breakfast cereal manufacturers compete. I think it's about time I start to make my own formula again.

Now - the whole latch thing. This is another reason I want to write this post. I pumped half of the time from week 6 on with her and nearly full time by week 12, which was honestly a bizillion times more difficult than breastfeeding, but it was the only way for her to eat for more than a minute at a time. Literally. Pumping left me feeling like I was missing something though - it was unnatural, obviously. I began looking into the importance of actually breastfeeding - the act of it, rather than just the benefits of the baby having the milk. Based on the research I have done, if at all possible I will let another baby eat one minute at a time rather than giving him or her a bottle full time, even with breast milk in it. Read on if you are interested in some sciencey stuff on this - you know me, I'm a closet nerd, I had to throw it in here.

Breastfeeding reduces the risk of OSA - Obstructive Sleep Apnea - among other things {like obesity and cancer}. We all know this basic principle: overall health is directly related to the ease of breathing. OSA is essentially defined as the cessation of airflow for greater than 10 seconds with continued chest and abdominal effort. There are similar signs and symptoms of snoring and sleep apnea as there are with bottle-feeding, excessive thumb sucking and pacifier use. The hypothesis is that breastfeeding reduces the risk of OSA, as infant mouths are allowed to naturally develop as they should; bottle-feeding prevents this given the manner of sucking and how it differs from breast to bottle. There is actually a formula that addresses this called the Stanford Morphometric Model - see, told you I am a nerd - but I won't bore you with that. "Modern, non-breastfeeding nurturing, is having a negative impact on our health and evolutionary destiny." - Brian Palmer, DDS, 1998. Very interesting this was said by a dentist, right? Someone who looks at mouths for a living, and has observed the immediate effects bottles have on infant mouth and throat development. Below is a direct quote from an article in the 1977 Archives of Otolaryngol, entitled Postnatal Descent of the Epiglottis in Man:

"Age group 4 to 6 months seemed to represent a transitional period from obligate nasal breathing to potential oral tidal respiration...this transition is important because it reflects a period of potential respiratory instability. Maturational descent of the epiglottis, found to occur between 4 to 6 months of age, is verified by cineradiography. This period, interestingly coincides with the peak incidence of SIDS, which similarly occurs at 3 to 5 months of age."

Bottle-feeding can disrupt this transitional period given its effects on mouth development.

And from Pediatrics, March 2000, Changing Concepts of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: Implications for Infant Sleeping Environment and Sleep Position, "A leading hypothesis for a large proportion of SIDS cases is that SIDS may reflect a delayed development of arousal or cardiorespiratory control. When the physiologic stability of such infants becomes compromised during sleep, they may not arouse sufficiently to avoid the fatal noxious insult or condition."

"Data supports the hypothesis that prolonged apnea is part of the final pathway resulting in sudden death. Study demonstrated that prolonged periods of apnea can occur in otherwise well infants beyond 1 month of age." - Prolonged apnea and the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Pediatrics, 1972

"The fear that pacifier use might stand in the way of breastfeeding is irrelevant to crib death cases, because most crib death mothers do not breastfeed their infants...only 10% of crib death mothers do so!" {emphasis in original document} - Risk and preventative factors for cot death in the Netherlands, European Journal of Pediatrics, 1998

There is TONS more info on this, but to sum up: bottle-feeding creates unnatural development of the mouth and throat in infants ---> causes symptoms that mimic sleep apnea  ---> SIDS.  

Then there is bottle feeding and ear infections - there is a direct correlation between the negative pressure in the feeding bottle and negative pressure in the middle ear. The American Academy of Pediatrics states that breastfeeding is associated with a decreased incidence of chronic diseases such as diabetes, lymphoma, Chron's disease and ulcerative colitis as well. Research has also indicated that mother's lower their own incidences of ovarian cancer and premenopausal breast cancer, and reduce their risk of bone fractures from osteoporosis later in life. 

And the best for last: human breast milk also kills cancer cells. In 1999, Lund University in Sweden discovered that a component of human breast milk compels cancer cells - EVERY TYPE of cancer cell tested - to die. The killer turned out to be the protein alphalactalbumin, in case you were wondering. Their lab is the only non-American lab with American Cancer Society support. 

I will end here because this is insanely long and much more than I set out to type. Knowledge is most meaningful when shared with others. Women in this day and age face a huge predicament due to several reasons comprising social, work related, psychological and personal reasons that lead to preventing them to breastfeed their child.

I believe breastfeeding courses should be added to the curriculum of all health care schools. I believe breastfeeding should be encouraged in public places. I believe large corporations should have child care facilities for their employees and allow women at a minimum three breaks during the day to be able to at least pump in a private area, and also give them a place to store it. I believe insurance companies should reimburse families for breastfeeding support services. I believe there should be no obstacle in the way of such a beautiful blessing.