A Case for Breastfeeding

The cover story of the Time magazine edition of May 21, 2012 was very interesting. It was about the decision of some American mothers to breastfeed their kids for as long as three years.

The story however reminded one of the other side of the coin. Out there in this same society is a total absence of breastfeeding among a large population of teenagers and young women who are abdicating their responsibilities as mothers to cows. Babies as new as a few-hours-old are having  formula bottles plunged into their mouths in place of their mothers' nipples. The hapless babies would have been better off if they had been made to feed directly from cows instead of being given chemically-processed milk that offers no benefits. And some of these babies will graduate from the cow milk to junk foods. It's no wonder therefore that a lot of babies grow up acting like they are in a cattle farm.

While the reasons for the women's willful negligence are shallow, the ignorance behind them are deep. On the one hand, they avoid breastfeeding to prevent their babies from clinging to them especially as they are desperate to resume "running all over the town". But whose fault was it, in the first place, that they embarked on unprotected sex that resulted in babies? And on the other hand, the young mothers are claiming that breastfeeding will make their breasts sag. Yet, it has been proved scientifically that whether a woman breastfeed or not, her breasts will sag. So, she may as well breastfeed her babies.

A young friend once told me the story of a woman he met online some years ago. Based on the posted pictures, the woman was so pretty that he fantasied about her for weeks. The two finally agreed to meet for a dinner date at a Wilmington, Delaware restaurant. On the scheduled day, the young man was the first to arrive and he had barely taken his seat when the woman showed up by his side. He took one look at her and was horrified!

Standing before him was a pregnant woman.

"Ah..." he shook his head as the woman sat down. "But you never told me you were pregnant?"     

"What?" the embarrassed woman flatly denied being pregnant.

"Really..." the man pointed at her stomach, stammering. "You...you look pregnant..."

Now getting upset, the woman tried to explain that the bulging stomach was the result of her last pregnancy. And so, for the two, that was the end of the dinner date.    

If only those ignorant and negligent young mothers had known the benefits of breastfeeding to both babies and mothers? First of all, the free breast milk will create and establish a natural immune system for the babies. Secondly, breastfeeding will allow for a strong emotional bond between mother and child. And finally, the mothers' uterus will promptly undergo contraction that will return the stomach to its previous flat shape. In fact, there is also the bonus of the woman having her skin glow afresh while she breastfeed her baby.

It's not funny and neither is it sexy for a young woman, who after just one child, goes about with a protruding stomach that results from her refusal to do something as natural as breastfeeding her own child.