Sunday, June 18, 2006

Women and breastfeeding part 1

What is going on nowadays with women and breastfeeding? About 4 out of 5 women I know do not breast-feed their babies and around me looks like there are more and more women don’t breast-feed their babies. My hands are itchy to bring up this subject on my blog because I really believe the importance of breastfeeding for the babies.

Although the survey that has been made by United Nation, there are 15% more women breast-feed their babies globally, I still think that modern women nowadays a little bit reluctant of breastfeeding their babies. I heard many reasons given by those women. But most of them said that their breasts produce very little milk so it is not enough for the babies and they just choose to give formula instead and let their breasts stop producing milk completely. These women, at least the ones I know, complain that their breasts are so painful every time they nurse their babies and because of this painful feeling, they’d rather stop nursing. They just can’t cope with this pain because they are already very tired; lack of sleep, the headache, the body ache and the never-stop-sound of their crying babies. To make it worse, they are still in the baby blues mode. So, they just don’t have spare energy to learn to express their breast milk correctly and to cope with the pain not only on the breasts but also on their stomach (because the womb contracts to its original size before these women were pregnant).

I really really feel sorry for these women. I really really want to help them but unfortunately I am not a doctor, not a midwife, and not even old enough for them to listen to me. All I can do just giving them my advice but they keep on telling me that they’d rather give up breastfeeding their babies because there is not enough milk coming out from their breasts and they just think I am such a busy body person.

Gosh, if only I could scream at their ears “I AM NOT BUSY BODY! I JUST WANT TO SHARE MY EXPERIENCE TO GIVE THE BEST FOR YOUR BABY.”
I am a mother too and I breastfed my baby exclusively for 15 months. When I had my baby it was my first time. I was all alone; husband not around, parents and parents in law not around, no family around, and I was living in a country that is not my home country. If you care, you can read my story from my previous post “Confession of a mother on mother’s day”. So I definitely know how they feel.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree totally with you on the long term benefits for the baby plus also the close bonding. Well done.