Blog Hop - Big Difference

This Week’s Topic: What I Would Have Done Differently

Whether you’ve been breastfeeding for a week or a year or more, I think we all have some things we wish we would have done differently. Share your stories here.

I am so so lucky that Little Man is just a born nurser.  He loves it, I love it.  We have our moments when I want to tell him to get to sleep and stop sucking my boob but in general it's pretty easy.  My only regret with him is that I supplemented a couple of times.  The second night home he was up fussing all night.  I thought he was hungry, hadn't yet learned about the night of transition.  So, I gave him a bottle and then a couple of more nights after that.  Each night he got really bad gas.  Then one night when he was a week old he spit up in his sleep and choked and woke up screaming.  I've lost a child and all I could think of was, he'll choke and die in his sleep.  I threw the rest of the formula in the garbage.  Do I want a baby with painful gas?  One that could choke in his sleep?  Heck no!  He has never had gas like that since and has never spit up since.  Occasionally if he gobbles his milk down to fast he'll spit up a little but not like the exorcism spit ups he got with formula.  It's just not right.  It was clear to me that it was not made for his tummy.  If I could go back in time I would have thrown that "gift" from the formula company out as soon as it arrived at my door.  

This is part of the Weekly Blog Hop hosted by Life with Levi...

Cancer Research

We have all heard that breastfeeding helps to lower a woman's risk for breast and ovarian cancer. Please click on this link to an article on a study that was performed on women who gave birth to two or three children and the link to certain positive and negative cancer reseptors. The research studied women who breastfed versus women who did not.

*Article credit - UPI.com

Breast is Best

I found this article a few weeks ago from KellyMom.com. It is such a wonderful perspective about how the campaign "Breast is Best" might not be enough to spread the benefits for breastfeeding. I love this quote from the article:

"I'm questioning why our natural instincts to nurse have gone askew and why our views about feeding our young are less instinctive and more socially and culturally constructed.

I'm questioning why what should be one of the most natural experiences of motherhood is under cultural fire and even being used as fodder for political grandstanding."

Take a look for yourself - what do you think is hindering our natural instinct to care for our young by breastfeeding - knowing that "Breast is Best"?

*Click here to read the full article - Womensenews.org

Health benefits of breastfeeding

I have learned over the years, through experience and reading; that breastfeeding keeps children healthier than their non-breastfed counterparts. If they do get sick, it tends not to last as long. Breastmilk can be used to cure eye infections, clear up congested noses, and help speed the healing of superficial wounds (in babies and adults too!) Breastmilk contains anti-infective and anti-bacterial properties and breastmilk that is pumped and left out on a counter for 6-8 hours, actually contains LESS bacteria than it did when it was first expressed!! It is so amazing and scientists have discovered some of the wonderful things in breast milk but not all, and formula companies are unable to reproduce exactly what is in breastmillk. This is why I was not surprised to read the following article (which made me feel sad all over again for the children who are not breastfed and for parents who do not know all of the benefits of mothering their children at the breast and the small percentage of breastfed infants in the US (and other parts of the world).


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/05/health/main6364292.shtml