Breastfeeding is often debated but it really can’t be duplicated. It’s your body’s way of nourishing your child into a healthy toddler and beyond.
The fact that it’s free and the best source of food for your child are just some of its many benefits. But not all of us mamas find it easy to do to, and some simply choose the bottle over the breast.
Here are three facts about breastfeeding that you can tuck into to your mommy files.
1. Breastfeeding Is Instinct
For both mother and baby, the ability and option is ingrained within our psyche. Your body wants you to breastfeed, that’s why it makes colostrum and milk during your pregnancy and after you’ve delivered.
And your baby is born with their own survival instinct of suckling and latching onto mommy’s breast in order to get their nourishment and to continue life.
It’s nature’s way of ensuring we survive - that mothers have the means to feed their young.
Breastfeeding is one of humanity's most primitive and naturalistic tendencies for both the mother and the child.
2. Breast Milk Is Stored Differently For Each Mother
Some mothers make loads of it, while others seem to make just enough.
This is not a sign to give up breastfeeding, but rather nature’s way of letting mother know that she may need to feed baby from both breasts during each feeding rather than choosing one at each nursing time.
For a mother that makes a lot of milk, this may mean that their baby doesn’t have to feed as frequently as those for whose mother makes less.
Either way, your milk production doesn’t define you as a mother, it simply means that more feedings for your baby and you should know that is perfectly fine and a normal part of breastfeeding.
3. Follow Your Instincts
The need to want your baby close to you is innate.
The skin-to-skin contact between a mother and her child send signals to your body that it needs to send milk to your breasts to feed and sustain your child, and it also is beneficial to your baby in that they feel safe, secure, and loved, thus nurturing their natural ability to latch on and feed from their mothers.
Therefore, when you hold your baby, nurse them, wear them, and cradle them, the situation becomes a hormonal win-win for both the mother and the child.
Nature and instinct combine to fulfil the life force within each mother and child independently as well as as an unbreakable and well-defined unit where both parties are feeding off of their own ingrained behaviors.
And that’s a beautiful thing for all of our mamas and babies everywhere.