Breastfeeding is personal, political, empowering, and healthy! It’s good for women, babies, and our planet.
Mother
Nature Loves Breastmilk
Bottle Feeding and Intelligence
Bottle Feeding
and Breast Cancer
Questions posted on this page will be answered by several members of our clinic because the problems associated with nursing are frequently multidimensional and require not only the technical knowledge of lactation itself, but also medical, nutritional, and psychological expertise to be remedied.
To find out the types of conditions that may be consulted about online in this office, please see Examples.
The price for this consultation is $15. If you wish to recieve a consultation from this office, please follow Macia's instructions on how to fill out our Patient's Questionnaire
The
single most important factor determining the success or failure of breastfeeding
is the way your baby is latched on the breast. In order to achieve a perfect
seal from the start, wait until your baby’s mouth is open very wide and
then thrust your breast into the mouth as deeply as possible, aiming for
the upper palate. Make sure your baby’s lips are not inverted and are properly
positioned around the areola—not the nipple itself. It is hard to see the
lower lip, but you can palpate it with your finger and pull it out if necessary.
Most women can produce more than enough milk for their infants; the reason that some newborns are hungry and nurse very frequently without gaining weight (and may even become dehydrated) is not lack of milk or its “thinness” but poor latching. For the purpose of establishing proper suckling technique right from the start, make sure no one ever gives your newborn baby a bottle before you nurse her. Put your baby to the breast as soon as possible after your labour is over.
Controlling female fertility is one of the major aims of patriarchy; interfering with continual breastfeeding and a woman’s reproductive cycle is one of its most important mechanisms. Nature did not intend us to lactate for such a short time and to menstruate so many times during our lives. After a successful pregnancy, the human breasts are meant to lactate continuously for four to five years, during which time ovulation is suppressed and libido is reduced. Currently, however, new mothers breastfeed for an average of only three months.
In
susceptible individuals, interruption of breastfeeding may lead to diseases
of the breast and uterus.
--- The almost complete suppression
of breastfeeding in the 1940s and 1950s, and the consequent interference
with normal lactation, may very well be related to the current epidemic
of breast cancer in women in their 60s and 70s.) Since the establishment
of large-scale agriculture, food supplementation has interfered with continual
exclusive breastfeeding, leading to a drastic increase in both
infant mortality and female fertility. In the modern world, even those women
who do not hurry to wean their babies use too many unnecessary food supplements.
The resulting suppression of lactation
brings about the untimely re-establishment of the menstrual cycle. For the
many women who live under the tyrannical patriarchy of the third world,
this leads in turn to multiple pregnancies—as well as an increase in infant
and mother mortality, poverty, overpopulation, and the exploitation and
neglect of children.
--- "If
all women who do not breastfeed or who breastfeed for less than 3 months
were to do so for 4 to 12 months, breast cancer among parous premenopausal
women could be reduced by 11 percent, judging from current rates. If all
women with children lactated for 24 months or longer, however, then the
incidence might be reduced by nearly 25 percent. This reduction would be
even greater among women who first lactate at an early age." Newcomb
PA, Storer BE, Longnecker MP, et al. "Lactation and a reduced risk
of premenopausal breast cancer."
N Engl J Med. 1994; 330:81-87
---
Women who were formula-fed as infants have higher rates of breast cancer
as adults. For both premenopausal and postmenopausal breast cancer, women
who were breastfed as children, even if only for a short time, had a 25%
lower risk of developing breast cancer than women who were bottle-fed as
infants. Freudenheim, J. et al. 1994 "Exposure to breast
milk in infancy and the risk of breast cancer". Epidemiology 5:324-331
For more information on breastfeeding check out the links in Other Lands
If you wish to receive a consultation from this office please fill out the Patient's Questionnaire
