Considering the facts Covid -19 pandemic, no vaccination, no healthy food for growing child, the only option we left with to keep our child (< 15 months) immune with the changing environment is breastfeeding.
Let’s see few more Advantages of breastfeeding to babies and mother
Considering the importance of breastfeeding in our life, babies should be feed on regular intervals for at least 18 months.
As per many studies, breastfeeding has many advantages to not only babies but to mother as well.
Breast milk is a naturally available,easily digestible by babies, a complete package of health enzymes and antibodies which are necessary for babies growth.
1.Breast milk is easily digestible as compared to cow milk or formula milk as protein in breast milk gets easily break down in babies body so this reduces the chances of upset stomach, constipation, allergies due to formula milk, chances of vomiting.
2. Breast milk contains antibodies that help baby to fight against any viral Or bacterial infection. Whenever we get sick, our body generates antibodies which are then passed on to babies through breast milk. This helps baby to prevent or fight when exposed to virus or bacteria. This generally not happens in case of formula milk and this is been proven by many studies.
3. Breastfeeding helps baby to gain healthy weight at the same time it helps mother to lose weight. By healthy weight, I mean it helps to prevent children obesity. Obesity rates in breastfed babies are lower as compared to formula milk fed babies. This is mainly because of development of gut bacteria which affects fat storage. Checkout below link to know more about how gut bacteria works
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23818794/
4. From my personal experience I would like to add one more benefit that breastfed babies are Smarter than formula fed babies and it is also proved by studies.
The brain development, learning ability, physical development are different in both case.
5. For lactating woman, breastfeeding has many benefits including weight loss, uterus contraction which bothers us a lot. For first 3 months, there won’t be any significant loss in weight but as after 3 months you will see a lot changes in your body. With increased appetite, we almost lost the hope of getting back to normal shape but we have found a simple solution is to breastfed baby.
6. After delivering the baby, most of the women suffers from depression but lactating mothers have less chances of having such kind of depression than others. This is manily because lactating mothers tends to have maximum physical contact, eye contact,skin touch with their babies. They tend to share maximum time with each other by means of breastfeeding which turns into calm, relaxing nature for mothers which helps them to overcome depression in case if they face any.
7. Apart from depression,lactating mothers are less likely to have breast and ovarian cancer. They also have less chances of high blood pressure, obesity, heart disease.
I would like to add one more important point.
In Covid-19 pandemic, breast milk has proves to be a effective for new born baby.
A journey of healthy and smart little one starts with breast milk.
