12 Benefits of Breastfeeding For You and Your Baby!
12 Benefits of Breastfeeding For You and Your Baby!
No mother should ever be made to feel as though she is not doing enough for her baby if she chooses not to breastfeed. This is a highly personal choice and many women will find that it can be painful, difficult, or upsetting. Others might be physically unable to breastfeed or may be on medication. There are plenty of highly successful, healthy adults who were once young children that didn’t get breastfed!
Parenting is different for everyone. The only rule is don’t judge anyone else for their parenting style. But, ……with that being said, the most common advice for most new Mothers, is that breastfeeding is the preference. If you have the option to do both, then this is the healthiest choice. There are many reasons for this, and those go beyond the nutritional benefits that the baby will enjoy. Here are 12 reasons to consider breastfeeding
1. It’s Bioavailable Nutrition
Bioavailability refers to how easy it is for us to extract and use nutrients from the foods that we consume. While two different consumables might have the same content of amino acids, minerals, or anything else; the reality is that we might get more or less benefit from each depending on how easily we can use those nutrients.
The most bioavailable sources of nutrients are almost always those that are available naturally as a part of our diet. The reason for this is that the human body evolved consuming those foods and thus adapted in order to be able to make the best use of them. Eat an apple for instance and you’ll find it easier to absorb the same amount of vitamin C, as compared with a vitamin tablet.
Often this comes down to the other nutrients that are in the food alongside the key nutrient. Breast milk works in a similar way – but to a much higher extent.
2. It’s Bonding
One of the major reasons that so many mothers choose to breastfeed, is simply that they find it to be a great way to bond with their children. Not only is this a time to be close physically, but there is also something highly rewarding about being able to provide for your child in this way.
Of course, there are plenty of other ways that a mother and child can bond and therefore you once again shouldn’t feel bad if it’s not something you’re able to do. But if you can, then you will likely find it to be a rewarding and wonderful experience.
3. Colostrum
We mentioned that milk was perfectly suited to provide a baby with all the nutrients they need in a highly available manner. And we mentioned that this only makes sense, seeing as we evolved drinking breast milk in this way.
Well, as it turns out, breast milk contains everything that a young baby needs for the first six months of their life and will even change its composition as they age. A good example of this is colostrum. This is the ‘first milk’ that develops when the baby is youngest (in the first few days) in order to help the digestive tract to grow. Sure, there are other options out there that may provide the same benefit, but this is just the perfect example of how the body is so perfectly suited to creating precisely what the baby needs as they need it!
4. Bacteria
This is a very new science that needs much further research before we’re able to delve into it in greater detail. However, suffice to say that we are now discovering a hugely important role for bacteria in human health.
We often think of bacteria as being ‘germs’ – i.e. unhealthy for us. In truth though, bacteria is good for us more often than it is bad for us. And the good kind provides us with a huge range of crucial benefits: ranging from the production of key neurotransmitters to breaking down food, to helping to improve the immune system.
The really amazing bit, is that mothers actually pass their own ‘microbiome’ on to their children during a natural birth: as the baby cries as it travels through the body, it actually ends up consuming some of the bacteria that lines the vagina! Babies born through cesarean may therefore actually have a relatively poor immune system as a result.
It’s very possible that the breast milk provides one more place for babies to get crucial ‘healthy bacteria’ from their mothers, which could improve their IQs, immune systems, moods, and much more!
5. It’s Easier… In Some Ways!
What many mothers (and even more fathers!) don’t realize, is that breastfeeding is not easy. It looks like this beautiful and peaceful process when we see it in the media, but in reality, many new mothers have great difficulty getting their child to latch on. Sometimes they will find that their nipples bleed and become broken and sore.
But on the other hand, it’s also true that in some ways, breast feeding makes less work. For instance, you don’t need to keep as many bottles lying around, and you don’t need to keep sterilizing said bottles!
When you have a newborn baby, you’re going to find that you have a huge amount of work to do to keep them happy, healthy and quiet. Creating less washing up for yourself is definitely a big bonus.
6. There’s So Much We Don’t Know
You might have been a little surprised earlier to learn about the importance of bacteria and how this might be linked with breastfeeding.
Well if you think that’s surprising, consider that there are countless other examples of things we’ve discovered lately about the human body and about breast milk more specifically. All the time we’re learning new things – such as the fact that consuming more lutein can help your child’s brain to develop faster and may even result in higher grades at school!
When you consider how much we don’t know about breast milk, it suggests that there are likely things left out of formulas and other products intended to replace said breastmilk. Therefore, it’s probably safer to stick with the OG.
7. It Will Help You Lose Weight
When you’ve first given birth, you’ll find that your body has been through a huge ordeal. It probably doesn’t look or feel quite the way you remember it! This can be distressing for some women who will miss the days when they had tight defined abs and could fit into the smallest items of clothes.
Well, the good news is that if you breastfeed, you should find you more quickly return to your original size. You’re literally creating a diet for your child. They are literally drinking the calories that you have in your body. As a result, you’ll find that your stomach shrinks back down much more quickly, and you are thus able to return to your original size more easily.
8. It Helps You Feel Like a Mother
Believe it or not, when your child drinks from your breasts, it will help you to feel more like a Mum. This is something that mothers have been doing since the dawn of time and it’s an image that many of us will associate with being a mother.
Again, this isn’t to say that not breastfeeding is in any way missing out. It is simply to say that you might find you gain something additional by breastfeeding that you otherwise wouldn’t have. Even just shopping for maternity wear and figuring out ways to discretely feed in public. Sure, it can be a bit of a nightmare… but it is also something that many of us will only get to experience once or twice in our lifetimes. And life is all about the experiences you have.
And yes: sometimes breastfeeding can be hard. Sometimes it can be a real struggle. But this is in some ways part of the experience too. This is one of the early challenges you face as a Mum and as such, being able to get past it, will help you to feel all the more successful, accomplished, and confident going forward.
9. Gives You More Iron
Now you might think that letting your sprog drink all the nutrients out of your breasts would result in there being fewer leftover for you… Thankfully, that’s not how these things work!
There are just as many benefits for Mums as there are for babies in fact. Amenorrhea – the absence of a menstrual period – is normal for 4-6 weeks after delivery. But for women who choose breastfeeding, the condition may last twice as long.
And that in turn means that you actually have more iron in your body. This is important because iron helps to carry oxygen around the body and also nutrients. This supports your immune system and ensures high energy levels. As your parent friends have already probably told you – you’re going to need all of the energy that you can get!
10. Encourages Skin to Skin
It has been shown that skin-to-skin time is very beneficial for both mother and child. In fact, this is considered extremely important when the child is first born – which is the reason that mothers are encouraged to hold their children as one of the first things they do.
Breastfeeding is a very useful way to encourage this – and may help with bonding, as well as encouraging the production of important and useful hormones and neurotransmitters.
During the pregnancy, babies spend their entire lives inside the mother – literally as close as you can possibly get. During this time, they hear the mother’s heartbeat and even the sounds of blood rushing through the veins and arteries (which may be why ‘shh’ has become the defacto sign for ‘at ease’). Skin to skin contact between a baby and their mother is the closest thing to this, so it should be no surprise that it’s encouraged.
In fact, there is even a school of thought called ‘the fourth trimester’ which basically encourages parents to treat the first few months as though the baby were still in the womb. Keeping them as close as possible. Either way, even if you choose not to breastfeed, it’s highly advisable that you still make sure to spend time skin-to-skin.
11. Aids Your Reproductive Health
As mentioned, there are likely countless benefits to breastfeeding that we simply don’t know about yet. At the same time, there are also plenty that we know about but just don’t quite understand yet!
For example, did you know that breastfeeding can statistically lower your likelihood of ovarian, uterine, and breast cancer? This is an observation from several studies. For instance, one study found that breastfeeding for the first 2 years could reduce the likelihood of breast cancer by 11-25%! Our best explanation at the moment is that the repeated ovulatory cycles and exposure to high levels of estrogen experienced for those that don’t go through breastfeeding makes them more likely to experience problems.
There are other potential explanations too though. For instance, it might be to do with the stress-fighting benefits of breastfeeding. Likewise, it could have something to do with autophagy – the tendency of the body to break down its own ‘waste’ cells when it has no other source of fuel.
12. Reduces Your Risk of Heart Disease and Diabetes
As well as improving your chance of avoiding those cancers, breastfeeding also lowers the risk of several other health problems. These include heart disease, diabetes, obesity and more.
The studies show that women are 12% less likely to have high blood pressure, 20% less likely to get diabetes, 9% less likely to have heart problems, and 19% less likely to have unusually high levels of bad fats in the blood. Wow!
In short, nature wants to keep you as healthy as possible during this critical time in your child’s life. And while we don’t know what the mechanisms of all these things are at the moment, the stats speak for themselves. And we can easily guess a few possible reasons too: breastfeeding lowers stress, it potentially triggers changes in the body, it reduces hormonal flux, and more.
