When a woman or a man searches for information to feed her baby it is easy to find blog entries, articles in magazines and even books that explain that breast milk is the best because it has a lot of benefits for the baby and the mother. Something like the bottle is what has always been given, artificial milk is what all babies take, but if you want, you can give something even better that adds a plus to the health of children.
It is not that it is false, but it is a way of explaining the totally perverse movie that manipulates the message so that the sensation of the person receiving the information is that both are perfectly valid options and that breastfeeding is only "in case you want to give something a a little better". The reality, the way it should be explained is quite different: breast milk has no advantages for the baby (it is artificial milk that has disadvantages).
The fault is the normalization of artificial milk
If we traveled to the past, sometime at the beginning of the last century, we would see that it was normal for babies to be breastfed. From there, backwards, it has always been normal. There was nothing else! In cases of emergency, what was possible was done (my wife's grandfather usually explains that he drank donkey's milk), but since the existence of the man, the baby's main food has been the mother's milk. Do you know any food that has been perfected for thousands and thousands of years to this day? Yes, human milk, for example, that offers the baby everything it needs.
Nobody looked for an alternative, nobody considered if there was something better or more liberating for the woman (probably nobody thought that the woman had to free herself from anything) until the artificial milk was advanced enough to be the main food of a baby . At that time it began to be advertised as a revolution, something that all babies should take, something that mothers should aspire to, a source of food for the baby that would allow them to feed them without the mother having to be with the baby almost at all hours. Misconceptions, unsubstantiated recommendations (breastfeeding every 3 hours for ten minutes, washing breasts before each shot, etc.) and the achievement of manufacturers, which they got to give artificial milk something of the women of high social strata and that the breast was only for those who had no means to buy milk and bottles, which over time managed to be like the wealthiest, made the formula milk end up being normal.
The baby was breastfed for the first few months, or not, and then it would begin to be supplemented until the breast was completely removed (mostly at 3 months, when a growth outbreak occurred and no one was able to tell the mother that The baby's increased demand was normal and that the only thing to do was to continue breastfeeding often as the baby asked.) The use of bottles and artificial milk was extended in such a way that ended up saying that "breastfeeding is a gypsy thing". The rest, they gave the normal, the bottle.
However, with the passing of the years and thanks to the advance of science it was possible to begin to demonstrate what many already knew but the industry had been in charge of denying: infant formulas had nothing to do with breast milk. If they even got to advertise artificial milk with slogans like “Give your son the best milk. Milk X ” or "Doctor X recommends a diet based exclusively on Milk X".
But many years have passed and we already know the truth
I can understand that at first, when most women believed that artificial milk was better, the discourse about breast milk had to focus on differences, on what it offered more. It wasn't just food, it was food, just like artificial milk, but it added more things. Therefore there was talk of "the benefits", a discourse that has been in force for decades and tries to show women and men, mothers and fathers, that breast milk is something above normal, sometimes extolled with an aura of mysticism that seems even magic.
And it is not like that. Breast milk is not magic. Mysterious, perhaps yes, because it is still under study and there are many things that we do not know about her, but not very different from what it means to have a baby and give birth (which will be elevated to the category of magic when babies develop in artificial wombs a season and begin to see that it is worse than forming in the womb of his mother).
We already know the truth, so we can already say it without fear: breast milk has no benefits, it is normal, what a baby expects to receive. It is what your body needs to receive.
What a baby expects to receive?
So is. Isn't blood and nutrients what a fetus expects to receive when it is connected to its mother through the placenta? Well that's exactly what you get. If now an artificial placenta appeared that showed that fetuses develop worse we would not say that the natural placenta has benefits with respect to it, we would say that it is a worse than natural invention. What if this artificial placenta served to save the lives of many babies who would otherwise die? Well, surely we would embrace such an invention as a great innovation and accept it for that purpose, but never as a way to avoid or supplant a natural gestation.
When a baby grows in the womb of his mother is at the end of pregnancy when he receives her defenses. In recent weeks he begins to prepare to defend himself at birth from everything that comes before him. This is done thanks to the defenses of his mother, who pass through the placenta, and he does it thanks to the birth canal, where the baby is contaminated by the bacteria of his mother (known to him) creating from that moment a internal flora that will help defend against the outside.
What happens when a baby is not born vaginally? Well, what we have commented on other occasions: it is no longer contaminated by the bacteria of the mother, but it does it of the microorganisms that are in the place where it is born, in the skin of mother, in the gown that she wears, in the hands of the gynecologist, in those of the midwife who cleans her, in the delivery room ... How does this affect the baby? An increased risk of allergies, abdominal pain (often called colic) and an increased risk of being colonized by microorganisms such as Escherichia Coli, a bacterium that can become quite dangerous because it causes many infections and Clostridium Difficile, a bacterium that is usually in the digestive system of people who usually spend a lot of time in hospitals or who have been treated with antibiotics, which can cause diarrhea, intestinal discomfort, etc.
If the baby is then breastfed it also helps the flora to have more Bifidobacteria (These are good and are involved, for example, in the digestion of new foods ... more Bifidobacteria, the body accepts new foods better when complementary feeding begins) and less E. Coli Y C. Difficile. As there is also a large number of immune cells in human milk, we can say without fear of being wrong that The woman's mammary gland's mission is to continue providing the baby with what she previously received by the placental route.
Or do you consider that a newborn baby is already a mature child? No, right? The first thing they say to the parents of a newborn is that they be very careful not to take it to very loaded environments, that parents and adults wash their hands, that sick children, cold adults, etc. do not approach it. You still need a lot of help to defend yourself from outside and that help comes from breast milk. I repeat, it is not magic, it is the continuation of what the placenta did. It is to continue abroad with the work that was done inside. It has no more mystery.
Where is the artificial milk?
Artificial milk, whose real name is "prepared for infants" is a product that comes from modified cow's milk so that the baby can drink it without their organs suffering the consequences that they would suffer in case of drinking unmodified cow's milk. It is a food that nourishes and feeds the time it takes, in the absence of human milk, but that is far from being what the baby's body expects. There are no defenses, there is no continuation with the work of the placenta (human milk is able to adapt its composition according to the moment the baby is born, as if it were intelligent, offering what the baby needs based on whether it was born before or later), there are no changes as the days go by, or between shots, or as the weeks and months go by, there are no hundreds of bacteria known to the baby to help you have an ideal intestinal flora, not there is ... there is not ... there is not ...
And all this means that babies who do not drink human milk have a higher risk of infections (diarrhea, pneumonia, bronchiolitis, otitis, urinary infections, etc.), than when they are vaccinated, the immune response is lower (the greater the response, greater effectiveness of vaccines), which have a higher risk of sudden death, more risk of chronic diseases such as allergies, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, juvenile chronic arthritis, leukemia, lymphoma, high blood pressure, worse cognitive development, etc.
But this last paragraph is terrible!
Of course it is! If I even wanted to not write it, not to publish it! It is a summary of a chapter of the Guide of Lactation for Professionals that the AEP (Spanish Association of Pediatrics) published a few years ago and it is scary to read it, but I think it is important not to ignore information, not to make up the data, because then we would be lying. Is a reality. It is something that is happening. Many babies are not receiving breast milk and are not developing the same way they would if they took it and much of the blame, badly for me, is ours, of health professionals, that for a long time we have not been able to help mothers to breastfeed and have left them sold with their breastfeeding problems and with the only solution of leaving it and going to the pharmacy for artificial milk and a bottle.
Therefore, once again, and through this entry, I appeal to all health professionals: doctors, pediatricians, midwives, nurses, gynecologists and anyone who must ensure the feeding of babies and, at the same time , for the possibility of the mother to breastfeed, so that train and learn about breastfeeding, as much as they can, to be able to attend to nursing mothers from respect, without value judgments and in the same way that a woman is born giving birth: "Go doing, that I am here alone in case something goes wrong" And in case something goes wrong, putting all the energy in helping both of them to continue with it, if that is what the mother wants.
The appeal obviously becomes extensive to the rest of society. To the mother-in-law, to the grandmothers, to the sisters, to the aunts, to the couples, to the neighbors, to the one who passes through the park and takes a questioning look at the mother who is breastfeeding,… breastfeeding should be protected by all, if we are all clear that the health of babies in a community is largely the responsibility of the entire community.
This is the photo
This is the photo of the current reality. That's how raw I wanted to do it and explain it because parents spend a lot of time choosing the baby's room, buying the stroller that will be better for them and choosing the clothes they will wear on the first day, but as a general rule, they spend very little to inform and train themselves to breastfeed in conditions, either in a health center, or with a book on breastfeeding, or in a support group for nursing mothers. Did you look for information? Well, look for it from this one, from the real one, from which it doesn't tell you that giving a bottle is the same as giving breast milk and that babies grow the same.
In the absence of breast milk, given the impossibility of breastfeeding, artificial milk is undoubtedly the best option. Thanks to her, babies do not have to resort to donkey's milk or watered cow's milk, as they do in countries without resources, and thanks to her, many babies have an alternative. But it must be that, an alternative, the solution to a problem, not an option like breast milk because, as you see, it is not the same.
Photos | iStock
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