Sushruta, the greatest surgeon in history, who is quoted by medical authorities worldwide and whose works are the building blocks of modern medicine, prescribed in his Sushruta Samhita, 5 months of exclusive breast feeding for the child. Which was then to be reduced gradually with introduction of solid foods in the sixth month and weaned away with love and care slowly as the child began teething. Today, as modern mothers have access to milk formulae for their babies, they mistake it to be a substitute to the mother’s milk. It is not!
- Breast milk contains all the vitamins and nutrients your baby needs.
- It is packed with disease-fighting substances that protect your baby from illnesses.
- It is the perfect temperature and forms a bond between mother and baby.
- It does not ruin your figure or make you fat. In fact, a 2010 study from University of Pittsburgh suggests that breastfeeding helps moms lose the abdominal fat they gain while pregnant.
- Breastfeeding protects children against obesity and cancer and helps their immune system develop properly. A research published in the Time Magazine, showed that kids who are breastfed for six to seven months are less likely to be overweight or obese than kids who drink formula milk.
- Mother’s milk serves like a chemical signal transmitted from the mother to the baby. It decides the temperament of your baby.
- Breastfed children on an average have a higher IQ than children who are not, shows research.
- Mothers who breastfeed have a 25% lesser chance of getting breast, ovarian and uterine cancer. Apart from that it prevents postpartum depression, i.e. depression caused after child birth.
In the words of behavioural biologist, Katie Hinde’s at Harvard, “We are really missing the breadth of what mother’s milk is…” No reason can be greater than the fact that it is what nature which created you and your baby chose. No man-made study or formula can replace what the Creation has given us. We can strive to better nature, but we haven’t been able to in the last 200,000 years of being humans on earth…our rishis have been saying this for the last 200,000 years.
STATISTICS TELL US…
- Optimal breastfeeding of infants under two years of age has the potential to prevent over 800,000 deaths (13 percent of all deaths) in children under five in the developing world (Lancet 2013).
- Breastfed children have atleast six times greater chance of survival in the early months than non-breastfed children. An exclusively breastfed child is 14 times less likely to die in the first six months than a non-breastfed child, and breastfeeding drastically reduces deaths from acute respiratory infection and diarrhoea, two major child killers (Lancet 2008).
