Wednesday

breastfeeding matters

Another new study demonstrates that not only is breastfeeding the gold standard for feeding your baby/toddler, it is dose dependent. The longer you breastfeed, the lower your child's risk for respiratory illnesses.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

but no data on who those breastfeeders are. are they stay-at-home moms or are their kids in daycare? could be that daycare is harder on respiratory health than breastfeeding is good for it. tg

Anonymous said...

We had planned to exclusively BF our baby for at least 6 months maybe longer. But at 5 months he had other ideas and was begging for food. He is now 10 months and still BFs 5 or 6 times a day, but he likes his solids too.
Of course, he was 11 days late, weighed nearly 11 pounds, and has always been ahead of the curve in regard to physical development.

He has had two colds, one led to ear infections.

Anonymous said...

I have three children. The first bf exclusively til 5 months, then solids were introduced and I weaned him at 9 months. He is almost 6 years old and has had one ear infection. He hasn't had a fever for 2 years now.
The second bf exclusively til 7 months, then slowly solids were introduced (she's a picky eater) and I weaned her at 18 months. She had about 3 ear infections in her first year and now, at almost 4 years old, still has one every winter.
The third child is 10 months old now, bf exclusively til 7 months as well, very picky eater, nurses almost round the clock. He has had two ear infections in the last 3 months and, for the first time in this family, a bronchiolitis.

I trully believe and support bf, but there must be so many other factors to assure baby's and young children's health... My children stayed home til 3 and 1/2. They almost never get sweets or fast food. They eat loads of fruit and vegetables.

I think the main difference between the first and the other two is that with the first, though bf for shorter time, I had all the time to clean his nose, dress and undress him properly according to weather, never went out when with a heavy cold, not daily and prolonged contact with other children until 3 1/2...

I'm not happy realizing this. I wish bf was really the only (natural!) antibiotic they had ever needed!