Despite so many advantages, the incidence of breast-feeding is declining and the use of commercial formulas increasing. Why?<\/p>\n
1. Figure consciousness: In this modern age, the media hype and western norms have created a feeling of insecurity about a person’s physical characteristics in the minds of both men and women. Breast-feeding being touted as the cause for breast sagging, women may prefer bottle feeding rather than running the risk of their figure being spoiled.<\/p>\n
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If one rationally thinks about it, it is obvious that breast-feeding cannot affect any other part of the body. So one cannot become heavy at the hips or get a tummy bulge because of breast-feeding. Regarding breast sagging, the firmness and tone of the breasts depend largely on the chest muscles. Proper exercise of the chest wall muscles coupled with a firm brassiere for good support of breasts will not cause their sagging in a breast-feeding woman. In fact, breast-feeding makes the breasts heavier and larger (something many women crave for as is evident by the commercial success of silicon implants).<\/p>\n
So, breast-feeding has nothing to do with making the woman unattractive. What spoils the figure of the mother is a lack of post-delivery conditioning exercises and overeating (in India, mothers are fed desi ghee and other rich and high calorie diet post-delivery). On top of this is a sedentary life style, particularly for the first few months after delivery.<\/p>\n
All these factors contribute in making the mother plump and lead to the slumping of her figure. As coincidentally, this is also the time of breast-feeding; an erroneous association is made between breast-feeding and the sagging of the figure, while actually other factors are responsible for it. Realising this, western women are increasingly turning towards breast-feeding as the nutrition of choice for their baby and take pride in doing so.<\/p>\n
2. Lack of motivation: The mothers give up easily if they feel that they are not able to breast-feed properly or they consider breast-feeding a bother. This “easy surrender” has a lot to do with the easy availability of infant milk tins. Because such an easy alternative is available, mothers don’t try hard enough, nor do they have the patience to go on till a satisfactory pattern of breast-feeding is established. (Remember breast-feeding is an art and it does take some effort and time to establish a smooth pattern). So, unless the mothers are motivated enough and have a serious desire to breast-feed, they give up early Motivation can come only if the mother understands the benefits of breast milk and takes pride in giving her baby her own milk.<\/p>\n
3. Career pressures: Many mothers are working women who go to work from morning to evening. Such mothers should take full advantage of their maternity leave and breast-feed during this leave to foster a deep emotional bond between themselves and their babies. When the woman resumes her duties, before leaving for office, she can express her breast milk in a container and refrigerate it, so that the caretaker of the baby during her absence can feed the baby that milk.<\/p>\n
Medical science strongly advises that mothers should breast-feed, so as not to deprive their baby of a nature’s gift from the mother to the baby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"