:: Bali for Kids.com Magazine - Breastfeeding is soooo cool!::

One of the wonders of this world is giving birth to a child and breastfeeding it. I am a mother myself and I have been breastfeeding my child for almost 1 ½ years. It was a stunning experience I would have missed – something I could not tell, I would miss if I never would have done it…

What makes breastfeeding so special for a mother? It is the strong connection and bonding you have with your child during breastfeeding. Having your child so close to you there is always an interaction between your child and you. A look, a little cuddle, a grasp of those little fingers on your breast… Your child communicates with you during breastfeeding like at no other time you spend with your child. Having you baby falling asleep on your breast and just falling backwards in your arms from total relaxation is one of the most funniest things you can see. Additional breastfeeding helps you to calm down your baby in seconds. No matter what happened, the comfort of putting your child on your breast and the instant calming effect on your baby makes a mother's life so much easier. It is not just putting them on the breast, it is the hormones released from the mother, which also calms the baby. Watching moms who only bottle feed and the dramas they often have to go though with their babies, is heartbreaking for a mother who was breastfeeding. As a mom you just want to go over and take them and put them on your breast and calm them down. I watched a woman a few weeks ago with a 2 month old boy who was bottle feed and her 1 hour battle with him to calm him down. This had nothing to do with colic. He simple always turned to her breast, wanted to suck himself to sleep, to comfort. He needed the hormones of his moms to calm him down. After one hour the mother was extremely stressed out and the baby totally frustrated feel finally asleep. I had myself situations where my baby was off the role, but just sitting down for 10 minutes and breastfeeding would just calm her down if I just calmed down myself enough.

Fitri nearly died in the Tsunami, which took nearly her entire family. On this day in March 2009 she gave birth to her child, in the water at Bumi Sehat Clinic... and here she is breastfeeding with her birth team... Love, Ibu Robin

Breastfeeding for us is essential for so much…. Love, comfort, feeling of togetherness, beauty. Yes, beauty too. Midwife Ibu Robin from Bumi Sehat Foundation told me once that the sucking effect on the breast – which is far stronger than on bottles – develops muscles in the face, which later in live make us much more beautiful. Often when I see bottle feed babies laying there by themselves sucking on a bottle of milk, it gives me a hard time. What love and pampering those kids are missing out? The feeling of emptiness filled up with just a full tummy. No wonder than later in life those children associate love with food and each time lack of love is compensated with food. There the circle of overweight and unhappiness is lay down very, very early. And again, people often think: Ah, no problem, they just little children. A believe more false it cannot be. In the earliest days most of our personality is lay down. Most of our habits are created. Lack of love and closeness to the mother is something many babies suffer today. No wonder our society is getting colder and more and more unsocial with every decade. If our basic instincts are kick out for convenience and freedom... But what freedom do you gain from bottle feeding? Is it really freedom? First of all you have big bills of baby milk and baby food coming up. As a breastfeeding mother you need to eat more, true, but nothing compare to expensive baby formula. If your baby needs to be feed in the night you have an almost 5-6 times a night disturbed sleep. Getting out to prepare the bottle, sitting down to feed your baby. As a breastfeeding mother, you just put your baby on your breast and often - in ideal situation your baby helps itself and you can just nap away. As you are close to your baby, you two are a breastfeeding/sleeping unit. So a lot of lack of sleep for bottle feeding mothers. Keeping up with sterilizing bottles, preparing milk. It is quite a big job. For busy mothers or mothers in third world countries this is a duty which takes over too much of the time. I am extremely happy I never had to wash out a single milk bottle nor sterile one. Just lift up your shirt and lets go. How easy… Why would one want to make live more difficult?

Breastfeeding mothers are extremely flexible. No matter if the child is hungry 1 hour earlier or later, the milk is just ready to go. No matter if you are in a traffic jam or your the bigger kids take longer - you got your milk ready to go. No matter if you traveling in a foreign country or just to your family. You got your "very own save formula" always with you. What can be more easy? For me it is almost not understandable that a mother would not breast feed her baby.

So what else you can expect if you breast feed and what if you got problems? Okay, what can happen is that you have no milk? Very often mothers go to strong births and are exhausted, so their milk supply is later. An experienced midwife knows many tricks to get the milk going. Special kinds of food, like Almonds or Mungobeans help. But for me there are two main reasons why women cannot breast feed in the first place: One is they simply are not drinking enough. To breast feed you need to drink at least 3 liters of water a day. This sounds a lot, but this is what you need if you breastfeeding and you want to have enough good quality milk. Means also a milk with as little as possible pollution in it. If you drink 1 1/2 liters a day for yourself, you can be sure you wash out a lot of pollution each day, pollution which will not go into your mother milk. Second, the baby needs at least 1 1/2 liter of milk a day. Why shall a breast feed baby need less than a bottle feed baby? So as a matter of logic: You need to drink 3 liters of water a day. Some even more. I meet many mothers who breast feed and they only drink around 1 liter a day and than they say: "I don't have enough milk." Nothing, comes from nothing, ladies. The second reason that breastfeeding is not working is a lack of bonding between mother and child - this can be already from the beginning. If the two did not bond during pregnancy, it is hard to have a kick start in breastfeeding. Unwanted pregnancy, abuse of the mother or simply fear of what is coming already creates a disturbance in the bonding in a very early stage. It is more than sad, that mothers and their children have to go though such problems. Lack of worldwide understanding is one of the base of all those problems. Women today are not enough supported anymore. If you know you can only stay for a month with your baby before you got to go back to work and abandoned your child - how can you build up a bonding with your child at the first place. Many women on our planet have to take care of the children and work for the living of the family. Something is totally wrong here already.

Just briefly I discovered that there might be another reason women have problems with breastfeeding. Though many reasons, women can already develop pre-breast cancer - which cannot be diagnosed from conventional medicine at this stage. If the early stages of cancer sits in the milk dugs, they cannot produce milk as they shall. So 3 major facts, which are very, very common can disturb milk supply right from the beginning. Midwives and holistic healers have ways to help woman even before the pregnancy to solve those problems by fine-tuning the mothers body and soul.

Breastfeeding is far better than any other solution out there. Bottled milk shall only be used in total emergencies. Please read additional my article on MILK to learn more about the dangers of bottle milk. Breastfeeding is incredible, as the connection between mother and child always fine-tunes the needs of the baby. Need more calcium? Okay, mom gives more calcium. Need more vitamin? Mom will produce them. Breastfeeding also give the child something NO bottle milk can give your baby: Oxytocin - The love hormone. This is pure love you give to your baby. I actually realized that the relationship with my daughter was far better and stronger while I was breastfeeding. We were more tuned to each other and I was far more passion with her. I nearly had a shocking experience when breastfeeding was over: The way I loved my child changed - not less, but somehow dropped and changed to a less intensive love. She no longer was a part of me. We finally separated... How shocking must be the separation if you never breast feed and you and your child's bond is just totally cut of from the first day of birth! How big is the influence of Oxitocin on our society?

Breastfeeding is far more nutritionally for your child. Women have mother milk and breasts to use them for breastfeeding their children. Sorry, I cannot support and understand women who think "my breast/my body" - So why going into motherhood in the first place? Motherhood is far more than being pregnant and raising a child with all you can provide. It is a commitment, it is giving all at any time. But is it this, what drives many parents later to less and less take care of their kids. To abandoned them with babysitters and schools? What men are these who tell their wives not to breast feed? Keeping their exclusive right to the woman's breast? Yeah, it is so much easier for your wife? I heard that comment so many times when I was asking why the woman is not breastfeeding. Really?

Breastfeeding is recommended exclusively for 6 months, than you can introduced solid food and cut down more and more on breastfeeding. Ideal is 1 year of breastfeeding, perfect is anything over 1 year. If you give your child good food, pure water and breast milk you don't need at any time to use bottled milk. Please note: This is very important!!!! Even if you breastfeeding after 1 month or 2 you need to add water to your babies diet. Babies need as much as we do - pure water. I have seen babies totally dehydrated with 5 month, as they never got a sip of pure water. Once we gave them the water bottle, they did not stop drinking and pulled the cup to their mouth again and again. The earlier you introduce pure water for drinking to your child, the better your child will drink later in life. The body will not go into a stage of "used-to-be-dyhydrated". Most people on this planet are not drinking enough, one reason is that drinking is a habit, so even if you breastfeeding, please give your baby pure water.

I hope more women will breast feed in the future again. I hope women don't let themselves get restricted to stinky toilets to breast feed their babies, rather than being a part of the crowed, rather being seen as the beauty they are when they are breast feed their babies. I always point out to my daughter when we see a breastfeeding mother and she almost each time turns around and says: "MMMH, so good mom? Can I too?" She remembers breastfeeding as a wonderful part of her childhood. I stopped breastfeeding with 1 1/2 years. I had cut down on one nurse before sleeping. When we did our last nurse I told her it will be the last time. I lighted an incense and told her when the insence is finished nursing will be finished. She was watching the incense and let go my breast at the end. She never demanded the breast again, only when we were making fun and jokes and I always simply told her, that it is over and other things are in her live now.

I hope women will be more and more supported to breast feed their children. I hope women do understand what is more important to their children - Job or Breastfeeding. I hope more men will support their wives to breast feed. I hope more women will work with midwives and holistic healers to be able to breast feed. There is really no excuse to not breast feed - Robin Lim told me many stories where they got hopeless cases nursing very well.

For all the babies in the world... May they all get their mother milk again - It was working for us for thousands of years, why not anymore? Get more info and support at the LA LECHE LEAGUE: