Is it Important to Read About Breastfeeding?
Is it important to read about breastfeeding? La Leche League (LLL) thinks it is. Although women today have almost unlimited access to information online, there is much misinformation out there and it can be hard to know what to trust.
LLL’s Breastfeeding Bible – The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding (published in 2010), is now in its eighth edition, and there is sure to be a ninth coming later. That’s good news for the millions of women around the globe who may not have internet access or the means to buy an electronic gadget. A good book can be very comforting when, as a new mother, you are apprehensive and worried. You can pick it up whenever you want, you don’t need a charger or connections, it can be your constant companion and comfort, always there, ready to read at any time in any place, the best passages highlighted, possibly your own tip or two marked in.Yes I know this information can be found electronically but there is something reassuring about print. Perhaps it feels more reliable, more sustainable and could also be 100% correct. Unlike an electronic gadget, a book doesn’t mind being covered with sand on a beach; it can cope with sticky fingers, spilt coffee, freezing cold, boiling hot sun or even being dropped in a bath. It might emerge looking a bit sorry for itself, but you can still enjoy it. In other words it is very much baby and child friendly.
There are quite a few books about breastfeeding available in hundreds of languages. So what is it that makes LLL’s book so different from other breastfeeding books? I will try and explain.
Supposing you had a choice: you could either bottle-feed your baby with your expressed breast milk in a bottle or you could breastfeed your baby, but with formula which miraculously came out of your breasts! A difficult choice? Yes. You would have to choose between the product – human milk, and the process – breastfeeding, and you couldn’t have both. Most mothers would choose the product because of its protective and health giving factors. Others would choose the process because they like the closeness and connection.
Naturally there is no answer. Most women today would automatically choose the product because human milk gets all the glory and there is so much research underlining its importance. But The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding celebrates the heart of breastfeeding – the relationship – it celebrates not just the product but also the process, because breastfeeding is a connection as well as a food source.
At our monthly meetings we talk a lot about the wonder and joy of breastfeeding. How the oxytocin hormone impacts on the mothers’ body helping her to calm down and slow down; how the baby’s sucking action stimulates good jaw development and the optimum position of the underlying teeth; the surge of love and tenderness the mother feels towards her nursing baby; the baby’s feelings of security, nestled against the soft breast and suckling. It is a baby’s first human relationship and it gentles him into the world. It is a way of mothering your baby and it is a deeply connected attachment that lasts long after weaning.
This latest edition of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding targets the 21st century mother who can be confused by new attitudes, new trends, new everything except for her baby. Babies are still built on a very, very old design. They have the same reflexes, the same instincts, the same needs that babies had thousands of years ago.
There is a lot of new information in the book on birth, sleep deprivation, solids and weaning, the working mum and coping with the increasing use of technology in our everyday life. BUT the basic concepts remain the same. And moreover they are backed by modern lactation science and solid research. Backed also by decades or millennia of “mother wisdom” for breastfeeding has always been something that women learn from each other and not from experts. This is why mothers find comfort and support at our meetings because they can talk to other mums. Another possibility is to communicate with an LLL Leader by telephone, or email. Elsewhere in this issue you will find details of the English and Spanish speaking groups in the Zurich areas. Come and join us, we look forward to welcoming you.
If you are pregnant or experiencing breastfeeding difficulties, I hope the above will motivate you to order a copy of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. It could become your faithful companion.
By Joanna Koch, LLL Leader since 1987.
Acknowledgement: Lovingly lifted from the Introduction to the La Leche League 8th Edition of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
Illustration by Albina Nogueira
