Hats off to New York and Nutrition: (Part II) Why "breast is best," for you and your baby.

This is a continuation from the Breast Feeding Part I post. WARNING - What you are about to read may change you and your baby's life for the best! Stop reading now if your baby's IQ, your weight, and your pocket-book are of no concern...

Formula Costs Money$ ; Breast Milk is Free.

Talk about eliminating the middle men...er industries. There is really no such thing as a free lunch, but this may be as close as it gets. Perhaps it was stubborn feminism or WIC (Women, Infants, and Children - now supporting breast feeding, by the way) that led people away from breastfeeding, but I can't fathom paying for something that one can otherwise get essentially for free.

Women love the FREE gift with purchase at Lancome or Clinique, we love the FREE food samples at Costco and Sam's Club...

...they apparently love the FREE benefits of online FREE dating

In fact we love $$FREE so much that we have websites that somehow make money off of FREE stuff

WWW.FREE.COM

AND....we must not forget one of the most profitable and well known....Craigslist ...

What is my point?

None of this stuff is actually free but we obviously have an affinity for bargains...especially when they come with added bonuses such as...something that costs more money than usual to offset the price of the "free" item, stalkers on the "free" dating sites who are really NOT 190lb with an athletic build (unless round is the new athletic build), an eternity of spam mail, and bed bugs (if you live in NY and are looking for that "NEW" mattress on Craigslist).

What if there was something that could: make you loose weight (women should already be interested because on average we all want to loose 5lb), make your baby smarter, and not touch your wallet.

Um ... breastfeed.

According to Dr. Sally Lederman, Special Lecturer at Columbia University, breastfeeding has been shown to raise a child's IQ (research shows) and help mom's utilize approximately 500 extra calories per day in the content and production of breast milk .

Now that I have the men interested with a large picture of a breast.....

Why else should women breastfeed (as if your baby's IQ is not enough)

The Female Breasts Need at Least Two Purposes.

We multi-task in everything else that we do - why shouldn't our breasts have an equal opportunity to do the same? - - I don't have anything academically remarkable to say about this. However, we did learn that size, of the breast, does not matter. Women with smaller breasts versus larger breasts should not be any less able or more able, respectively, to produce milk.

As an interesting physiological tie in - Oxytocin is a feed-forward hormone while most other hormones undergo negative feedback inhibition. What this means is that while other hormones, when stimulated and in abundance, tell the body to stop producing that particular hormone, Oxytocin does the opposite. This remarkable hormone is responsible for the continually increased intensity and frequency of contractions during child-birth (also interesting tid-bit "pitocin" is the synthetic form of oxytocin that is administered to induce labor/contractions). Another interesting tid-bit....oxytocin is involved in a female's orgasm.

Conclusion: Breast is Best.

It is cheesy but true. I don't care what fallacy I am committing in claiming an absolute - this is my blog and I think breastfeeding (and breasts) are the best way to go - if you are nervous to beast feed because of the "milk letdown" that may occur in inappropriate settings...say at work, leaving your blouse with awkward spots, try LilyPadz. These silicone inserts prevent milk leakage and have been highly recommended by personal friends and family with breast feeding experience.

Other recommended sites for resources regarding the benefits of breastfeeding - please see the links below: