More and more pediatricians and nurses (I give them gender for a matter of habit) are becoming an invaluable help for mothers who breastfeed their babies, both in the promotion of breastfeeding and in support when things they go wrong.
Despite this, there is still a long way to go and I realize it when I talk to someone I know and explain the views with the pediatrician and the nurse, telling me things like "At 15 months they told me that it was no longer meaningful to breastfeed, because it is no longer food". Lie!
If you don't know how to fight, what do you get for?
Of course, you (me, a pediatric nurse) see you there every day breaking your horns to try to make mothers who want to breastfeed to do so, you give support to those who have been breastfeeding for months and months and receive criticism from the family directly and indirectly. and you solve doubts of those who think that "they are equally right and I am doing him a bad thing", so that others like you (like me), also dressed in a white coat, say lightly to a mother who breastfeeds his son who no longer makes sense to do so.
It's a blunder for two reasons, one, because it's a lie that doesn't make sense, and two, because it is irrelevant what is the source of a child's milk, unless the child suffers from a disease that requires special attention.
Breastfeeding still makes sense
It is said that breast milk from the year no longer makes sense because it compares with other foods probably more caloric and in that sense is at a disadvantage. It is perhaps said that "breast milk, after a while, is almost water", which is a false myth that until recently happened at six months (at which point by magic the milk of a mother was transformed into water) and now it seems to happen later, towards the year.
The fact is that breast milk is still breast milk with its proteins, its fats, its hydrates and its calories have passed months or years. It remains a very complete food and, more importantly, it remains an invaluable source of immune (defense) cells for the baby. I lie, in fact, is the only source of defenses that a baby can receive from outside. The child who stops breastfeeding stops at that moment of receiving defenses, keeps his own only in the face of danger.
As the children's immune system has just matured sometime between two and six years (pulling more at six than both), tell a mother to stop breastfeeding her child it's bad medical advice, because it is asking him to stop helping his son's immature immune system with his milk. In these times, it seems that children suffer more acute diseases than in the past (bronchitis, otitis, laryngitis, ...) breast milk still makes sense even when the child is 15 months old.
Perhaps that is why WHO, UNICEF and the AEP recommend breastfeeding for at least two years.
Breast milk has more calories than cow's milk
Cow's milk provides about 65 kcal per 100 ml. The same amount of breast milk provides about 70 kcal. They are not many more calories, but they are more than cow's milk.
In any case, the calories of more or less are not those that have to say which food is better, but the logic. The milk most adapted to a human baby will always be, without a doubt, human milk. Cow's milk serves as a substitute, but having milk of the same species, it is absurd to withdraw one to give the other.
Some mothers of children over one year of age, when asked what milk they give their children, they answer that they only give them breast milk and occasionally some yogurt. It seems perfect to me, but there are health professionals who think differently and come to try to fool these women for not giving their children something as important as cow's milk, as if their milk was not suitable or valid. Isn't it absurd?
Breast milk is given in skin-to-skin contact and is taken by sucking
Surely you know more than one baby who is breastfeeding when he sees a pacifier makes a cross with his index fingers while saying "get that away from me!". It has some logic, if you choose between mom's breast and a silicone substitute, they usually choose the first one. Even if you give them a bottle of breast milk, many say the same thing: "Vale is mama's milk, but keep that away from me!"
Breastfeeding is not just giving milk and that's it. It is not a matter of giving him food and holy Easter. Breastfeeding a baby is much more, because it is to take the baby or child in his arms, have it close, take out the breast and allow him to suck on it, contacting skin with skin and leaving the baby full of the smell of mom (with the nose attached to the chest, what else will it smell?).
That is why it is logical that many children, when they hurt themselves, when they are crying, when they feel alone or when they feel too accompanied, run to look for mom and ask for her breast. They are not hungry, they are not thirsty, but they need a safe corner in which to stay for a while to calm down and there is no safer place than the one where everything smells like mom, everything tastes like mom, you're sucking mom's milk and you're also touching mom's skin directly.
