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| Image from Shutterstock - Young Nursing Mother |
I realise it is World Breastfeeding Week right now but what I am wondering is do we really need a world breastfeeding week promoted here in the UK? It was only six weeks ago that we had National Breastfeeding week and surely there is enough pressure on women to breastfeed in the UK already?
It is of course a different story in the developing world and breastfeeding is often the best option for nourishing a baby as there isn't access to sanitary water to be able to prepare formula milk. Although, as I saw in Ethiopia, even this isn't as cut and dried as it might seem as so many of the mums are so undernourished themselves that after having a baby their body can struggle to produce milk and certainly to produce milk that is of a good enough quality to adequately nourish the child. So of course the fight still needs to continue to ensure that all people in our world are able to be fed and nourished well.
But don't get me wrong, I am not at all anti-breastfeeding. I successfully breastfed two of my babes and really tried with the other but it wasn't to be so we moved to bottle feeding and it was the best thing for us as she finally started to put on weight instead of losing it and and heart-ripping label 'failure to flourish' was removed from over her head.