That is what I am talking about, kid!
Leila is 11 1/2 months now and we are still nursing. And I love it. It is in my top 5 when it comes to all things pregnancy/baby related, right up there with feeling the baby kick in the womb. Leila isn't nursing a ton, we are down to 5 times or so during the day for a couple of minutes each time and maybe once at night. My favorite time is right before bed. It seems like life never slows anymore and nursing is the perfect thing for Leila and I to go and do to settle down before bed. We nurse laying down and I rub her little leg or back and kiss her head. My body still calms as I nurse which is awesome for me- the best medicine after a sometimes stressful day. Being able to nurse a child is just beautiful and so special. It's cool to look as my girls before they had had other foods and think, my body made the milk that nourished this body. It is awesome.
Speaking of breastfeeding, I recently read an article in the New York Times that I thought to be very profound and had nothing but good stuff to say about breastfeeding. The article is called The Breast Milk Cure by Nicholas Kristof. In the article Kristof suggests that breast milk, a free substance that already exists and doesn't need refrigeration, could be the answer to worldwide hunger-related deaths in children. The article states that in Niger only 9% of babies get only breastmilk for the first 6 months as suggested by the World Heath Organization. In America it's 13%. Kristof states that misconceptions that some mothers have such as thinking that babies need water outside of their breast milk (and then giving their child water that is potentially unsafe) is part of the reason that babies all over the world are dying unnecessarily. A statistic that absolutely stunned me was that, according to a British medical journal called The Lancet, 1.4 million child deaths could be averted each year if babies were properly breastfed. That is one death every 22 seconds. Wow!
For complete text see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/opinion/23kristof.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=breastfeeding&st=cse
Baby, you got it right- breastfeeding does ROCK!
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