An Infants Right to Eat

The most common reason that women choose to breastfeed is the fact that it is a free source of nutrition for an infant. The second reason is that it can promote weight loss post-partum. It helps mothers bond with their newborns. Breast milk can also give infants immunities that they can not find anywhere else. It is said that breastfeeding is a private choice. In my opinion, breastfeeding is not an option; it is a baby's birthright. After all, that is what breasts are for. Breasts are for infants to use and not for objectification or sexual definition. They are they not offensive. It is skin, other body tissue, and nothing else. A breast is not "forbidden flesh".

The sad thing is, in America, we have made the female body a taboo subject. Oh my god! Breasts? How could you? People are constantly trying to sabotage the efforts of mothers who chose to breastfeed. There are people protesting mothers who breastfeed just as they protest "sex" in video games. Then there are formula companies that are bound and determined to stop any new mother from breastfeeding only because they want to line their pockets with hard earned dollars. They give out diaper bags that are covered in their logos, full of proproganda. There are leaflets that come in the mail with words written on them, proclaiming that the powder inside the can is "just like mother's milk!"

Just like mother's milk? Are you kidding me?

In Africa, many infants die because of formula. The women are given the foul substance to feed their babies while in the hospital. When they are sent home to their villages, they find that they cannot afford formula and because they never gave breastfeeding a chance, their milk did not come in. These babies usually die of starvation or are passed off to mothers who are still breastfeeding or are pregnant. The reason that is given to why there is a decline of breastfeeding on this continent has to do with HIV and AIDS epidemic.

Breastfeeding is not just about nutrition. It is about bonding with the human that just spent nine months inside of you. It is about loving your baby, not propping a bottle up with a towel so that you can text your friend who wants you to go out to a bar. I remember what was told to me when I had my second son. The lactation consultants in the hospital told me that if I could not get the hang of breastfeeding, I could get the hospital staff to give my son a bottle.

I told the woman, who wore a Le Leche League International pin on her lapel that she should remove that sign of status and find a new profession. I would not give up on my son. He would get the breast I could give him. He got nine months and everyone figures that that was a good job but I felt as if I failed because I did not do the recommended amount of time that the WHO, UNICEF, NIH, and AAP says if optimal for a baby which is twelve full months.

My cousin only breastfed for a week, she quit because smoking was more important than giving herself to her daughter. A friend of mine gave birth to a boy months after I did, I asked her excitedly if she was breastfeeding. Her response was sad, "Oh no, I was too tired after delivering him. I gave him a bottle. The nursing staff fed him while I got to sleep!" How could she be so thrilled about giving her son formula? Another girl said when asked if she was breastfeeding, "Oh my god. That's totally gross. No one is touching my boobs."

It is pitiful situation. In Ohio, we fall below the national average of breastfeeding mothers. At most, fifty-nine percent of new mothers choose to breastfeed, while other states are doing much better due to the fact that they are in the seventy and eighty percent range. When I breastfed I felt as if I was doing something extraordinary for my child. We bonded but as soon as I got sick and could not breastfeed any longer, a bottle was pushed onto my child and I no longer had an interest in trying to bond with him. I taught him how to hold the bottle and feed himself. I became a part of that forty-one percent of women who do not breastfeed.

If state governments realized how beneficial breastfeeding is to society, they would push formulas out of hospitals and make better laws regarding breastfeeding in public, and protect the rights of breastfeeding mothers in the workplace. If the national government realized how beneficial breastfeeding is, they would totally ban formula except for special cases. They would help protect a mother's rights. Breastfeeding moms are discriminated against every day from situations concerning breastfeeding in public to breast milk and daycare centers.

In Columbus, Ohio, a daycare center places a biohazard sticker onto the container of breast milk; stores it in a separate refrigerator, and then heats it in a separate warming pot. They also charged the mother an extra $50 a week for handling the milk. Breast milk is not a biohazard material. The mere notion that you can contract something from expressed milk is absurd and offensive. For doing this, a mother decided she was not going to be treated like that and contacted a lawyer, who then went to the Department of Human Services to file a complaint against the daycare center.

Breastfeeding means less sick children. It means less days off work. Studies have shown that children who are breastfed have higher IQs and usually do not have to deal with childhood obesity.

What is more surprising than the discrimination of daycare centers and breastfeeding, is the amount of women who are discriminated against because they breastfeed in public. Everyone has a right to eat in public. Asking a nursing mother to go to the bathroom or cover up the baby would be like asking a fat person to do the same to eat. The people, who demand that mothers stop this natural act, are people that say the breast is offensive. How do those types of think man survived in the early days? Do they think Jesus was bottle fed?

Thousands of years ago, nomads who roamed the earth did not have bottles or formula. Mothers who gave birth, breastfed but they did not do just that, they nursed in public, while walking, and they co-slept and wore their babies. No one was offended by this activity. It was an everyday thing. Breastfeeding is only offensive because the American public has made it so. I honestly think that if women were required to breastfeed, America would be in a much better shape today. Breasts are not offensive. Breastfeeding is not offensive. It is what people do with these masses of tissue is offensive.