Breastfeeding Your Newborn Helps Brain Development

There are many advantages to breastfeeding a newborn baby over giving them formula. One of the advantages is that important immune system boosters are found in breast milk that aren't found in cow's milk or commercial formulas.

This, as well as exposing the newborn to a variety of germs gets the immune system functioning and makes for a much healthier baby. So it's good not to keep the area around the baby completely sterile and overdose it with antibiotics so its immune system has nothing to work with.

Now it's recently been discovered that breastfeeding gives your baby a significant mental head start as well. Recent research has shown that breastfeeding your baby at birth makes them more intelligent at the age of ten than formula fed babies. My mother fed me formula so I guess she dumbed me down by doing it, but at least she didn't know that she was doing that.

According to Medical News Today:

"Australian researchers found that babies mainly breastfed for at least six months went on to score significantly higher in academic tests at the age of ten, especially boys. Researchers from the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth, the Curtin Health Renovation Research Institute, Centre for Developmental Health, and several other research facilities published their research online recently "

The researchers say that there are fatty acids in the breast milk that support rapid brain growth and development in newborns. Why boys and not girls? Boys have been proven to be more sensitive to adversity during periods of critical brain development that the girls are.

The close relationship between mother and child during breastfeeding may help the psychological and cognitive development of the child's brain. Male babies are more dependent on maternal attention to develop their cognitive skills and the ability to start using language.

The purpose of the study was to see if longer periods of breastfeeding had any outcome on the learning skills and intelligence of middle childhood. But there was one thing that had more of an impact with both boys and girls: the amount of attention that the mother gave the newborn, playing with them, reading, etc. This seemed to spur academic development later in life more than anything else.

So, if you can't breastfeed your infant for whatever reason, make up for it by spending a lot of time nurturing. I guess that's what my mother must have done, or I wouldn't have turned out so smart. Thanks, mom.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/212089.php