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Breastfeeding Gods Way!

By Nancy Campbell

We often hear the statement, Mothers milk is best for baby. Yes, that is true, but it would be just as correct to say that Breastfeeding is best for mother too. Not only does breastfeeding benefit the health of a baby but it also benefits the health and wellbeing of the mother. What are some of these blessings? 1. Prolactin. When a mother is nursing her baby, the hormone, prolactin, is operating. This is a very strong love hormone which bonds the mother to her baby. Animal studies with this hormone are most interesting. When it is injected into a rooster, it will make the rooster become clucky and mother chickens! How about that? A female animal who is nursing her young in the wild will fight to death any intruder upon her young, whereas after weaning, she does not show this protection. The mother who is nursing her baby is bound to her baby. She finds it hard to leave her baby with a baby-sitter. This is Gods plan. He does not intend for mothers to leave their babies after a few months to pursue their career. They already have a more important career. Breastfeeding ties them to one another. In Exodus 2:9 Pharaohs daughter said to Moses mother, Take this child, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. I believe God says these same words to each mother as He gives her the gift of a child. Entailed in this is the nurturing and training of this child from infancy to adulthood. But if we are not prepared to do the very first task of nursing, how will we fulfill all the rest that God wants us to do? Breastfeeding is a biological function of our womanhood. Some time ago I was checking the word woman in the Strongs concordance. The most common word for women is gune which means woman, wife. I wish there was a word which described womanhood better I thought. Then I found one, thelus. It comes from the Greek root word, thele which means the nipple of a womans breast, to suckle, to nurse. It is the true picture of a woman, cre ated with a womb to nurture life and beasts to nourish that life. That certainly is a more descriptive understanding of women I thought. Now where does God use this word? This is where I received a shock. This word is used in Romans 1:26-27: For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women (theius) did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another. In this scripture, God is stating the consequences of women turning away from the way that He has created us, including the biological function of breastfeeding. Now please dont get me wrong. I know that some women have not been successful with breastfeeding because of lack of knowledge or even physical disabilities (I wasnt totally successful in my first attempt either), but it is when we blatantly refuse to nurse that we go against nature and Gods plan for us as w omen. It goes on to say that when men saw women turn away from their God given functions, they turned to unnatural lusts. The rejection in our hearts of our womanly functions of pregnancy, childbirth and nursing is a root of homosexuality. 2. Oxytocin This hormone, which is released by the pituitary gland is the hormone that stimulates the mothers let-down or milk-ejection reflex (the tingly sensation you feel when the milk lets down). This is a wonderful hormone that has a calming effect upon the mother. Every time the milk lets down she experiences a feeling of relaxation and calm and sometimes sleepiness comes over her. God is good. When we do things His way, we get is benefits. He knows that the mother needs this calming hormone and He has graciously provided it for her.

2 I am not the calm kind of person by nature, but after nursing my babies for many years, the continual release of oxytocin had a major calming effect upon my whole personality. I noticed it more, the more children I had. In fact, I wished I had kept having babies I need it badly!!! Many mothers notice an increase in tension after weaning their babies. My daughter, who is very similar to me, is now nursing her baby and we see this calming effect upon her. My other daughters look on and say, Mother, that relaxin (as they have nicknamed the hormone) sure works, doesnt it? A study cited by Dr. Niles Newton, Professor of Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University of Chicago says that mothers who were exclusively breastfeeding their infants had higher levels of oxytocin during feedings than mothers who were breastfeeding and giving formula supplements. Randee Romano writes about a study which indicates that the secretion of oxytocin is a conditioned response, meaning that a mothers body may produce oxytocin in response to familiar sights, sounds, or activities, not just from the direct stimulation of breastfeeding. In a small sample of nursing mothers, all showed an increase in oxytocin before the baby was put to breast. This will not surprise mothers who feel their milk let down when their babies cry. In fact, half of the women in the study experience this. An increase in oxytocin levels was also measured in 30 percent of the mothers when their babies became restless and in 20 percent of the women as they were preparing to nurse. Oxytocin is known as the hormone of love. Dr. Niles Newton says, Oxytocin also triggers nurturing behaviorBoth men and women release oxytocin with orgasm. Married couples, after lovemaking, and nursing mothers, after breastfeeding, all reported lower levels of anxiety and depression than a group of mothers surveyed after a bottle-feeding. Even eating triggers oxytocin release, which is another reason to share family mealtimes. 3. Natural Contraception Just a minute I hear you say. I know many women who have conceived while breastfeeding! Yes, I agree with you. But it depends how they were breastfeeding. If we do it Gods way, we will have natural child spacing. Well, what is Gods way of breastfeeding? As a young mother I was confused. Thirty years ago, I was influenced by the rigid fourhourly way of doing things. This limited amount of nursing was not enough to stimulate milk supply and by three months I had sadly weaned my baby. It was not until my fourth baby that I found the successful way of doing things. Oh why werent there some older women around to teach me? I found that to ensure an ample milk supply, that I needed to feed my baby more frequently, in fact, not just when he was hungry, but when he was miserable and needed comforting. But then I felt guilt as voices around me spoke out, Oh you will spoil the baby if you feed him whenever he wants a feed. N ow what should I do? I so wanted to do it Gods way. Then God showed me through His Word. Every answer is in the Word of God, isnt it? In Isaiah 66:10-13 God is talking about Jerusalem and likening her to a nursing mother. So when we read what He says, we get Gods understanding of a nursing mother. As you read this passage you will see no mention of food. Instead you will read the words, satisfy, console, delight, comfort. We see here that nursing is not an alternative way to feed a baby, e.g. bottle f eeding versus breastfeeding. No, it is a total mothering to meet every need of the child. So the breast is used, not just to satisfy hunger, but to satisfy, console and comfort. It is interesting that this passage also hints at the hormone oxytocin. It says that as she gives suck, she will have peace flowing over her like a river. When a mother nurses her baby this way, she will be nursing many times a day and even in the night. This amount of sucking stimulation will hold back ovulation and therefore she wont conceive.

3 They have made a study of mothers who nurse this way, using the breast to console all the needs of their baby. The average return of menstruation for these mothers is 14.6 months which means they would have their babies about two years apart. However, some dont commence menstruation until 2.5 years while some will start at 6months. It is also usual for the first period or even the first two to be sterile. In Hosea 1:8 it tells us that after Gomer weaned she conceived and bore a son. Now I must reiterate that this natural contraception requires total mothering which is Gods plan. Y ou will need to: a) Nurse your baby for emotional as well as physical needs. Yes, youll be nursing more frequently. But dont worry! Just put your feet up and have another rest and dont fret! Remember, you are doing a great job! You are nurturing a prec ious life. There is nothing more important that God wants you to do at this moment! b) Satisfy the sucking need of your baby. I am surprised to see so many babies with pacifiers in their mouths. A pacifier is a mother substitute. Babies are born with an incredible sucking need which must be satisfied. God intends the mother to satisfy that need. Not only does this increase the bond of mother and baby, but it holds back ovulation. If your baby uses a pacifier, it will be likely that you could still conceive during breastfeeding. c) Dont start solid food until six to nine months. There is absolutely no necessity to do this before this time. You are only substituting an inferior food for the most perfect food God intends for your baby. And if you do, it will also limit your nursing and thus hasten the onset of ovulation. In fact, babies dont need extra food until they have teeth and can masticate. d) Dont ever use a bottle. Dont give water in a bottle or orange juice. It is totally unnecessary. If your b aby is thirsty, nurse from your breast again. Dont ever give a supplement. If you think your baby is not getting enough, increase the nursing. Increase d nursing will always build up a dwindling milk supply. It is the sucking stimulation that promotes the milk supply. It is impossible to run out of milk if you feed your baby frequently enough. Babies will often have a hunger spurt at about six weeks and again around three months. They fuss and cry and want to feed more frequently. The mother may think she is running out of milk, but what is happening is that the baby is saying, I need a bigger supply now, and so he fusses so he can feed more frequently to build up the supply again. So the law of demand and supply always works. e) Nurse during the night. The goal of modern mothers is to get their baby to sleep through the night. A good baby is determined on whether he sleeps through the night or not. But night nursing is necessary for holding back ovulation, which means that this is Gods intention. Even Paul, when describing himself as a nursing mother toward the Thessalonian new Christians, talks about labouring night and day. 1 Thessalonians 1:7-9. Night feeding is not so bad, especially if you take the baby to bed with you. In fact, it is a very precious experience. A word of caution. Breastfeeding should not be used for the primary purpose of contraception. It is just a blessing that comes with breastfeeding. Ultimately, our trust must be in the Sovereign Lord who opens and closes the womb.

4. Mothers Health We usually think of the babys health when we think of breastfeeding, but most people dont realize that it is also advantage ous for the mothers health. We were created by Gods design to function as nourishers by using the breast. When we dont do this, our whole body is at stake. More statistics are constantly coming to hand to prove that the more a mother breastfeeds, the less likelihood she has of getting breast cancer, ovarian cancer or even fibroids and endometriosis. Here are a few quotes for you:

4 Eight case studies gathered from different countries have been conducted which prove that prolonged breastfeeding is a preventative measure against breast cancer. Herbert Ratner, Editor of Child and Family says, If breastfeeding reduce the risk of breast cancer it will be found in women whose babies are totally breastfed for the first six months and with more than one baby. The state of prolonged amenorrhea caused by breastfeeding could very well be the factor associated with the hormonal state that protects against cancer. In this day and age, when supplementary feeding and the early introduction of solids is popular, most breast-feeding is token, not total, and is not associated with the customary prolonged amenorrhea of the totally breast-fed infant. Reported in the Science News, October 1992, by Kathy Facelmann, Malcolm C. Pike from The Southern California School of Medicine, Los Angeles blames the epidemic rates of breast and other female cancers on a fact of modern life: The average American woman starts menstruating at age 12 and typically gives birth to one or two infants. Pike estimates she will ovulate a whopping 450 times during her lifetime. By contrast, a woman who lived 200 years ago would have started menstruating at age 17 and would have delivered and breastfed about eight babies. Thus our foremothers ovulated fewer than 150 times during their lives. Pike argues that pregnancy and lactation provide a crucial resting period for the ovaries, the female sex glands that produce not only eggs, but also several powerful hormones, including estrogen and progesterone. Each month, a womans body readies itself for pregnancy. The ovaries secrete estrogen and progesterone, which tell the breast cells to begin dividing in preparation for milk production. In years past, women went through this cycle less frequently because they were more often either pregnant or breastfeeding. Women who have a full pregnancy before the age of 18 have one third the breast cancer risk of a woman whose fi rst child is delayed until after age 39, or never has a child. One interesting angle on the breastfeeding issue is that the Tania women in Hong Kong, who traditionally only nurse with their right breast, have more cancer in their left breast. Mark Renneker, M.D., Understanding Cancer 24.142. The observed protective effect of lactation on risk of breast cancer can be interpreted in a number of ways. The hormonal changes of lactation (i.e. increased prolactin and decreased estrogen production) may in some way inhibit breast tumor initiation or growth. During lactation, ovulation often ceases or is less frequent, which may also protect against breast cancer. There could be direct physical effects on the breast associated with lactation that might protect against breast cancer, such as changes in breast ductal epithelial cells in lactation or mechanical flushing -out of carcinogens. McTeirnan A, Thomas D.B. Evidence for a protective effect of lactation on risk of breast cancer in young women: results from a case-control study. Am J Epidermiol 1986;124:353-8. A recent CASH study involving about 9,000 women, revealed that the women with the least breast cancer were those who had the most children and thus a longer breastfeeding experience. CASH researcher, Peter Layde, M.D. reports, We found that women who breastfed a total of two years or more had nearly a third less breast cancer than women who did not breast feed.

5. Babys Health If your baby is healthy, this is a blessing for you as a mother. A healthy baby is easy to care for; a sick baby is a constant worry. The best way to keep your baby healthy is to give it the perfect food that God has planned. Cows milk is a perfect food but only for cows! It was never intended for human babies! The cow is a big animal with four stomachs. It weighs about 90 lbs. at birth and in only two years it is a whopping 2,000 lbs. This is not the kind of food that is required for the human baby who weighs 6 8 lbs. at birth and is only 100 200 lbs. twenty years later! The baby uses 100 percent protein from the mothers milk. Less than 50 per cent can be absorbed from cows milk or formula so that baby has to take twice as much which is extra work on the kidneys. Nursing mothers should not take any notice of the large amounts of milk that their bottle feeding counterparts give their babies. Nor should they expect them to be as big and fat! They are not meant to be! They are humans, not calves! And they dont want to establish unnecessary fat cells for overweight problems later in life.

Breast milk contains up to 10 times more essential vitamins than cows milk. This difference is reduced when cows milk is di luted and reduced further when the formula is heated. The immunity that breast milk affords last long after the child is weaned. Breastfed babies do not suffer from constipation as breast milk forms a soft curd in the babys stomach. Sucking on the breast will promote optimum facial development for which your child will bless you later in life. Here are a few quotes: The risk of acute gastrointestinal illness in infants receiving formula was six times greater than in infants receiving breast milk and 2.5 times greater than in infants receiving cow milk. J.S. Koopman, M.D. MPH. Insufficient breastfeeding of genetically susceptible newborn infants may lead to beta-cell infection, beta-cell destruction, and insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) later in life. K. Borch-Johnson. Children who were artificially fed or breastfed for only six months or less were at in creased risk for developing cancer before age 15. The risk for artificially fed children was one to eight times that of long-term breastfed children, and the risk for short term breast feeders was 1 9 times that of long-term breast feeders. M.K. Davis. Infant feeding and childhood cancer. Lancet, 1988 Whole cows milk should not be fed to infants during the first year of life because of its association with hidden gastrointestinal bleeding, iron deficiency anemia, and cows milk allergy. The consumption of whole milk after the first year of life should be discouraged because of its potential role in a variety of disorders including atherosclerosis, recurrent abdominal pain of childhood, cataracts, milk-borne infections, and juvenile delinquency. Frank Oski, M.D. writing in the journal of the American Academy of Paediatrics. Recent news from London says, Researchers say thousands of bottle fed babies risk long-berm brain and bone damage from aluminum in milk powders. Surveys showed the powders often contained more than 100 times the aluminum in breast milk. Aluminum interferes with the production of enzymes vital to brain activity. There were also fears that high doses could accelerate mental decline in old age.

We would need a whole book to list the advantages of breastfeeding for the baby, but apart from the physical health of the baby, studies reveal that it also results in increased intelligence. In Britain 300 premature babies were studied 193 were breastfed, 107 were fed formula. Eight years they were tested and the breastfed children scored eight points higher in their test scores than the formula fed babies.

6. Correct Weight Loss A mother puts on about 9 lbs. in readiness for her milk supply. If she doesnt nurse her baby, that weight does not come off easily. This problem is intensified if the mother herself was bottle fed or given fatty food in childhood. If too many fat cells are produced in childhood they remain on the body, waiting to be filled up when the adult eats a high calorie meal. Some mothers say they havent lost weight during nursing, but usually they have only breastfed for a short while. Long term nursing will always reduce weight. In fact, this is one time in your life, when you can eat what you want without worrying! Also, breastfeeding causes the uterus to contract and retract to its former state in the first few weeks.

6 7. Less Work No need to prepare bottles or solid foods. Each time the baby needs you, it is another opportunity to sit down and put your feet up or even take the baby to bed with you. If you have little ones around, it is an opportunity to gather them around you as you nurse your baby and read them a story or relate to them. Nursing keeps you close to your baby and your other children. You also dont have to worry when baby cries. Put the baby to the breast for whatever need the baby has. It takes all the wor ry out of mothering. It is interesting to note that mothers who feed this way are usually the mothers who want more babies. 8. What About Weaning? A baby should be weaned when it is ready to wean, which if a baby is given this opportunity, will be at about three years of age. Research reveals that peoples in the world who do not substitute with animal milk of some kind nurse their babies for 3 5 years. Dakes commentary of the Bible suggests that Moses was five years old when he was weaned and ready to sta rt his education in the Egyptian court; Samuel was five years old when he was weaned and taken to the prophet, Eli; Isaac was five years old when he was weaned and they celebrated with a weaning party. Lets look at the mammal kingdom. We are also mammals, although more than that, for we are human beings created in the image of God. Young mammals that grow rapidly and mature early have correspondingly short nursing periods. Young mammals that grow slowly and develop late have correspondingly long nursing periods. The human infant grows slowest of all and reaches maturity latest and therefore should have a correspondingly longer nursing period. Large numbers of mammalian species reach maturity, reproduce themselves, live out their life span and die in less time than it takes for men to attain maturity and yet many of these nurse longer than most women. Dr. Niles Newton tells of a study which suggest that the duration of breastfeeding may be related to the amount of social learning required. As long as a mammal is lactating, the young tend to stay near the mother and thus can possibly learn more from her. Marked differences exist in the duration of the nursing of aquatic mammals. Some are simple grazers of the sea and nurse only 7 10 months. Others, like the porpoises have complex social structures and sophisticated navigational systems and they nurse for 18 25 months. He states, The effect of the unbiologically early weaning in human infants is not known, but it is possible that learning ability and socialization are influenced by date of weaning. Herere the words of an old Egyptian sage, Three long years she carried thee upon her shoulder and gave thee her breast to t hy mouth, and as thy size increased her heart never once allowed her to say, why should I do this? The advantages of later weaning are more than physical. In fact, as the baby grows and enters the second year, the mother is not necessarily feeding her baby for sustenance as he can get that from other food. She continues to nurse to satisfy his inner needs which are just as important as his physical. I am sure that a baby who is allowed to nurse for two to three years will have a basis of security and confidence for his future years.