Your most important contribution to the future health of your child will be the attention you give to your own diet during pregnancy and to proper nutrition for your baby after he is born. because your pediatrician has little knowledge and even less interest in nutrition, you will have to become your own expert where your child’s diet is concerned.

Your first and most important nutritional decision whether you will breastfeed your baby or not will af­fect his health and development in infancy and for the rest of his life. unfortunately, most obstetricians and pe­diatricians fail to emphasize the importance of breast-feeding strongly enough and to inform you fully, if at all, of the comparative shortcomings of bottle-feeding for­mula milk. it is essential, therefore, that you inform yourself.

Breastfeeding lays the foundation for healthy physical and emotional growth and provides your child and your­self with many additional benefits as well. here are some of the benefits of breastfeeding that are stimulating a promising resurgence of this womanly art in the United States.

1. Mother’s milk, time-tested for millions of years, is the best nutrient for babies because it is nature’s perfect food. it provides your child with all of the nutrients he needs for healthy growth for at least the first six months of life, and all responsible nutritional and pediatric au­thorities acknowledge its superiority over both infant formulas and cow’s milk.

Cow’s milk is deficient in iron and should not be given to babies for at least six months. Even then it should be introduced with caution, because many babies perhaps as many as 15 percent are allergic to cow’s milk. it should be suspected as the potential cause of many ill­nesses.

Bottle-feeding with infant formula is also less than sat­isfactory from a nutritional standpoint, even though the manufacturers fortify their products with vitamins and minerals and maintain that their products are as nutri­tious as mother’s milk. if you breastfeed your baby there is no danger that some essential nutrient will be omitted from your milk, but that can’t be said for manufactured infant formula. the manufacturers not only can fail but have failed to include essential ingredients, with disas­trous consequences for the infants who were fed their products. Classic examples were the lack of vitamin B6 in SMA formula, which led to a pyroxidine deficiency and convulsions in the infants who received it, and the production of Neo-Mull-Soy with an inadequate salt content, which resulted in failure to thrive.

Bottle-feeding with infant formulas also predisposes infants to lifelong obesity because the products provide the wrong kind of nutrients. Human milk is 1.3 percent protein: cow’s milk and infant formulas are 3.3 percent protein or more. That’s why one study of 250 full-term infants at six weeks of age found that 60 percent of the bottle-fed babies were overweight, compared to 19 per­cent of those who were breastfed. Excess protein places an unduly heavy load on the kidneys, and some children gain weight faster because they retain more fluid.

Finally, breastfed babies are permitted to eat until they are satisfied, and you have no ability or need to measure the quantity of milk that your child takes. Formula-fed babies are usually placed on a fixed schedule, with a measured amount of milk given at each feed­ing. Too often, mothers feel a responsibility to encourage their baby to take the full scheduled feeding, making him drink six or eight ounces when he was satisfied with four. I’ll have more to say about the relationship be­tween infant overfeeding and obesity later on.

2. a breastfed baby gains from his mother’s milk a natural immunity to many allergies and infections that is denied to babies who are bottle-fed. Mother’s milk con­tains unique substances that inhibit the growth of bacte­ria and viruses, affording your baby critical protection against disease during the most hazardous months of his life.

3. the bonding of mother and child is regarded as essential to your baby’s emotional development, and it provides emotional rewards for you, as well. the nurtur­ing that breastfeeding supplies are the ideal way to estab­lish this bond almost from the moment of birth. unless you have received excessive drugs during delivery, which also affected your baby, his desire to begin nursing should be at its peak within 20-30 minutes after birth. from that moment on he should be nursed when he gives evidence of the desire to do so. At the outset this may be as many as 20 times a day.

4. the emotional and psychological rewards of breast-feeding cannot be overstressed. you and your baby will sacrifice one of the most beneficial of human experi­ences if you fail to breastfeed.

Newborn babies should be fed when they are hungry, not on some arbitrary schedule. That’s one of the addi­tional shortcomings of postnatal procedure in most hos­pitals, which I alluded to earlier. Too often, mothers and babies are required to conform to a four-hour feeding schedule, simply because that is more convenient for the hospital staff. This is not good for your baby and it is not good for you. your baby’s hunger is regulated by his need for food, not by the nursery clock. He should be fed when he wants to be fed, whether that’s once every hour or once every four.

If your baby is born in a hospital, try to secure per­mission to keep him in your room so that you can feed him as often as he desires and give him the nurturing that will help bonding take place. if this is not permitted, de­mand that he be brought to you when he is hungry, not every four hours. Also caution your doctor to insist that no supplementary feeding be given your baby in the nur­sery. Some nurses can’t resist the temptation to shove a bottle of formula into a baby’s mouth when he cries, even when the baby is being breastfed. This may quell his appetite when you are feeding him, and you don’t want him to have the formula, so it is appropriate to insist that when your baby cries the nurses bring him to you instead.

5. not to be overlooked in deciding whether you will breastfeed your baby are several factors of specific im­portance to you. if you begin nursing your baby within a few minutes after delivery, it will help prevent hemor­rhage because his sucking will cause your uterus to con­tract, hastening its return to its normal condition which reduces the flow of blood.

6. Mothers who breastfeed are able to return to their normal weight with greater ease than those who abandon this phase of the reproductive cycle by resorting to bottle-feeding. Typically, about nine pounds of a mother’s weight gain during pregnancy is body fat, which is be­lieved to accumulate to enable you to produce milk for the baby after his birth. if you breastfeed, this excess fat will be consumed in the process. if you don’t, heroic measures may be required to restore your normal weight.

If your baby is, totally breasted, it will provide you with contraceptive protection, in most cases, for at least six months, and in some instances for as long as 2l years. the act of breastfeeding causes your reproductive cycle to move into a dormant stage, and you are unlikely to have menstrual periods for seven months or more after the delivery of your baby or to become pregnant until after your periods resume. American women whose babies were totally breastfed and found an average of 14.6 months without menstrual periods after their babies were born.

While this means of contraception is not completely reliable, it is probably as effective as any of the others, and no risks are involved. Remember, though, that occa­sional, haphazard breastfeeding won’t do the trick. if you breastfeed your baby only occasionally, and give him a bottle of formula at other times, you probably won’t receive the contraceptive benefit that exclusive breastfeeding will provide.

I get a lot of questions from new mothers about how often their babies should be fed, how long they should be fed, and how much they should eat. my answer whether your baby is breastfed or bottle fed is that the baby is boss. Feed him when he seems irritable, let him nurse until he loses interest, and don’t be concerned about whether he is eating too little or too much.

If you breastfeed, your baby will consume 80-90 per­cent of the available milk in about four minutes of feed­ing on each breast. However, a longer period of nursing is advisable for emotional reasons and to stimulate the production of milk. the act of nursing, even when it is only minimally productive in providing additional food, stimulates lactation and increases the production of milk. if you limit the period of nursing unduly, or fail to nurse your baby often enough, lactation may decrease to the point at which you are not producing as much milk as your baby requires.

The emotional reasons for extending the nursing periods are very important. more mothers would breastfeed if they were aware of the wondrous relationship it establishes be­tween mother and child. Some mothers, they say, are also intimidated by the misconception that breastfeeding is inevitably a difficult, uncomfortable, unmanageable nuisance. There is no doubt that many mothers have that concern, but in my experience, once they experience the pleasures of breastfeeding, it is quickly dispelled.

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