Breastfeeding: Nature’s food for your baby… but wait, there’s more

Listing all the positive health effects of breastfeeding (and we’re talking just about the ones we know about) can start to sound like an infomercial, but wait there’s more… But this is not hype, it’s fact. The scientific evidence is compelling, study after study proves the many ways that mother’s milk is critical to a baby’s immediate and long-term physical, emotional and cognitive development.

Breastfeeding provides your baby with the balance of nutrients that’s made-to-order for her changing needs throughout infancy and early childhood. But breastfeeding is about much more than food. Your milk protects her from acute illness as an infant and from a laundry list of chronic diseases throughout her lifetime, while resetting your metabolism after giving birth to give you better health outcomes decades later. But beyond the positive health effects of the immune-strengthening, disease-fighting, nutritionally-customized milk is this: breastfeeding brings you emotionally closer to your baby, it decreases stress (in both mother and infant) and promotes your infant’s normal emotional, neurological and cognitive health. That’s why all major world health organizations recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life and continued breastfeeding after solid foods are started for at least your baby’s first year.