Breastfeeding

I felt breastfeeding was a good topic to discuss for my blog, because there are so many feelings and thoughts behind the issue. Breastfeeding is the best source of nutrition for an infant, it provides the child with great brain development. Breast milk also is very important, it promotes sensory and cognitive development, and protects infants from infectious and chronic diseases.It is suggested that breastfeeding starts an hour after birth if possible(Kidshealth, 2011).

Although Breastfeeding is a personal decision and its your choice as a mother, when my daughter was born in 2007 i felt that i didn't have the time to breastfeed my daughter because i was still in college and i thought it took a lot of time out of my day. Plus i thought that it was painfull.After completing Early Childhood classes, i felt that i made a big mistake at the beginning of my child's life which was not to breastfeed, but if i was to decide to have another child that would be the only option for me.

I studied Breastfeeding in Africa allthough many mothers in africa are affected with HIV they still breastfeed. Which was something new to me. According to the World Health Organization the  transmission of HIV from an HIV-positive mother to her child during pregnancy, labour, delivery or breastfeeding is called mother-to-child transmission. In the absence of any interventions transmission rates range from 15-45%. This rate can be reduced to levels below 5% with effective interventions( World Health Organization).
After studying about Africa, Breastfeeding is common to some when and not to others. According to Berger, in some African nations HIV-positive women are encouraged to breastfeed  because the risk of dying of the infection is not likely ( Berger,2009,p.155).


Although Breastfeeding is a great chose for your baby, breastfeeding will not affect my work as an early head start teacher, i will just make sure that i give the mother her rights and her privacy.



Reference

KidsHealth. Breastfeeding Vs formula Feeding. Retrieved from http://kidshealth.org/parent/growth/feeding/breast_bottle_feeding.html  

Berger, K. S. (2009). The developing person through childhood (5th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

World Health Organization. Infant and Young child feeding. Retrieved from  http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs342/en/