“Fifty years ago, mothers didn’t have a choice,” said 92-year-old La Leche co-founder Edwin Froehlich, who had her first child at age 35 and was told she wouldn’t be able to produce breast milk because she was over 30. “Bottle feeding was what a doctor knew, and if you mentioned breast-feeding, he’d shrug. He had no idea how to help.”

Half a century ago, breast-feeding rates were an abysmal 20 percent. The medical establishment was largely ignorant to the benefits of nursing for both the baby and the mother, a normal biological process as ancient as life.

New mothers were routinely told they didn’t have enough milk or that it wasn’t good enough. Meanwhile, the conventional wisdom of the day—separating a mother from her newborn for 24 hours, spacing feedings every four hours and topping off a nursing session with 2 ounces of formula to make sure infants were full—sabotaged breast-feeding.

Today we know the best way to establish breast-feeding is to nurse infants immediately after birth, something that also has important postpartum recovery benefits for the mother. We know that breast-fed babies need to eat 8 to 12 times a day in the early weeks, often every two hours. And we know that breast milk is a baby’s perfect food…

Source: Chicago Tribune
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