Attachment Parenting…Another Perspective

What a sensitive topic this is!  Just saying the word ‘schedule’, ‘attachment‘, ‘routine’, ‘demand’ and raise the blood pressure of most mom’s.  I have just come across another article on this topic and thought it explained some things regarding breastfeeding rather well.  She has raised 5 of her own children and now has moved into the grandmother role.

The following is by Debi Pearl:

At least 3 people a day write and ask me what my views are on breast feeding.

It seems to be a major issue causing a great deal of confusion and uncertainty. What surprises me is how for the last 6000 years babies have been born, were nursed, and grew up to be emotionally and physically healthy without anyone telling their mama’s how and when to nurse them. But since so many have asked, I thought I would give you my 2 cents worth as well. I covered the same subject on Mail Box Tape #3.

Nursing is instinctual, in the baby and the mother. It is so natural that I never dreamed it could be made into an issue. Let me tell you, cows are different one from the other. That’s right COWS. Don’t get upset with me for introducing animals into a high and noble subject like human breast feeding. It is the loss of such knowledge that has caused this controversy in the first place. Beef cows can let their calves nurse all and any time they want, because they don’t have much milk. Whereas Jersey calves would die if they nursed any time they wanted, because Jersey cows have too much milk, and so the calves only get the sugar milk. People are very much like cows in respect to nursing. Some are beef stock and some are Jersey. When a cow first delivers, she produces colostrum just as a human does. The newborn baby or calf needs all the colostrum it can get. It is a natural antibiotic for the baby, as well as serving other vital purposes. A cow and a mother only produce colostrum for 5 or 10 days, and then her real milk comes in. When the mother’s milk comes in she usually has far more than her baby can use. Thus the baby nurses only part of the breast and never really drains the breast dry. That is a problem. Any mother who has had a baby with colic and diarrhea can attest to this. Just like that Jersey calf, the baby is getting too much “first milk”—not colostrum, that ceased after about 10 days. At each nursing, when a mother’s milk first lets down, it is “sugar milk.” It is light blue and clear. As you milk the cow, or the baby nurses the mother, and the breasts begin to empty, the milk gets thicker and creamier (hind milk). The very last milk left in the breast is cream, full of fat and very filling to the baby. When a baby gets a belly full of creamy milk he will not be hungry for several hours. If the baby gets the thin, clear, light blue, sugar milk he will be hungry in 2 hours and have a tummy ache with diarrhea to follow.

Herein lies wisdom. Use common sense. All down through the ages people raised animals, thus had enough common sense to know how to adjust their nursing problems based on the common knowledge learned from raising animals.