Breastfeeding Can Save Your Child’s Life

To breastfeed or not to breastfeed? Even though this is the epitome of healthy living for babies, many women go for the bottle. However, when Beth Gonzalez asked herself this question when she got pregnant with her first child, after much research and soul-searching she decided that yes, she would.

Now, she asserts, she knows that her decision saved her baby’s life.

Her story is in the latest issue of New Beginnings, a magazine that La Leche League International sends out several times a year to its members. But if you don’t get the publication, you’ll never hear the story, and the infant formula companies certainly aren’t going to let you know about it.

So I want to share it with you.

Beth had been exclusively nursing (or bottle-feeding with breastmilk) her son, Lucas, for four months when he ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. There, she expressed her milk so that Lucas could get it via a feeding tube. Eventually, he was diagnosed with Primary Immune Deficiency, which meant his body had no antibodies to fight off illness.

The medical staff told Beth that not only was her breastmilk now providing Lucas the antibodies he needed, but also that her breastfeeding him since birth had protected him from becoming ill as a newborn. In addition, Lucas was exposed to chicken pox while at the hospital. Did he contract the virus?

Nope. Because, said the doctors, of the breastmilk.

Beth is convinced that her son would be dead today if she had decided to feed him formula.

To breastfeed or not to breastfeed? That shouldn’t even be a question. If you are a mother-to-be who has been confused by all the misinformation about infant formula, I urge you to educate yourself. Get a copy of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. Study the La Leche League website until your eyes hurt.