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I Knew Having Grayson on My Nipple was Best

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Carlin Ross

Grayson is 6 months old and I'm still breastfeeding round the clock. He loves yogurt and bananas in the morning but always finishes up breakfast with a breast nosh.

I do all the things the "experts" frown upon: I nurse on demand and during the night because he sleeps in bed with us. And I've taken alot of heat for not pumping my breast milk. I did it - I had the pump sitting in his room for months but I couldn't bring myself to hook it up and put my milk in a bottle.

I'm not judging...I know I have the ideal work-at-home-care-for-baby situation (and I think we should make some changes so more women can enjoy motherhood without walking away from their careers). But I just instinctively knew that having Grayson on my nipple was the best for his health. And, as it turns out, my instincts were correct.

I was perusing my FB feed when I stumbled upon this article written my a breastfeeding mom. According to the latest research, latching has a profound effect on the antibodies the mother's body releases in her breast milk:

"when a baby suckles at its mother's breast, a vacuum is created. Within that vacuum, the infant's saliva is sucked back into the mother's nipple, where receptors in her mammary gland read its signals. This 'baby spit backwash' contains information about the baby's immune status. Everything scientists know about physiology indicates that baby spit backwash is one of the ways that breast milk adjusts its immunological composition. If the mammary gland receptors detect the presence of pathogens, they compel the mother's body to produce antibodies to fight it, and those antibodies travel through breast milk back into the baby's body, where they target the infection."

Our bodies are perfectly designed to sustain life. And one of the things I'm learning as a new mom is that I know best, no apologies. My child my choice.

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