This document discusses the benefits of breastfeeding for both mothers and babies. It outlines benefits such as stronger bonding between mother and child, hormonal changes that aid the uterus and weight loss, natural birth control, and reduced risk of diseases. Breastfeeding promotes weight loss in mothers and provides long term health benefits like reduced risk of breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis. It also allows for breast milk expression so others can feed the baby, and saves families money on healthcare costs versus formula feeding.

1. Breastfeeding

2. Benefits
To the mother

3. Bonding
• Researchers have pointed out that the bond of a
nursing mother and child is stronger than any other
human contact. Holding the child to her breast
provides most mothers with a more powerful
psychological experience than carrying the fetus
inside her uterus. The relationship between mother
and child is rooted in the interactions of
breastfeeding. The emotional health of the mother
may be enhanced by this relationship she develops
with her infant during breastfeeding, resulting in
fewer feelings of anxiety and a stronger sense of
connection with her baby. This feeling sets the health
and psychological foundation for years to come.
•

4. Hormone Release
• Uterus returns to normal size more quickly and mother
has reduced blood loss
• Breastfeeding releases oxytocin and prolactin,
hormones that relax the mother and make her feel
more nurturing toward her baby. Breastfeeding soon
after giving birth increases the mother's oxytocin
levels, making her uterus contract and return to its
normal size more quickly and reducing bleeding.
Pitocin, a synthetic hormone used to make the uterus
contract during and after labour, is structurally
modelled on oxytocin.

5. Weight Loss
• Mothers who breastfeed are more likely to return to their pre-
pregnancy weight than mothers who formula feed.
Breastfeeding reduces the risk for long-term obesity.
• As the fat accumulated during pregnancy is used to produce
milk, extended breastfeeding—at least 6 months—can help
mothers lose weight. However, weight loss is highly variable
among lactating women; monitoring the diet and increasing
the amount/intensity of exercise are more reliable ways of
losing weight.
• Mothers burn many calories during lactation as their bodies
produce milk. In fact, some of the weight gained during
pregnancy serves as an energy source for lactation.

6. Helps Birth Spacing
• In developing countries, exclusive
breastfeeding reduces total potential fertility
as much as all other modern contraceptive
methods combined. By spacing births,
breastfeeding allows the mother to recuperate
before she conceives again.

7. Natural Postpartum Infertility
• Exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months
postpartum, in the absence of menses, is 98
percent effective in preventing pregnancy
(similar to oral contraceptives). It is natural,
and totally free. This is the Lactation
Amenorrhea Method (LAM).

8. Promotes Emotional Health
•
• Some research suggest that mothers who breastfeed
their babies have fewer episodes of post-delivery
depression.
• Breastfeeding comforts a toddler when they are
tired, upset, sick or hurt. Extended breastfeeding can
make mothering a toddler easier during those times.
• Breastfeeding women report psychological benefits
such as increased self-confidence and a stronger
sense of connection with their babies.

9. Breast Milk Expression
• If the mother is away, an alternative caregiver
may be able to feed the baby with expressed
breast milk. The various breast pumps
available for sale and rent help working
mothers to feed their babies breast milk for as
long as they want.

10. Saves Money
• Breastfeeding is among the most cost-effective of child
survival interventions. Households save money; and
institutions economize by reducing the need for bottles
and formulas. By shortening mothers' hospital stay,
nations save foreign exchange.
• Because breastfed babies are healthier, their mothers
miss less work and spend less time and money on
pediatric care thus reducing healthcare costs to family
in Doctor office visits, prescriptions, over the counter
medicine purchases, and hospitalizations.

11. Long-term Health Effects
• The more months a woman has spent
breastfeeding, the greater the beneficial
effect. The long-term health benefits of
breastfeeding for nursing moms are less often
discussed, but they are vast, and include
protection against a wide array of life-
threatening diseases such as:

12. Reproductive cancers
• Prolonged nursing lowers a woman's lifetime
risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer,
probably because it suppresses ovulation—
and the ovulatory hormones that play a role in
these cancers—during those first few months
that she nurses exclusively.

13. Breast Cancer
• Among both premenopausal and
postmenopausal women, risk of breast
cancer decrease with increasing
duration of lifetime lactation
experience although the effect was
consistently stronger for
premenopausal women.

14. Diabetes
• Nursing protects against type 2 diabetes. That's likely because
lactation makes cells more sensitive to the hormone insulin. (In fact,
diabetic mothers who breast-feed usually require less insulin when
they nurse.) It could also be due to nursing's effect on where fat is
stored: on the hips and thighs rather than on the belly. Excess
abdominal fat, often acquired during pregnancy, is a key risk factor
in adult diabetes.
• Diabetic women improve their health by breastfeeding. Not only do
nursing infants have increased protection from juvenile diabetes,
the amount of insulin that the mother requires postpartum is
decreased.
• A woman suffering from Gestational Diabetes has less risk of
developing type-2 Diabetes later on if she breastfeeds after that
pregnancy.

15. Heart disease
•
In 2009, researchers found that women who
nursed for at least 24 months over the course of
their reproductive lifespan had a 23 percent
lower risk of developing heart disease. While the
reason is still unknown, researchers theorize that
it could be due to the beneficial effects that
nursing has on the body's metabolism of sugar
and fats. Nursing may also decrease visceral fat—
the dangerous kind that collects around the
abdominal organs—and promote healthier fat
storage on the hips and thighs.

16. Rheumatoid arthritis
• A number of studies have linked breastfeeding to
protection against rheumatoid arthritis. One from
Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital found
that nursing for a total of two years decreased
the risk by 50 percent, while nursing for 12 to 23
months lowered risk by 20 percent. Nursing
seems to permanently alter levels of female sex
hormones, like estrogen and certain androgens,
thought to play a role in this debilitating
condition.