I have chosen to raise my children in as natural a way as possible. I understand that how I live my life is not for everyone, we all have our choices to make. But what I do think is important is that more people start to take responsibility for how they live, for the choices that they make.

It is our choices that affect us the most, what we eat, how we treat ourselves, how we look after our bodies, how we view ourselves. No matter what we wish to accomplish in life, we need to start with self. Because everything will then flow from there. We all deserve to be healthy and happy, to feel strong and valued. Everything that passes through our body, via the mouth, the skin, the ears it all has an affect on us. To some extend we can choose what it is that we consume and what it is we put onto our skin. We can choose to use only natural products, eat only wholesome foods. In reality organic food is not always a choice for some people, it can be very expensive, but it is important to eat more natural unprocessed foods.

The diets of so many today, really reflect their fast pace lifestyle, food is now, much more about being convenient, rather then nutritious. It really reflects how they feel about themselves and how much they value their bodies.

If we want our bodies to function at their best, to stay healthy, then we need to start to take responsibility for what we are putting into them. It has become all to easy to just go to a doctor to get help, to deal with indigestion or feelings of sluggishness for example. It has become all too easy to just hand that responsibility over to someone who can come up with a magic little pill to fix our problems. But the problem is still there, those magic pills are just masking the symptoms and creating more problems.

The best gift that I can give my children, is to give them the best start in life. I spoke before how this begins even before birth, how the health of the parents has an affect on the baby. For me breastfeeding another one of those gifts that I chose to give my children. The female body is perfectly adapted to feed our babies, as is the case for all mammals. The composition of the milk changes as the baby grows making sure that it meets all of their needs. For example if a baby is born premature then the milk produced will adapt for the baby.

One of the many amazing things about breastfeeding, is that if the mother is exposed to or encounters infectious germs or viruses in her stomach or lungs, she will produce antibodies to fight them, those same antibodies will travel to her breasts and be transferred to her baby via the breast milk, meaning the baby will be protected also.

There are many other components of breast milk that help to enhance the functioning of the babies immune system, the image below lists the many different ones that a breastfed baby recieves.

Breastfeeding also stimulates the development of the thymus, which is such a an important component of the immune system in childhood. The thymus is the gland responsible for producing :

progenitor cells, which mature into T-cells (thymus-derived cells). The body uses T-cells help destroy infected or cancerous cells. T-cells created by the thymus also help other organs in the immune system grow properly.
https://www.livescience.com/62527-thymus.html

Once you reach puberty the thymus stops growing and will turn into fat once you reach adulthood. Babies who are not breastfed have a thymus half the size of those that are breastfeed. The breast milk that a baby first receives known as colostrum, is full of antibodies, but it also contains "Memory Lymphocytes". Lymphocytes create antibodies which fight viruses and disease, they then create memory cells which enable the body to create the antibodies faster if the once again become exposed to those same illnesses, what this means for the baby is that they now receive these Lymphocytes against illnesses that the mother has encountered or been exposed to within her life. In a way the baby is receiving some of the mothers immunity through the breast milk.

On top of all of this breastmilk also enhances the growth of healthy stomach bacteria, or gut flora and the act of breastfeeding results in the secretion of gut hormones in both the mother and the baby. These hormones are really important for proper digestion . There really are so many benefits of breastfeeding, for both the mother and the baby, below is some of them.

I could not write this without mentioning how important breastfeeding is, when it comes to bonding with your baby. I do not wish to insinuate that those who don't breastfed are not bonding, but when you are breastfeeding you are connecting with your baby in such a special way. You both are producing Oxytocin, which is, in the simplest form, the love hormone and this hormone is exchanged between mother and baby every time they feed. This really deepens the connection you have with your child.

I breastfed my eldest girls until they were 3 years of age and I am still breastfeeding my 21 month old baby. In the western world most women are advised to breastfeed up until 6 months to a year. However breast feeding is still not very common, especially in infants. The idea is met with some resistance by some and mothers are often made to feel uncomfortable when they do. For me breastfeeding was the most natural thing for me to do for my children. At the end of the day the reason I have breasts is to feed my young. It is the reason all mammals have them and I always knew that I would. But that does not mean that it was always easy. In fact breastfeeding was really painful for me with my oldest and my youngest at the beginning.

There are so many factors that affect your breastfeeding experience. From the way you birth your baby, to your actual health and well being. I had planned a homebirth with my first, but in the end I was taken to hospital where they preformed an episiotomy on me and my baby was born by suction. All of this really interfered with the natural production of hormones in my body and also within my babies body which is needed to successfully start breastfeeding. AS a result my breastfeeding experience was difficult, but I was so committed to breastfeeding my baby that I persisted and in time I was able to feed pain free.

With my youngest I was emotional very drained because of the relationship with my ex and although I did birth my baby by myself with no intervention, I was suffering inside and that affected my ability to breastfeed successfully in the beginning. When we are birthing our babies and when we are feeding them, we are undertaking a very complex and beautiful dance that is fuelled by the hormones within both of our bodies. But because I was hurting so much inside it affected my hormone production and also affected my baby's ability to feed efficiently. How do I know this, because after we did split I experienced the exact same pain in the same breast and once I finally acknowledged it, it resolved itself.

Our bodies are amazing, they will always try and communicate with us when they are out of balance.

I know in my last living naturally post I did say that my next post would be about the herbs I have used to treat my children, but I realized I could not continue without writing about this life long gift that I have given them. This gift that is from my own body and that is created to meet all of my children's needs. Something that will stay with them throughout their lives. Breastfeeding is that gift, it is the most natural thing in the world and I would not be raising my children naturally if I did not breastfeed them, it is such an important part of our journey togther.

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