Breastfeed … anytime … anywhere
Annual Breastfeeding Awareness Walk comes to Bishop, Lone Pine.
Breast milk is still hands-down the best food a mother can provide a newborn infant and young child.
Walks by Women with Infants and Children (WIC) Directors Sherrie James with Inyo County and Irene Mason with the Toiyabe Tribe have been promoting the Breastfeeding Awareness Walks for the past several years with great success.
WIC Program is made possible with the support of local businesses and agencies donating prizes. At the Walk in Bishop on Thursday, August 6, over 80 mothers, fathers, grandparents, and children arrived to show their support. Another Walk is scheduled in Lone Pine.
The La Leche League International says breastfeeding provides babies with optimum nutrition, reduces landfill waste, preserves valued energy, and helps prevent deforestation. Deforestation? Apparently the environment pays a price for growing soybeans or raising cattle to produce artificial baby milk and clearing land for pasture results in deforestation, which then results in land depletion and soil erosion. Growing soy requires fertilization and irrigation. All in all, we need healthier babies and more trees a lot more than we need more cows or soy beans.
Human milk requires no resources for packaging, shipping, or disposal. It is estimated that the 550 million tons of formula sold in the United States alone, placed end to end, would circle around the earth more than one and a half times. Each year, says the La Leche League, just in the United States alone, the production of artificial baby milk produces 86,000 tons of tin and 1,230 tons of paper labels, which add substantially to the landfill waste. What a waste! Especially when there is a natural, healthy alternative.
Astoundingly there are still people that object to breastfeeding as “inappropriate” in public spaces. The problem is, there are often not very many alternatives provided. This year’s theme “Breastfeed… Anytime… Anywhere” emphasizes that a baby’s health is more important than a few people’s unevolved social attitudes towards women’s breasts and breastfeeding infants.
Astoundingly in the far past, breastfeeding was far more accepted and even included the use of “wet nurses.” Today some women have chosen to “share” breast milk with other women who have difficulty providing it because of problems with producing enough milk or having to be at work away from their child. Yes, most women today work and yet there are still those that find breastfeeding in public or sharing breast milk “inappropriate.” These same people usually have no difficulty with the idea that people regularly drink the milk from other species of animals all the time… and in public!
WIC and the La Leche League have this to say about those that put barriers between a mother and her child when it comes to breastfeeding: Breastfeed…Anywhere … Anytime!
