Happy World Breastfeeding Week....Stop by on Wordless Wednesday. We will continue the celebration of WBF Month by holding a give-a-way contest for a $100.00 gift certificate from our own Blessed Nest store.
I'm happy to say that I found this article on the site Womens health a Federal Government source for women's health information. Please visit their site for the complete detailed story but one issue I found amazingly significant was this.
"The risks of not breastfeeding are significant. The 2005 Progress Report on Breastfeeding, issued at the 49th Session on the Commission on the Status of Women, concludes that increasing the incidence of exclusive breastfeeding in the US would reduce the rate of death for children under five by 19 percent.
According to UNICEF, if infants worldwide were fed only mother's milk for their first six months, at least 1.3 million lives a year would be saved. In the first two months of life, an infant who is not exclusively breastfed is up to 25 times more likely than an exclusively breastfed baby to die from diarrhea, and four times more likely to die from pneumonia.
As these outstanding benefits and unacceptable risks make breastfeeding not a lifestyle choice but a health mandate, it is only a matter of time before the US as a whole becomes a breastfeeding culture. In order to do this, however, obviously we must have more breastfeeding. And in order to increase breastfeeding, we must encourage mothers to nurse in public. Breastfeeding in public is essential to successful breastfeeding because babies simply cannot wait to be fed. Whether bottle-fed or breastfed, babies need to eat often; if they are in public with their parents for extended periods of time, they will have to be fed.
No one gives a second thought to bottle-feeding in public. In fact, images of baby bottles are ubiquitous in popular culture and are sometimes even used in public places to designate nursery facilities. Despite the health mandate, a society saturated with such images can make a new mom feel that breastfeeding is out of the ordinary, or even abnormal. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, lack of public support for breastfeeding is one of the obstacles to its success. Fortunately, studies show that 93 percent of people in the US are just fine with breastfeeding in public.
When we published "Taking Down the Almighty Bottle," Stephanie Ondrack's article about breastfeeding in a bottle-feeding culture (Mothering, July-August 2006), our Art Director, Laura Egley Taylor, wondered whether a universal symbol for breastfeeding existed. We were surprised to find that it does not. While Canada and Singapore have such symbols, neither image is in wide use or compatible with international signage styles. The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), along with the US Department of Transportation, created the 50 standard symbols used by US sign companies today, but they did not include one for breastfeeding.
Through a contest held by Mothering.com a sign was chosen. You may recieve a free copy of the sign on their site.
Of course, breastfeeding does not require a special place. As the Canadian government's slogan says, it is appropriate "anytime, anywhere." The purpose of the symbol is not to segregate breastfeeding in any way, but to help better integrate it into society by better accommodating it in public.
