Natural Health

In praise of mother's milk

Kavita Mukhi

Getting back to my tryst with nutrition, it was the birth of my son in 1981 which triggered my interest in infant nutrition. Prior to that I was just a happy-go-lucky journalist living very much in the way I pleased and following my instinct vis-à-vis health and nutrition. It was with the birth of my son that for the first time I began thinking about nutrition, the best foods, how to raise my son and ensure a happy, healthy childhood for him. All that any mother would want. I also became more anxious and curious because I had a colicky child on my hands who could be restless, leaving me exhausted.

It surprised me to learn that the antidote to colic which most doctors reflexively prescribed was gripe water, together with the homily that colic was part and parcel of the growth process. If a mother complained too much she was labelled fussy and stronger medicine was reluctantly prescribed. Meanwhile elders within the family would conjure up home remedies. So everyone would spend most of their time trying to alleviate my son’s obvious distress. Being one who never gives up I spent a lot of time going from one doctor to another.

Finally one good doctor opined that the cause of colic was mother’s milk and advised a switch to soya milk. Even if this wasn’t an accurate diagnosis, it was some comfort that nothing other than his daily milk intake was the cause. I was now closer to seeing my son smile rather than cry. Around the same time, I was reading a wonderful book on the virtues of breastfeeding which prompted me to believe that my child couldn’t possibly be allergic to mother’s milk. Besides the many benefits of breastfeeding flowing to mother and child, it seemed the most natural way to nurse an infant. By sheer coincidence at the same time my father was reading Health for the Millions by Dr. Herbert Shelton. He drew my attention to Dr. Shelton’s contention that animal milk isn’t suitable for human consumption. Homo sapiens is the only species which consumes the milk of other animals. On the other hand mother’s milk is the standard nutrition during infancy across the animal kingdom.

Further investigation prompted me to narrow down my suspicions to the animal milk I was consuming at the time as being the cause of my son’s colic. When following my instinct I stopped drinking any milk, I found that my son’s colic problem vanished into the blue because — as I discovered later — mother’s milk had suddenly become non-stressful for him.

What I forgot to mention earlier is that I did try feeding him soya and other milk formulations in a bottle at the family’s urging in case he was allergic to my nursing. But my son refused all of them. If he hadn’t been stubborn, his fate would have been like that of many others. Deprived of nature’s most perfect food because of wrong advice or other misconception.

Another miracle of nature is that as long as an infant wants to be nursed, the mother will produce milk. There will never be a shortage. Looking back I realise that my son was fortunate that he refused bottle milk and was nursed by me until his natural instinct advised him to stop.

All this led to my getting to learn about the La Leche League and all the wonderful mothers who formed this transnational breastfeeding support group. Later when I was in the United States I attended their meetings and read their manual which states that a baby can be allergic to something in her mother’s diet, but never to breastfeeding. Persuaded by the numerous arguments advanced by the promoters and brave members of the La Leche League who took on and vanquished several pharma multinationals who were then heavily pushing milk powder formulations as being superior to mother’s milk, after my return to India in the mid 1980s, I became a La Leche leader to help Indian mothers learn more about the most perfect food on earth i.e breastmilk. And to this day my advice is available to mothers with problems about breastfeeding their infants. I also have a book collection they can use.

Another useful revelation i experienced as a young mother was related to thumb sucking. All the literature on child rearing indicates that thumb sucking is a substitute for insufficient breastfeeding, lack of mothering resulting in a child’s lack of security. So when at the age of four-five months my son began sucking his thumb, it hit me quite hard. However, I did know his stomach hurt and sucking his thumb soothed him. I was amazed and naturally very happy when six months later he stopped sucking his thumb. That’s because with my having stopped ingesting animal milk, my breast milk had improved qualitatively and he didn’t need to soothe his stomach anymore. I went on to nurse him for 35 months i.e until before his third birthday when he weaned himself.

There’s a lot I have to tell young mothers about infant nutrition and feeding your child. If you are in urgent need of information, put your questions to me on e-mail at kavitamukhi@conciousfood.com and we will answer your queries. Child nutrition is my first love and it is always a pleasure to ensure that infants are given mother’s milk as their birthright. I strongly feel there should be a law which mandates that all mothers breastfeed their babies for at least one year. Next month we’ll discuss the first foods i.e beyond breastfeeding, of infants.

Meanwhile happy mothering!

(Kavita Mukhi is a Mumbai-based eco-nutritionist and CEO of Conscious Food)