for breastfeeding - it is much greater than that required for a bottle - works on strengthening the muscles in those areas for the best alignment of skull bones.
·  The loving intimacy of holding your baby close to your breast, I find, is second to none. Breastfeeding can be a time of meditation with your baby, of absorption into the heart space, Anahata Chakra. The expansion of this chakra and the growth of maternal love is strongly stimulated by the skin to skin contact of breastfeeding. This psychic energy is then transmitted to your baby for comfort, nurture, bonding and its own future capacity for loving.

Benefits For Mother
·  Breastfeeding costs nothing.
·  Breastfeeding allows you the flexibility to feed anywhere, anytime. The food is always with you; you can't run short (if healthy); it is always at the right temperature; no implements or equipment; no preparations needed; and no cleaning up required!
·  Breastfeeding helps to build a mother's self esteem. I always felt a real sense of satisfaction when I looked at my babies a few months after birth and saw that they had flourished on nothing but my breast milk.
·   Allows many a good opportunity (OK, excuse!) to slow down, relax and space in.
·   A certain degree of post-natal contraception results from breastfeeding. This is not fully reliable but is usually the case for about 3 - 6 months.
·  Uterine tone can be regained quicker by breastfeeding. After the birth, contractions of the uterus continue for quite some time and breastfeeding helps stimulate this. These contractions can often be felt, albeit subtly, as a pleasurable feeling when breastfeeding.
·   The extra body weight that pregnancy creates is meant to be a store of energy for the months of breastfeeding that should follow birth. If you are breastfeeding this energy is then used effectively. If not, a woman has to find other ways to use it up.
·  A link is now being shown between mothers who don't breastfeed and an increased risk of developing breast cancer later in life.

Benefits For the Community
·  Breastfeeding is environmentally friendly - there's no waste, no packaging.
·   Breastfed babies are less likely to develop childhood illnesses, thereby requiring less trips to the doctors, less medications, less hospitalisation, and ultimately growing into healthier adults.
·  Breastfeeding has the potential for increasing respect for mothers and
 

know we are the most suitable and effective nurturers, and that we have  no need at all for the "help" of science or commercial products in this regard. If mother-hood is ever to be fully valued by society, all mothers must act to demonstrate the fundamen-tal importance of their role, firstly by showing that they are capable of providing the nutritional requirements of their babies, and secondly, as first guru to their children, that they also provide the primary spiritual sustenance as well.

Critique of Formula and Bottle Feeding
   Within the whole of the breastfeeding debate, there are in fact 4 components: (i) the use of breast milk as a food, (ii) the use of formula milk as a food, (iii) the use of the breast as a feeding device, and (iv) the use of a bottle as a feeding device - any of which may be mixed into hybrid kinds of infant feeding. Of course, the ultimate natural regime (which I obviously advocate) is 100% breast milk, from the breast as a dispenser, 100% of the time.
   As to which milk food is better for your baby (breast or formula) there are literally hundreds of studies which show that the nutritional value of mother's milk far outweighs that of synthetic milk. The only downsides to breast milk itself are the rare cases where a baby may have an allergy to his mother's milk, or may not be able to digest it properly due to a poor digestive system. The only other situations where it may be advisable to substitute formula for mother's milk is where the mother is unable to produce the quantity required by her baby (severe and prolonged post-partum haemorrhage), or where she may be on medications that would be harmful to the baby if passed on through the milk. Communica-ble diseases or narcotic drug use would also be other areas where breastfeeding may be risky to the baby.
   The following is a list of scientifically proven risks associated with formula feeding issued by The World Health Organisation. The WHO has been seriously concerned with the use of formula feeding for many years now. Like the health warnings we now have on cigarette packets, the WHO would like to see mandatory labelling of these risks on infant formula the world over.
· Formula milk is much more difficult to digest, taxing a small baby's system. Constipation is much more common in bottle-fed babies.
· Increased risk of gastrointestinal illnesses due to contamination of formula either in the home or factory
· Increased risk of long term respiratory illnesses, both acute (such as pneumonia) or chronic (as in asthma)