Chennai: When Bhuvaneshwari Velmurugan, a mother in her 30s and a private firm employee, decided to continue working soon after giving birth to a son, she found it tough.
“I was working and was able to feed him breast milk only twice a day. I did not want to store milk for various reasons. He cried a lot as I stopped breastfeeding him after seven months. I felt he wanted human milk,” recounted Bhuvaneshwari.
Soon after this she shifted to formula milk and began feeding porridge and vegetables and the baby got accustomed to the shift.
And then there are women like Radhika Ram, who quit her job soon after getting pregnant. “I did not want to take chances and wanted a healthy child so I breastfed my child until she turned two,” she said.
We cannot blame anyone, for it is their choice how to raise a child. With Bhuvaneshwari are other mothers who are at an impasse if they should continue working or be a stay-at-home mother and feed the baby.
If the mother chooses to work, the immediate question is how she would provide breast milk to her child, which precisely was the situation that Bhuvaneshwari encountered.
On the other hand, the dearth of infrastructural facilities at workplace – creche or breastfeeding room – discourages women from continuing the practice.
Institute of Child Health and Hospital for Children Department of Neonatology Head, Dr C N Kamalarathnam, suggests the working community store the expressed milk, if they have a private space and an equipment, while they are at their office and feed the child when they get home.
“To facilitate this, caretakers of the child should encourage women to store the breast milk and use it for feeding when they are away. It is a common practice abroad. Human milk can be stored easily for 24 hours,” Kamalarathnam said.
If the baby does not suckle, the milk gets stored, leading to breast enlargement and the milk cannot be used for feeding. In such cases, the mothers have to find ways at their workplace to express it. “Milk secretion has to be maintained which can be done only by feeding,” the doctor said.
Asked about the food intake of mothers, he said, “Balanced diet and 300 additional calories is recommended for breast milk secretion.”
| BEST BABY FOOD |
| As it secretes naturally, Institute of Child Health and Hospital for Children Department of Neonatology Head, Dr Kamalarathnam, stated that breast milk contains the right amount of proteins, fat and carbohydrates that an infant can easily digest.
“The anti-infective properties present in it protects the child. Necrotizing enterocolitis is a severe intestinal disease that can be prevented when the baby is fed breast milk,” the doctor added. He stated that mother’s milk contains high quantity of whey protein which can be easily processed by the baby, as against cow’s milk. |