Breastfeeding: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Breastfeeding is ancient art practiced for many centuries. Suboptimal feeding practices either due to lack of knowledge, skills, or lack of resources can permanently damage a child's growth and development. Breastfeeding is natural, instinctive and physiological process. Human milk has widely acknowledged benefits across economic strata with respect to infant nutrition, gastrointestinal function, host defense, neurodevelopment, psychological wellbeing for full-term and premature infants. The method of “Breast Crawl” can be adopted for early initiation. If breastfeeding was temporarily discontinued due to an inadvertent situation, “re-lactation” should be tried as soon as possible. The possibility of “induced lactation” shall be explored according to the situation e.g. Adoption, Surrogacy. The best position for feeding is one which suits both the mother and baby. Kangaroo Mother Care is a simple way of caring preterm and low birth weight babies. Breastfeeding should be on cues. If the goal is to achieve sustainable goals mother's milk in indispensible for baby. Presence of human milk banks in NICUs is associated with elevated exclusive breast feeding rates in VLBW babies. The online breast milk business is becoming more and more lucrative, despite health warnings like infections, contamination and misrepresentation. The breast milk is also one of the excellent sources of stem cells. Mothers should feel comfortable to nurse in public. All efforts should be taken to remove hurdles demeaning breastfeeding in public places. We should take a pledge today that we will not waste any opportunity to protect, promote and support proper breastfeeding practices.