CEBU, Philippines - NNC nutritionists recommend regular weight monitoring and diet management for infants and young children especially for babies who are born obese. To encourage breastfeeding, NNC holds seminars on lactation management with mothers, health workers, caregivers and hospitals. In Cebu, there is a memorandum of agreement between NNC 7 and the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the establishment and designation of lactation stations in workplaces. The business community has become highly supportive in the campaign to encourage breastfeeding among working mothers.
Companies with lactation rooms provide physical accommodation in the workplace for breastfeeding employees. The space is clean, private and comfortable to express milk. Ideally the lactation room provides a sink or close to the sink, and a refrigerator to store milk.
With all these initiatives, it is the height of tragedy and irresponsibility when mothers forego breastfeeding because they need to go to work or for any other reason — nothing justifies depriving a baby of mother’s milk. Mothers who substitute breastmilk with infant formulas carry with it a stigma of depravity. Mothers who forego breastfeeding for bottle feeding carry with it a stigma of separation for it is only in breastfeeding that emotional bond with the mother is intimately lasting even into adult life.
When your baby or child grows up to have heart disease or is diabetic or is emotionally withdrawn, it may have nothing to do with genes. Fat chance it was just your tendency to feed the baby the way you gobble your food. Cushy-cushy-coo… that’s not necessarily cute. (FREEMAN)