Perhaps you are faced with a choice of breastfeeding your baby or formula feeding? There are several benefits of breastfeeding, although it is not always an option for everyone. In this article, we'll look at the benefits of breastfeeding for both mother and baby.

Breast milk, together with vitamin D, contains all the nutrients an infant needs for the first six months. The WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and shared breastfeeding for up to two years - or as long as mother and baby want. In addition to nutrition, the newborn baby gets the physical closeness, warmth, body contact and security it needs.

Benefits of breastfeeding

There are many benefits of breastfeeding for those who can and want to breastfeed:

- Optimal nutritional content for the baby you gave birth to
- Environmentally friendly
- Always heated to the right temperature
- It is free of charge
- Reducing the risk of sudden infant death syndrome
- Reduces the risk of the child falling ill with certain infectious and inflammatory conditions.
- Potentially reduces the risk of the child developing obesity later in life
- Reduces the risk of breast and ovarian cancer and type II diabetes later in life

If you choose to breastfeed, you may want to be aware of the advice for breastfeeding:

- Alcohol has no positive effects on breastfeeding. However, according to current research, drinking moderate amounts of alcohol while breastfeeding, i.e. 1-2 glasses of wine or equivalent 1-2 times a week, does not pose any medical risks to the baby. The amount of alcohol that the baby can ingest through breast milk is very small.

- When you are breastfeeding, you should be careful with food supplements, herbal products, herbal teas, herbal remedies, traditional herbal medicines and natural products, as it is often not known whether they can be harmful to the baby. Therefore, do not use such products without first discussing them with the nurse at the childcare center or the doctor.

- Caffeine from coffee and tea is passed to the baby via breast milk in small enough quantities that it does not harm the baby. Therefore, you do not need to cut down on coffee or tea when breastfeeding.

Here you can read about baby's signals that they want to breastfeed.