Food glorious food? Not as good as breast milk.

Following on from my last post:

How often have you heard a breastfeeding mother say, “s/he’ll probably stop/start doing it (depending on what “it” is) when s/he starts on solid foods”? (e.g. he’ll sleep through the night when he’s on solids, he’ll stop being so fussy when he’s on solids etc.) What does this really mean?

Think about it. The implication there is that solid foods are somehow a cure all for baby problems. What are we comparing them to? That’s right, human milk. We’re saying solid foods are somehow “better” than human milk.

Again, we’re suspicious of breast milk. It’s somehow lacking, it’s not trustworthy enough, we can’t see how much is going in, we don’t really know what’s in it, it’s a bit mysterious. Whereas solid food – well, we cook it ourselves, we can see it going down, it’s tangible and real.

And yet, did you know that your breast milk actually contains, gram for gram, more calories than “solid” food? So that if you’re swapping breast milk for solid foods, you’re actually lowering your baby’s calorific intake? That’s certainly not going to stop a night-waking baby; if anything it will exacerbate the problem! Solid foods, at least for the first year, are meant to be a dessert rather than the main course. Baby needs to fill up his/her tummy on nutritious, calorific breast milk and then experiment with tastes as an afterthought.

But we’re suspicious of breast milk because it’s not the norm. It’s as if, as soon as baby has tasted that first floret of broccoli, breastmilk, which for the first six months was a complete food, suddenly becomes just a drink, an afterthought to the main meal of “normal”, solid food.

Think about it. Have you ever said, “he should sleep well tonight after that huge meal?” or lamented, “she’s too full of milk to take her proper food?” Think again.