The Long-Term Benefits of Breastfeeding Your Baby
The overall benefits of breastfeeding have long been established in history since breastfeeding has been around every since the world started. Here are the long-term benefits you should know about:
Improved Digestion
Breastfeeding can get rid of meconium, the substance that can be found within your baby’s intestines after he comes out of your uterus. The overall composition of breastmilk, unlike the formulas that are commercially prepared, tends to change as time goes by, meeting your baby’s nutritional needs through each stage of his life. Additionally, breastmilk offers various protective factors to your baby’s digestive system which can protect him from illnesses like diarrhea.
Your baby’s close relationship with you through breastfeeding also offers inoculation with beneficial bacteria which he will need to colonize his gut. Such microorganisms offer the required raw material to manufacture particular vitamins and help with digesting solid foods after your baby’s digestion tract matures.
Allergy Protection
It is physically impossible for your baby to become allergic to your breastmilk because its protein was made specifically for your baby. Throughout the initial few weeks after birth, your baby’s gut lining will still be permeable and immature. This means that it will let certain big molecules, such as protein, leak out of his gut. If such proteins get into your baby’s immune system while it is immature, unwanted allergies could occur.
Breastfeeding tends to protect against this by offering your baby a substance known as secretory IGA. The immunoglobulin within breastmilk and colostrum offers absorption of huge foreign molecules while your baby’s immune system is still immature.
Resistance to Illness
Breastfeeding will offer your baby a lot of immunological benefits that will protect him from infectious diseases. Your immune system happens to be much more mature compared to your baby’s since you have had more chances of building resistance to a lot of pathogens that cause diseases over time. This special protection could be passed onto your baby through antibodies within your breastmilk since colostrum has high levels of antibodies.
Mothers can get microorganisms from their babies through close physical contact, producing antibodies to any potential pathogens the baby may have received. Therefore, breastfeeding can provide babies with ongoing outer sources of antibodies, which their personal immune systems still cannot produce.
The long-term benefits of breastfeeding are so well-known nowadays, that pediatricians recommend it as the primary source of nutrition for babies up to one year old.
