Beautiful Breasts

I just saw this and thought it was a beautiful story that needed to be shared...

Not only is Salma Hayek a sexy, talented actress, and a mother who is currently breastfeeding her 16 month old daughter, she is also saving lives with her boobs! Good for her for using her breasts for what they were made for, spreading the word, and not being ashamed!

This came from Celebrity Baby Blog:

Many of you responded positively to last week’s story about Salma Hayek nursing a starving baby during her UNICEF trip to Sierra Leone, after finding that his mother could not produce milk. Having her experience filmed for ABC’s Nightline, Salma explained that doctors in the country encourage mothers to breastfeed for two years, but this rarely occurs. The reason? Men urge their wives to cease nursing rather quickly because of a cultural taboo against sexual intercourse with breastfeeding women.

“It is the best thing you can do for your child, not only the bonding, that’s how you build the immune system, so in a country like [Sierra Leone] imagine how important it is for the mothers to do that,” Salma says. “But here, there is the belief that if you are breastfeeding you cannot have a sexual life so the husbands, of course, of these women are really encouraging them to stop and this is just a taboo.”

Her decision to assist one of these women by nursing her hungry baby boy hit home for Salma, 42, as she wondered if it was fair to daughter Valentina Paloma, 16 months. She shares,

“That was amazing. I’m in Africa, in Sierra Leone, and I was able to feed an ill baby that was very hungry. I thought about it — am I being disloyal to my child by giving her milk away? And I actually think that my baby would be very proud to be able to share her milk. When she grows up I’m going to make sure that she continues to be a generous, caring person, and I think that’s the best thing I can give her as a mother.”

What Salma did is called “cross-nursing.” Bettina Forbes, CLC, of the Best for Babes Foundation says, “cross-nursing has been critical to the survival of the human species and is more common today than people might think.” Andi Silverman, author of Mama Knows Breast: A Beginner’s Guide to Breastfeeding adds,”some moms do it, but there’s no way to know how many. And La Leche League actually discourages cross-nursing and wet nursing because the person feeding your baby could have a communicable disease.”



While we're on the subject, here are a couple of my favorite breastfeeding clips from kids shows...

First we've got good ol' Mr. Rogers (love this!):



Big Bird even gets in on the action:



So sweet.

It's really too bad kids today don't get to see this kind of thing. Many are clueless about such a natural & normal thing as a mother feeding her child. Something I recently learned from kids book illustrators is that the publishers don't want them to show any nipples. No mom nipples, no dad nipples, no cow nipples... well udders, I suppose. Don't want to make anyone uncomfortable. How strange. We are so backwards - in a culture of cleavage-lovers, women are still forced to sit in corners or hide under tents to feed their babies! What the world needs is more NIP!
An image that always sticks with me is a photo of an Arab woman covered from head to toe in modest dress, but sitting outside with her breast completely exposed, unapologetically breastfeeding her child.

So anyway, thank you Salma! Hopefully things will change and we will see Elmo nursing one of these days. And no, he isn't too old... The American Academy of Pediatrics, The American Academy of Family Physicians, and the World Health Organization recommend breastfeeding for at least two years and as long as mutually enjoyed by mother and child. Not to mention the numerous benefits to both as a result of nursing past infancy. So, c'mon Elmo - you, me & Big Bird need to have a talk!

Ok, getting off the soap box now & heading to bed... ;)