What has snow to do with breastfeeding?

The cold, snow and ice that has covered the country for the last few days has caused traffic disruption, accidents, frozen pipes  and I’m sure lots of individual hardship for those dealing with the effects.

For a breastfed baby, so long as they have their mum, the snow and ice will make no difference at all.


Derbyshire 23/01/2013


I can think of a couple of events that involved snow disruption for my family where breastfeeding stood out as very real factor in simplifying our temporarily disrupted lives.

The first was on a journey one afternoon in February, across the Pennines from Liverpool to Sheffield. Our usual route would have been on one of the Pennine passes, but all of those were closed due to snow. We were in a hire car that broke down on the M62 just before that too was closed due to snow, for the first time ever. We had managed to call for breakdown help, then just sat and waited. The breakdown service was very busy that day and we were in the cold car for hours. We were found by a patrolling police team, on the motorway to make sure that everyone had managed to get down to a lower level before being snowed in. The young policeman was very embarrassed when he worked out the reason that the baby was fine without the offered trip back to the police station to heat some water “So that you can feed the baby”.

Derbyshire 23/01/2013

The second time was when ice and snow took down the power lines to our home; plus the power lines to the pumping station that piped our tap water. We were without electricity for three weeks and water for a week. We had just moved house at the time and the nearest supermarket I knew of was seven miles away on impassable roads, I was away from family and friends and I knew none of my neighbours. The local shop very quickly ran out of water and other cold drinks, so we were getting our water from melted and boiled snow. I remember thinking at the time just how traumatic it would have been to have a baby that was not breastfed. My breastfed daughter experienced no change.

Compared to what some mothers deal with on a day to day basis and on a world scale these were temporary, minor issues. Keeping warm is a great reason to cuddle your baby but, what I gained most though, was a real sense of empowerment and self reliance to nourish my babies. It is easy to think of the health outcomes of breastfeeding; many times we forget that it is the practical issues are what skills us and give us confidence as mothers.

 

Anne