Useful and balanced baby foods are very important for children’s nutrition, living and body growth. The Almighty Allah has kept a lone source for exploration of food from human body for her offspring. And that is mother’s milk. There are three deciding factors for children’s health, nutrition and living. These are safety, care and disease control. The glaring instance of coordination of the three is the mother’s milk.
Foods remain prepared in the breast of every mother for her expecting baby just after birth of her child in the world at the grace of Allah. A baby gets the sweet scope of meeting hunger and thirst as soon as he or she is breast-fed immediately after birth. The food in terms of milk a baby gets from his/her mother for the first three or four days is called ‘Shal Doodh’, which is small in quantity. But, it is enough for a child immediately after birth for limited storing space in stomach.
The ‘Shal Doodh’ not only meets hunger and thirst of the newborn baby but it also supplies various food ingredients to keep the baby healthy. That’s why ‘Shal Doodh’ is termed as the baby’s first vaccine. The children are not only the benefactors of breast- feeding, rather the mothers, their families and the society in general become beneficial. Mother’s milk not only supplies necessary nutrients for children six months after birth but also works as preventives to five diseases.
Children remain free from different ailments after their growth for taking their mother’s milk (breastfeeding) in their childhood days.
Mother’s milk also plays a significant role in children’s body growth and child health safety. Taking of mother’s milk only, children get proper nutrition, healthy growth and all the nutrients for merit. They also get best protection. Children get protection from infection in vocal cord, diarrhoea and other deadly diseases. Besides, they also get protection from fatness (over weight) and infectious diseases like bad breathing problem (Hapani) and diabetes. Mother’s milk is also a vaccine for children. Besides, it as a food also helps enhance children’s intelligence and eye sight. The mother’s risk for conceiving baby within a short period also declines.
In accordance with the advice of the World Health Organisation (WHO), breast feeding should be started within one hour after baby birth because mother’s milk protects newborn baby from different diseases like diarrhoea, lung infection, pneumonia, ear ailment and meningitis. Not only the baby, a mother can also be benefitted herself by breastfeeding her baby.
In our country, mothers usually breast feed their newborn babies. But, there was deviation from this habit due to some reasons. Awareness has already been grown among people about breastfeeding over the last few years following extensive campaign in different media.
The rate of breastfeeding only among six-month-old children has increased to 64 percent from 47 percent over the past five years. According to a recent statistics revealed by the WHO, over 15 lakh children could possibly be saved from premature death if all the children of the world are breast-fed from their birth up to six months of their age.
Some nutritionists were of the opinion that the government should go for widespread campaigning on the issue (matter) relating to breast feeding and supplementary foods. Some child specialists (paediatricians) held the view that there are 200 nutritious ingredients in mother’s milk, which is not available in any other single food in the world. Nutritionists said further that lives of at least 37,000 newborn babies could possibly be saved if mothers start lactating their babies one hour after their birth. On the other hand, child mortality rate increases by 25 percent for intake of powdered milk or other processed baby foods.
Mother’s milk is similar to gold in value to a child as baby food. All the mothers should be encouraged to lactate their newborn babies. Malnutrition of mothers and their children is the main impediment for building a healthy nation. So, nutritious foods should be ensured for the mothers after their childbirth so that their babies get enough milk from mothers. We should have also to make the mothers aware of the fact that they should have patience to be successful in breastfeeding their newborn babies. It has clearly been defined in the Holy Quran that those mothers who want to complete the period of breast- feeding their babies should go for breast feeding them for two years and the fathers’ duties are to shoulder the responsibility to bear all their expenditures and rearing (Sura Al Bakara, Ayat-233).
