Sunday, February 09, 2003

Breast milk is best bet for baby
"With this issue, Dr. Roxanne M. Allegretti begins a monthly column for Healthy Living.
I FIRST CAME to Fredericksburg with my family on a house-hunting trip in 2000, when my oldest daughter was 10 months old. We were preparing to move from California, because of my husband's transfer to Quantico.

Being a long-time California resident, I was already a bit nervous about how my attitudes and beliefs might fit in here. One night, while eating a delicious dinner at the Riverview in downtown Fredericksburg, my daughter needed to nurse a bit. I felt we accomplished it discreetly, but a woman at the next table stood up and said, "That's disgusting. That baby has teeth."

None of the great comebacks that I thought of later came to me at that moment. I was dumbstruck that someone would criticize me for feeding my baby the best food there is, and for doing what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends for all infants. Now, I'm nursing my second baby, and I still find it interesting how people react to this most natural act." [This is the first of a series of columns on health by a pediatrician and it's terrific that she chose to talk about breastfeeding. As is often the case, the articlecould benefit from language that warns of the harm from not breastfeeding. I've forwarded her a copy of Diane Weissinger's Watch Your Language from the Journal of Human Lactation, Volume 12, Number 1, 1996. - JC]