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Monica Cheru-Mpambawashe
Living life to the max
Starting this week, a colleague who will feature next week and I will bring you a new lifestyle column that focuses on interpreting and adapting the information from experts into our own lives. As we struggle with life’s challenges, we are inundated with information that sometimes overwhelms us with contradicting guidelines and we are not sure as to just the right choices to make. In recognition of the World Breastfeeding Week, we will start by looking at that contentious issue. Shifting expert recommendations, cultural beliefs, peer information, health concerns and practical considerations are just a few of the challenges that many women face when it comes to breastfeeding.
All other mammals seem to naturally know how to rear their young, so why is the human female in a quandary? This is a case where one can really receive too much information and when that barrage is conflicted with traditional advice, one is confused and not sure what is best for mother and baby.
Women are advised to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months, but with the need to earn money, how many of us can afford to do this? There is a simple way of getting around this; expressing milk is a convenient way to ensure that the baby is taken care of while the mother is away. Expressing pumps are now available in many local shops. But it is also high time that the local employer starts looking at the global trend of providing day care facilities at work. Companies like Microsoft have successfully done this and it ensures that workers are more productive as they do not have to worry about their children or constantly run home to check on the baby-minder.
Breastfeeding myths
In the past traditional healers and wise ones who were most women were the go-to people when it came to problems with babies. Modern medicine has changed many things but locally the belief in the supernatural is still strongly ingrained hence most women have simply transferred their faith to prophets. So many myths still abound. Sexuality and sex life are closely linked to breastfeeding in most traditional Zimbabwean cultures and most myths revolve around this theme.
Let us look at some of them
Myth 1: Kuyamwira
The widely held belief states that if a woman breastfeeds while pregnant, her milk will be toxic and her baby will become ill and possibly die. So most women wean off their young babies as soon as they realise that they have fallen pregnant.
Fact: All medical experts advise that the woman should eat a balanced diet that takes into consideration that her body needs to sustain the growing foetus, feed the suckling baby and ensure that the mother is also fully nourished. They also advise that the mother continue to breastfeed the baby for as long as possible before the next birth.
Myth 2: Kunyararira
Another myth that is widely believed is that if either parent indulges in an extramarital sex when they have an infant in the house the baby will go off the mother’s milk until the erring parent makes a full confession. It is especially believed that if it is the mother who has been adulterous then the danger is even higher as the ‘foreign’ sperm from her lover will mix with the milk and affect the baby.
Fact: Multiple concurrent sexual relationships are always a health risk especially in light of HIV. A breastfeeding woman can infect her child through the milk so both parents need to remain mutually faithful. But a baby refusing to feed most probably has health problems and needs proper medical attention.
Myth: Kuomeswa
Sometimes a woman’s breasts do not engorge after delivery and she may remain dry and fail to produce any milk. In such cases most people tend to believe that the mother has been bewitched and turn to spiritualists like prophets and traditional healers for assistance. Usually what the woman will be told there will only add to her stress, thus making it even more unlikely that she will produce the milk. Sometimes women may get cuts which are infused with herbs (nyora) which may lead to infections.
Fact: A few women may face this problem which may be caused by hormones that will not have acted as they should. In that case hormonal therapy will help the women produce milk.
There are several diseases that can affect the breast like cancer and mastitis which is inflammation of the breast. The best way to deal with any unusual development in the breast is to seek professional help as soon as they are noticed. Most of them can be treated if caught early enough.
Breastfeeding and
HIV positive women
There are many other myths but let us move on to yet another thorny issue; that of breastfeeding in HIV positive women. The received wisdom locally is that HIV positive women should breastfeed exclusively for six months. But it is a fact that other countries like the USA actively discourage infected women from breastfeeding.
“CDC recommends that infected women in the United States refrain from breastfeeding to avoid postnatal transmission of HIV-1 to their infants through breast milk.
These recommendations also should be followed by women receiving antiretroviral therapy. Passage of antiretroviral drugs into breast milk has been evaluated for only a few antiretroviral drugs. ZDV, 3TC, and nevirapine have been detected in the breast milk of women.” — cdc.gov
So what is the right path?
According to Unicef there are reasons why HIV positive women in the developing world are being encouraged to breastfeed:
“The risk of HIV-infection has to be compared with the risk of morbidity and mortality due to not breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is protective against death from diarrhoea, respiratory and other infections, particularly in the first months of life. Breastfeeding also provides the necessary nutritional and related ingredients, as well as the stimulation necessary for good psychosocial and neurological development, and contributes to birth spacing.
WHO also supports the position:
“For HIV-infected mothers, especially in developing countries, the decision to breastfeed or to give breast milk substitutes like infant formula or modified cow’s milk provides a dilemma. While breastfeeding increases the risk of HIV-transmission to the child with up to 15%, giving breast milk substitutes instead of breast milk increases the risk due to infectious diseases like diarrhoea and respiratory infections about 6 times during the first 2 months. Many mothers in developing countries cannot afford breast milk substitutes and lack access to clean water, which is essential for their safe preparation and use.” — who.int
The final decision to breastfeed or not to lies with each woman, all that is needed is access to correct information to enable the making of an empowered decision.
Online Reporter