Would You Breast Feed Your Baby in Public?

(From Vanguard (Nigeria) - AAGM)

Byline: Sola Ogundipe

Women speak out

Over the years breast milk has been known to be uniquely superior for infant feeding. Breast-feeding helps in infant growth, health development and all other short and long term outcomes. Medically, breast feeding, should serve as the only food for babies under six months.

But for many women, the decision to breast-feed their babies outside their bedrooms is never an easy one. Again, lifestyle and career demands have also made it more difficult for women to breast-feed their babies in the public. While some sees it as a right others consider it as an embarrassing exercise mostly carried out by poor and uneducated women.

Chioma Obinna sought the views of some Nigerian women on the issue. Exerpts:

Ngozi Anyanwu

Actually, breast-feeding is every woman's right just like the child's. You must breast-feed the baby anywhere you are. Whether you are in the bus or market, it is proper for a woman to breast-feed her child.

For instance one day, I was in a bus, in which there was one Muslim woman who covered the baby she had on her back with a cloth under the hot sun. The baby …