Though it’s been covered in other posts on breastfeeding and barley formula, today’s brouhaha stemming from the Time Magazine cover article on breastfeeding moms seemed a decent enough reason to restate & distill the topic:
Do Scientologists breastfeed their kids? Yes, they do. But the decision as to whether or not to breastfeed, and for how long, is one that is up to the family and not one that the religion has any say over.
In a 1953 lecture that Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard was giving regarding energy and the lack of energy people sometimes have, he said,
“You’ll find the basic on this sometimes in the failure of the mother to breast-feed the child.” – LRH
He went on to describe research he did in the area, talking also about the shoddy substitutes for infant nutrition being offered at the time,
“Why they feed a child pasteurized milk is a great problem, since the amount of nutrition in pasteurized milk is comparable to water and chalk compared to good raw milk taken from a cow who has fed on pretty good fodder like good natural grasses and so forth.” — LRH
For our two kids, we breastfed as long as we could on both. And “as long as we could” was defined as, as long as it made sense both from the standpoint of our kids health and the overall health & sanity of the family.
On my daughter, she started growing teeth and biting while nursing right around 8 months. So, we were sort of forced to stop right around there – as it was just too painful to continue, and all of the little tricks to get them to not-bite were just not working. Add that to the fact that her appetite was going out of control at the time, and she needed sometimes over 64oz of milk/day in addition to phased-in solids.
On my son, he was breastfed exclusively until about 12 months, then we phased in formula and phased out breastfeeding, due also in part to a hectic work schedule my wife had which made it tougher to stay ‘charged’.
But in any case, I’d say the proof is in the pudding – and both kids turned out strong, healthy, quite smart, free of most any illness, and well above height and weight averages — so both were growing and thriving, which is all any parent is really after anyhow.