What makes breastfeeding so darn special? Any mother that loves her child can raise a wonderfully, bright, loving child, regardless of what went into his tummy, right? Are mothers who choose to feed artificial milk missing out on a part of motherhood? We know that human milk towers over artificial milk in providing developmental nourishment. We know that breastfeeding makes a mom have to be physically close to her child, skin to skin. You can't prop a breast that's for sure! So if we can mimic all the aspects of breastfeeding into a bottle-feeding regime, is that enough? What is the whole story to breastfeeding? And does it make a better mother?

Breastfeeding is a physiological norm. Our babies are meant to receive the milk of the mother, as all mammals are. Breastmilk is readily available, and babies are genetically given the instincts to draw it out of the breast. It is a symbiotic relation ship designed from millennia of trial and error. We have evolved to near perfection the ability to feed our young. For a mother to breastfeed means that she has made a commitment to her child, a biological commitment. The milk itself has all the vital nutrients in it to nourish the child. It has the perfect amount of vitamins, proteins and fats to assist the child in growing his or her brain and body the way nature intended. The mechanical act of breastfeeding ensures that the child will have properly developed facial muscles. The act of sucking on a breast involves many more muscles than that of an artificial nipple. Breastfeeding exercises the muscles of the jaw and thereby helps in proper bone development in the jaw.

The physical act of breastfeeding does all this plus includes all the immunity factors. Not only does the milk contain immunological factors passively transferred from the mom. It has now been discovered that one of the proteins in the milk actually helps the child to develop his or her own immune system. So it would go to show that as long as the child is obtaining this protein, the immune system is being built stronger and stronger. This would be one of the valid arguments for providing breastmilk on a long-term basis.

There are many mothers that are unable to provide their children with their milk. It is very few that are actually naturally physically unable to provide milk. It is mainly social reasons our young do not receive their mother's milk. By this I mean that educational ignorance as to how breastfeeding functions or breastmilk's biological importance to the child. I'm talking about:

- the baby that leaves the delivery room sucking on a pacifier and the mother wonders why the baby won't latch to her.

- not understanding the law of supply and demand. Giving artificial milk, which eventually depletes the mother's milk due to lack of suckling stimulation by the baby or by pumping.

- shoddy birthing practices, that cause women to have horrendous labors, which may lead to baby being in NICU, or the mom unable to tolerate/accomplish breastfeeding ( or just plain able to look after baby at all!).

- or to have their breasts swell up from all the fluids required due to the epidural that now baby cant latch to the breast properly.

- blood loss that leads to pituitary failure (the gland is destroyed to a point that it can not produce the necessary hormones to support lactation).

- lack of support by family or professionals to realize that breastmilk is a biologcal right due to a baby.

-the decision to do "what is right for our whole family" without even blinking an eye as to how artificially feeding the baby might effect the baby for the rest of his or her life.

So once the baby is being artificially fed, is it the same? Can we duplicate the breastfeeding experience? In many ways yes we can. We can hold the child skin to skin. We can loving look into the child's eyes and talk and coo and stroke the child. We can practice a type of parenting that is common to breastfed children. There are many things we can do to ensure that the artificially fed child benefits from a relationship that is similar to the breastfed child. But there is one thing missing from this mother-child relationship. An element that can not be duplicated.

This element is the hormonal relationship between mother and child. This relationship starts at birth. As the baby is being born he or she is receiving endorphins, and adrenaline from the mother, so that when he or she is born they are alert and ready for action. The receptors in the mother's pelvic floor are triggering the release of oxytocin, which in turn helps the child be born but also floods her system. Oxytocin is responsible for the "let-down reflex" the ejects the milk out of the breast.

Once the baby begins to suckle more and more hormones are released. Oxytocin continues to be one, the other is prolactin. Both of these hormones are continuously released during the breastfeeding relationship. Looking at the child triggers them, hearing the child triggers it. Oxytocin is our "feel good" hormone. It is the one released when we climax during sex. It is also released when we nurse our babies. Prolactin is called "the mothering hormone". This hormone is the hormone that relaxes us during our nursing sessions. It is the one that will put us to sleep at night when we are snuggled up tight to our wee one. As long as we breastfeed, we have these hormones, these chemicals running about our systems, making us feel wonderful about our babies, our children, our lives. These hormones in my opinion make us more "in love" with our children. Many women have said they feel different about their children if one was breastfeed and one was not.

So there. There is the difference. There is the missing link. No matter how hard you try, if you feed your baby something other than your own milk, you will be missing out on this very primal biological occurrence. No matter how hard you try, you have to be breastfeeding to understand this fact. And you have to ask yourself; "does it matter?" If you believe doesn't matter, then, so be it. Does this chemical/hormonal occurrence within your body make you a better mother?  Maybe, maybe not. I do know that it makes me a better one. I know on my most stressful days, sitting back and nursing my child brings a calm over me that nothing in the natural world could do without blurring my senses.