I learned a few things about female breasts from a new book by Florence Williams, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History.

First, when it comes to infant nutrition, breast milk contains 100% of all the nutrients a growing baby requires and furthermore it contains various antibodies passed on from the mother which protect the baby during its earliest days of growth. Add to that the strong bond between mother and child that breast feeding develops and it sounds like a pretty great thing. My own daughter was breast fed exclusively for her first year and it continued until she was around two (I think it was the baby teeth that eventually made breastfeeding problematic).

Continue reading “Breasts” →