"The waiter gestured at my breastfeeding baby as though he was an unexploded bomb and told me to cover up or leave"

This in support of  Ireland's national breastfeeding week👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/the-waiter-gestured-at-my-breastfeeding-baby-as-though-he-was-an-unexploded-bomb-and-told-me-cover-up-or-leave-40928299.html

Extract:

With only 6% of Irish babies exclusively breastfed to six months, Ireland is a world breastfeeding laggard. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef, breast is best, yet only 40% of infants are fed exclusively with breastmilk for the first six months of their life.

 Why does that matter? Because babies are being deprived of proven health benefits of breastfeeding, including reduced risk of asthma, sudden infant death syndrome, obesity, diabetes, infections and food allergies. Mothers benefit from a reduced risk of breast cancer and heart disease. An estimated 800,000 infant deaths and 20,000 maternal deaths would be avoided, according to a report in The Lancet, if WHO-recommended breastfeeding practices were universally implemented.

 As a first time mam mourning the loss of my own mother, breastfeeding saved me from Post Natal Depression. The release of Oxytocin (also known as the “love hormone”) during breastfeeding felt like a shot of Valium coursing through my bloodstream, acting like a natural sedative. A recent US study showed that postpartum depression is a significant health issue and found that women who were breastfeeding at the time of data collection had a significantly lower risk of postpartum depression than women who were not.

On Monday, in support of National Breastfeeding week, President Higgins described the “commodification of child feeding” by largely unregulated organisations that deploy vast funds in the “abuse of advertising” and lobbying. The infant formula market is a €60bn a year industry. Subsidised by taxpayers, Ireland produces 13% of the global supply of formula, worth over a billion euro a year. President Higgins passionately urged government to promote and protect breastfeeding as the most natural and sustainable food source.