DID YOU KNOW...?

BREAST-FEEDING MYTHS

Advice to nursing mothers has been rich and varied - and often contradictory - over the years.

Here are some examples from various times and places:

1.  If you eat peanuts, your milk will dry up (unless you're in Africa, where they say that peanuts increase the flow.)

2.  Some people insists that eating chocolate will stop your milk; others, that it will produce more.

3.  In many places it has been long believed that drinking beer or milk will increase your milk supply; in Minnesota, oatmeal helps.

4.  Eating like a cow, nature's premier milk producer, is advised in some quarters; drink alfalfa tea or eat alfalfa sprouts.  (But farmers don't allow cows to graze near apple orchards - eating apples causes their milk to dry up.)

5.  There are more examples:  An onion in your stomach will give your baby colic.  If you rock while nursing, you'll shake up the milk.  If a mother becomes nervous, angry, frightened, or sexually stimulated, her milk will turn sour.  In any case, she will pass her own nature on to her baby in her milk.