I just love it when someone says that it is just the "well-to-do,white, stay-at-home mothers" who are now "going natural" and doing such crazy things as breastfeeding, cloth diapering, and such.  I'm guessing that they are the most vocal about it; they do, after all, have more at-home time and time with other moms, so I would imagine they'd have more time to talk it up.  And maybe there's an element of this that is somehow trendy. I say this is a myth.

My daughter definitely does not fit that mold.  She is jobless.  She has no child support (yet, if ever) and is a single mother at 20.  She had only just begun college when she became pregnant, so she has basically no education and no job.  Because she'd been out of my home (living with her father, then friends) for some time, she had no insurance coverage, so Medicaid paid for the maternity expenses.  She qualifies for WIC.  And although none of her friends who've had babies do so, she is breastfeeding and cloth diapering.

One major reason for this is that they are both low-cost, much lower than formula and disposable diapers.  But she did a lot of research on this subject while pregnant.  She read books by doctors, read college and medical school textbooks online, and even read some full journal articles we found.  She's highly intelligent (she taught herself to read when she was 4), and she made it her mission to get all the information she could before making a decision that would affect her baby.  Cloth diapering seemed to benefit babies mostly by less skin irritation, and mothers mostly by less cost, but breastfeeding was another thing entirely.  

We found a wonderful chart on askdrsears.com, and it reiterated many of the stunning facts on the differences between breast milk and formula, some which even I had never before seen.  

For one, there is no cholesterol, no DHA, and no lipase (a fat-digesting enzyme) in formula.  Cholesterol and DHA are vital to the growing brain and body, and lipase aids in proper digestion of fat, the "most important nutrient" in breast milk. 

I've long heard from physicians and learned in my immunology classes that breast milk contains antibodies, but I was unaware that much of those antibodies are the IgA form.  This is especially good considering that IgA contains a secretory component which helps it survive the acidic digestive tract.  

And did you know that each feeding from the breast gives a baby millions of living white blood cells?  The cells have various functions that protect the baby as well as the mother's breast.  It may sound "icky" to you, but these cells help fight off infections, and that's always a good thing.

While I know it's less than diplomatic of me to say so, I find it childish that some moms (the ones who for whatever reason did not breastfeed) get offended when someone points out the benefits of breastfeeding.  I speak from experience when I say that we mothers bristle at any hint that we might have done something or failed to do something that may have harmed our children, even to the point of becoming almost religious about our offense and discounting any real facts.  Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I breastfed my kids (for 4 months, 8 weeks, and 10 months) and had to quit when I went back to school and work (no pumping allowed), so I understand not being able to swing it.  And I have a long-time friend who did not even attempt breastfeeding because she didn't want to be inconvenienced in that way.  Her daughter fought numerous ear infections and had food allergies, and my friend now laments the decision to bottlefeed, though she knows that breastfeeding isn't a sure protection against those things.  But instead of letting guilty feelings override her good sense, she tells me that she's glad she knows more now.  She's glad because now she can encourage her kids to at least try with their babies, and that is a wonderful thing.