Feeding your baby is one of the most important things you can do for your baby.
How you nurse them and get nutrients into them is something that every mum worries about and no a study has confirmed that choosing to breastfeed has some other benefits you might not have heard before.
The study, led by the World Health Organisation (WHO), found that babies who are never or only partially breastfed are at a higher risk of obesity as kids.
The research suggests that feeding your baby with breast and bottled milk increases the risk of obesity compared with just breastfeeding.
Data from 22 countries were analysed and included more than 100,000 six to nine-year-olds.
And what did they find?
Kids who were breastfed for six months compared with kids who were never breastfed were 22 percent more likely to be obese.
And those who were breastfed for less than six months were 12 percent more likely to be obese.
Data from across eight countries showed a similar effect against obesity from exclusive breastfeeding as opposed to mixed feeding.
Kate Brintworth, head of maternity transformation at the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), said, ''This work contributes to the already strong evidence base about the many benefits of breastfeeding for mother and her baby and reinforces the need to increase the resources that are put into supporting women to begin and maintain breastfeeding for at least the first six months of the baby's life."
It's food for thought for sure.
