Born a Mother's Child

There is a special bond between a mother and the child that the world of today tends to minimize in a mistaken notion that independence is threatened by the a child's devotion to his mother. Far from the truth. In fact, devotion to our mother enriches our appreciation of true independence--an independence ground by the stability of a mother's love. This week's Breakthroughs article will reveal how much of the mother reaches the being of her child.

CHRISTMAS is not merely about the birth of God’s only Son, but also the emergence of a Mother. We can say that the new year is also all about birth and everything starting anew. This is a relevant thought because even in this age of test tube babies and surrogate parenthood, a child will not see the light without a mother. So wherever the son is, the mother must be there also. In the same manner, whatever the mother has the son will get also.

That’s the essence of the scientific breakthrough we will be on this week. While no one challenges the health value of breast milk as the optimal nutrition for newborn infants, it has not been explored in the past how far the milk and dairy intake of the mother affects the newly born child.

That’s the scientific puzzle that the team of five researchers, led by Anne Lise Brantsaeter of the Department of Exposure and Risk Assessment of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (Oslo, Norway), embarked to find out.

In a report published in the Food & Nutrition Research on Nov. 23, the team found out that there had only been mixed results on the relationship between maternal milk and dairy diet, and an infant’s birth length and birth weight. That means that while some studies found a relationship, other studies did not.

What the team found to be strongly associated with a mother’s milk and dairy products consumption during pregnancy was the child’s... [READ MORE]

This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 09 January 2013.

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