May 19, 2006

Breast milk is best...but not for this mall

I was breastfed as a baby. It's no wonder that I never really got sick with any major illness common to kids. In fact, I only got mumps and chicken pox when I was already an adult. What a bummer!
Scientists long ago have already proven the importance of nursing your baby. Breast milk provides your little one with a lot of important antibodies to fend off infections, helps boosts her IQ, makes her less susceptible to food allergies and more. And in a poor country like the Philippines where infant formula is so expensive, it makes sense for mothers to breastfeed their children.
But what's this we hear about an upscale mall in Makati disallowing breastfeeding? As the story goes, a single mom who was breastfeeding her baby was approached by one of the mall's security guards then told her to breastfeed in the rest room instead. To which, the feisty lady replied, "Ikaw ba pag nagugutom sa CR ka kumakain?" The last time I looked up the term, "security guards" are people hired to secure the premises of their employer from thieves and other possible attacks. Now unless that mom was filching something from a store while breastfeeding her baby, or had a bomb hidden in her boob, the "sikyo" had no business telling her where to nurse her baby!
Actually I'm not surprised at the behavior of this mall's guards. Wasn't it only a few years ago when they beat up some kids accused of petty thievery? Barbarians!

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