Today I had my first two interviews with student/mothers who have children enrolled at the federal university of Bahia. IT WAS SO GREAT! They are genuinely interested in my study and have been extremely helpful, even offering to do additional interviews if I want to.

Basically I’m asking them about the factors that influence breastfeeding while they are studying and working, and have gotten some really interesting responses. Clearly these women are more educated (being in the university and all), but even though they are swamped with work and a job and a baby, the 2 that I interviewed have actively looked up information about the benefits and importance of exclusive breast feeding for the first 6 months (despite being told otherwise by mother-in-laws and grandparents) and have made it a rule to follow the advice that countless of research articles give: which is, exclusively breast feed your kid for the first 6 months. 

This differs from other women (mainly in rural areas) that I have talked to- they don’t exclusively breastfeed for the first 6 months because:

• they believe that milk is weak
• babies need more than breast milk to grow and develop (NOT TRUE!!) for the first 6 months
• that their breasts will sag (truth is, gravity will work either way)
• that they have to work and therefore can’t be around every time the baby wants to feed (this is legit)
• and that they don’t have the will to consistently feed or pump milk for their baby during times that they are apart from them

I’m excited to see how this all unfolds in the coming interviews.

Just got really excited.