The day after Leslie Ott’s daughter, Ella, was born at Banner Thunderbird Medical Center in Glendale, Arizona, a doctor came into her room and threatened to separate Ott from her baby. “The pediatrician told me I was starving my baby and would have to give her a bottle, or she was going to be admitted for jaundice and I would be sent home,” Ott remembered. “The baby was cooing and crying, and the pediatrician walks over to the baby and says, ‘Oh, you must be hungry. You look like you’re starving!‘”
Literally thousands of peer-reviewed scientific articles show the short- and long-term health benefits of breastfeeding. In fact, if all babies were breastfed according to WHO guidelines, more than 800,000 infant deaths could be avoided each year.
