By YOLANDA Z. SOTELO

WEDNESDAY morning saw me in a room full of mothers and their babies.

The affair: A program of the Children for Breastfeeding and Nurturers of the Earth aimed at setting a new world record – the most number of mothers simultaneously breastfeeding their young.

It had been a long time since I was in a room full of babies, perhaps the last time was at the hospital nursery where my second baby stayed after I gave birth to him. And that was almost nine years ago. So there was a feeling of nostalgia and excitement seeing all the babies crying, laughing, smiling; and their mothers lovingly cradling them, kissing them and breastfeeding them.

I was at the room at around 9:30 when the program started. The lively nurse of the Pangasinan provincial health office, Maricel Abulencia, started to read a script which was also simultaneously read all over the country, before the breastfeeding at exactly 10 o’clock in the morning.

I learned a lot from the script about the benefits of breastfeeding. For instance, the slimming effects of feeding the baby. When a woman is pregnant, her body loads fat, especially in the bilbil (belly) area readying food for the coming baby. The baby is the best “liposuction machine,” sucking up all the deposited fat in the woman’s body.

The best example is former Ms. Maja Philippines Iza Bungubung gained 63 pounds during pregnancy, but lost 65 pounds during the two years that she breastfed her baby.

Breastfeeding for two years protects the mother from ovarian cancer, diabetes, osteoporoses, anemia. It also protects the mothers from unwanted pregnancy for six months after giving birth.

And do not believe those advertisements that say the baby became intelligent or gifted because they were raised on such and such milk formula. May baka bang matalino? May baka bang marunong mag chess? May baka bang magaling magpiano?

Breastfeeding is a birth control method, too. While breastfeeding (and that means the baby is not given any formula at all), the mother is protected from pregnancy, especially in the first six months.

For working mothers, they can express milk and keep the milk which can stay from at room temperature for 6-8 hours, in the refrigerator for 3-5 days, and in the freezer for 3-6 months. It can also be kept in a cooler with ice and this can keep for 24 hours.

And did you know that a woman’s body has the ability to make milk even without giving birth? So those who have decided to adopt babies can breastfeed them.

The woman’s chest has a higher temperature compared to the other parts of the body, so holding a baby close to the chest is the best as it adopts to the life outside the belly where it is dark and warm. The woman’s chest, too, adopts to the babies’ needs- if the baby’s body is cold, the mother’s chest gets warm up to two degrees centigrade. But if the baby’s body is warm, the temperature of the mother’s chest lowers to a degree centigrade. It’s the best incubator there is for pre-bies or premature babies.

I remember when my first son Prince was about two months old. He was running a fever and there was nobody in the house to help me care for him. At around four in the morning, I put him on my chest and I fell asleep. About two hours later, I woke up and his fever was gone! Now I know that my body did miracles – that it was designed that way to protect my baby.

Remember that commercial of a milk company that used the tagline World’s Number One Baby? That was a very misleading commercial because the world’s number one baby – Jesus Christ – was breastfed.