Above Rubies Daily Encouragement Blogs
Through the weekly and daily devotionals you can be constantly encouraged in your great role of parenting, the highest career in the nation. You can also stay updated on what's happening with the Above Rubies ministry.
BLESSED BEYOND MEASURE
Further thoughts to my post yesterday about being a nursing mother.To be a suckling mother is a beautiful blessing. Although every female is born with a nurturing anointing, we receive a double portion when we are breastfeeding. God gives the hormones of oxytocin and prolactin to the nursing mother which release even greater motherly hormones to her. The more she nurses her baby, the more motherly she becomes.
Oxytocin is released by the pituitary gland and is the hormone that stimulates the mother’s let-down or milk-ejection reflex. This incredible molecule of motherly love is called by many other different names:
The stress relieving hormone,
The calming hormone, even reducing blood pressure, cortisol levels, fear, anxiety, and staving off psychological as well as physiological problems,
The life hormone,
The love hormone,
The cuddle hormone,
The bonding hormone,
The empathy hormone,
The trust hormone, and even
The bliss hormone!
Who wouldn’t want to have this hormone? Who wouldn’t want to get as much of it as she can? It’s a great way to live instead of being filled with anxiety and stress. And this is the blessing God gives to every nursing mother. The secret: keep nursing your baby as long as you can! Don’t wean your baby before he or she is ready. Remember, you are a suckling mother.
Prolactin is another wonderful hormone. It’s a very strong protective hormone. They have done studies to find that when they inject this hormone into a rooster it becomes “clucky” and begins to mother the chickens. A female animal nursing her young in the wild will fight to death any other animal that comes near her young.
Every time a mother puts her baby to the breast, she releases prolactin which causes her to become more motherly. And also very protective of her baby. This is why it is painful for a nursing mother to leave her baby. She is tied to her baby. And this is how God intends it.
Many scientific studies also reveal that lengthy nursing of babies is a deterrent to breast cancer and other female cancers. And this is apart from all the blessings to the baby.
O yes, Isaiah 66:11 calls it “glory.” God’s way is always the best way.
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
Painting: A Woman Nursing a Child, c.1894 | Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Fine Art Painting Reproduction
