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Banking on age-old methods to boost breast milk production

Monday, March 2nd, 2020 00:00 | By
George Kinyanjui Muthua and Serah wa Karuri pound maize using mortar and pestle. Photo/PD/GERALD ITHANA

Rose Muthoni @rosemuthoniN

Breast milk is important for infants. The milk provides the most important nutrients to babies, hence the growing advocacy for six-month exclusive breastfeeding for new-borns. Breast milk boosts a baby’s immunity, to help them fight viruses and bacteria.

Many nursing women are, however, unable to produce enough breast milk for their children. 

Several factors cause insufficient breast milk production. Hormonal imbalances, stress, poor nutrition, medication, fatigue, lifestyle diseases and family planning methods are but some of them.

One of the biggest challenges for breastfeeding working mothers is the high cost associated with products that support milk production. 

An electric breast pump costs more than Sh20,000 exclusive of additional necessities including nursing bras, milk storage bags and cooler bags.

To keep up milk production, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends pumping or breastfeeding every three hours. But due to the high costs and lack of safe spaces, many women end up foregoing the exercise, only for their milk output to dwindle. 

Reliable alternatives 

To tackle this challenge, many lactating women are resorting to traditional solutions. In the absence of technology or milk supplements such as formula, traditional societies employed several tactics to shore up milk production.

Most Kenyan communities praise the traditionally fermented porridge often referred to as ucuru wa mukiio in Kikuyuland or ucuru bwa gukiia  in Meru for its ability to boost milk production.

The traditionally brewed gruel, often a mixture of ground maize and millet, works by offering unparalleled nutrition and its rich probiotic content believed to settle the mother’s and baby’s stomach.

“Ucuru wa mukiio is beneficial for the nursing mother. Not only does it help her regain back strength much faster after giving birth, but it also increases breast milk production,” says Serah Karuri, who has been brewing the porridge for more than 20 years.

The process of making the porridge is not for the faint hearted, but the results are worth the hard work. First, Karuri sorts her dry maize in an itaruru (flat basket) before soaking them in water for two days to soften.

Because the gukiia (grinding) stage is tasking, Karuri enlists the help of a traditional brewer, George Muthua, to grind the maize to fine flour.

This is done in a ndiiri, a big mortar often made of wood or stone. She drains water from maize and pours it in the mortar.

Muthua then uses a muuthi, a huge pestle, to crash the maize to produce fine flour.

“You cannot crush all the maize, however. The coarse pieces are fed to chicken.

After I am done crushing the maize, I often mix the flour with water and strain it using a large sieve to separate the coarse pieces from the fine unga, which is what we are interested in for the porridge,” says Muthua.

The fine flour and water mixture is then enriched with millet flour before the mixture is fermented for three days.

The porridge is best cooked over a large jiko for a long period of time to ensure it cooks properly.  

Wet nursing

“You have to be extra clean when preparing ucuru wa mukiio. You do not want the mother to fall sick. That beats the purpose. Once you start the process, you are not allowed to use the toilet,” says Karuri.

In large homesteads, nursing women would breastfeed a baby on behalf of their mother, if she was ill or had died during childbirth.

Wet nursing, as it is referred to today, ensured the baby accessed the nutrition needsed when the mother was incapacitated. 

For the Luo, nursing mothers banked on fish and omena to produce a steady supply of nutritional rich milk.

Coupled with a steady intake of fluids, women in the region seldom complained of lack of milk.

The Abagusii embraced traditional vegetables including saga, managu (African nightshade) and kunde (cow peas) much like the Luhyas who swore by mrenda  and mito, to not only enrich the nutritional richness of the mother’s milk, but to also ensure its steady supply.

Breastfeeding mums in Central Kenya still sing praises for njahi (black beans), cow and chickpeas for a steady flow of breast milk.

Not only do the cereals enrich the milk, but they are believed to restore a woman’s nutritional balance much faster than any other food. 

Still, these traditional alternatives are complimented with modern solutions.

In March last year, the Ministry of Health and PATH, a US-based nonprofit health organisation, launched the first human milk bank in Pumwani Maternity Hospital in Nairobi, to reduce the number of newborn deaths, which currently stands at 39 per every 1,000 live births.

This facility caters to newborn babies whose mothers cannot breastfeed them due to various health complications or death.

Mothers housed at the institution and who have surplus milk donate it to feed these babies. The breast milk bank is the first in East Africa and the second opened on the continent after South Africa.

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