As someone who was back modelling swimwear six weeks after giving birth, Gisele Bundchen’s experience of motherhood is not exactly ordinary.
But that hasn’t stopped the supermodel deciding to share with us lesser mortals her insights on how best to raise children.
The 30-year-old Brazilian reckons there should be a ‘worldwide law’ that new mothers should all breastfeed for six months.
Gisele, who gave birth seven months ago, won back her flawless figure days after Benjamin Rein was born.
She said: ‘I think breastfeeding really helped. Some people here think they don’t have to breastfeed, and I think, “Are you going to give chemical food to your child, when they are so little?”
‘There should be a worldwide law, in my opinion, that mothers should breastfeed their babies for six months.’
The model, who is 5ft 11in, gave birth at home and apparently managed to meditate throughout.
Naturally, she then got up and made pancakes.
She told September’s issue of Harper’s Bazaar magazine: ‘Not for one second did it cross my mind that I was not going to have my baby at home. I am not the first person to give birth naturally. Billions of other women have come before me and have done this – so why can’t I do it?’
Gisele practiced kung fu for two weeks before the birth, did yoga three times a week and meditated every day in preparation.
‘It prepared me mentally and physically,’ she said. ‘It’s called “labor”, not “holiday” for a reason, and I knew that.
‘You want to go into the most intense physical experience of your life unprepared? That doesn’t make any sense to me. Then I was ready and I thought, “OK let’s get to work”. I wasn’t expecting someone else to get the baby out of me. I had to do it together with him.’
And to add to Gisele’s fairytale motherhood experience, she said she dreams of living on a farm with Benjamin and her husband, millionaire NFL player Tom Brady.
‘I want to get a farm where I am going to live for the rest of my life. I like the idea of a secluded place,’ she said.
‘I will have horses, my kids will be riding, and there will be chickens and ducks.
The NHS and the World Health Organization advise that breast milk is the best form of nutrition for infants.
It recommends breastfeeding only for the first six months of a baby’s life because it provides all the nutrients needed for optimal growth, development and health.
But although four in five women in England start off breastfeeding, only one in five keeps it up until the six-month mark.
And despite Gisele’s eulogizing of home births, a report in The Lancet medical journal last week said it could triple the risk of infant death.
