Cameroon: sexual relations and breastfeeding, a controversial subject

#Other countries : Health professionals insist that healthy sex has no influence on the quality of breast milk. This is refuted by the guardians of the tradition in Cameroon who testify to numerous cases of illness and death of child “victims” of this practice.

Cameroonian society remains divided between science and traditions on the practice of sexual intercourse during the breastfeeding period of the young child. If scientists keep saying that healthy intercourse is safe for breast milk, so for the child.

Finding no direct physiological link between the breasts and the vagina, they concluded that no child might fall ill or die because he suckled his mother’s milk while she regularly had intimate relations with her partner. Of course, we are talking regarding healthy relationships, where neither partner suffers from a viral disease such as hepatitis B and C and HIV-AIDS that can affect the mother’s milk and therefore the child.

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This assertion is completely rejected by older people, who claim to have received these teachings from their parents in order to protect their families. For the majority of the defenders of this thesis, a child whom one “crosses” (breastfeeding when one has a dynamic and regular sex life) necessarily falls ill and must undergo traditional intensive care to be saved.

According to some, the situation would be more complex depending on whether it is a male or female child. The girls would, indeed, be a little more resistant. “I am from the Beti tribe and in our culture it is strictly forbidden for women to have sex while breastfeeding. Our parents taught us that sperm spoils the woman’s milk and puts the baby in danger,” said a lady we met near the Jamot hospital in Yaoundé.

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Another abounds goes further: “I cannot count the number of children who died before my eyes because their mothers crossed them. With us Bassa, we do not joke with this story. It’s real.”

These declarations come to contradict the position of the specialists of modern medicine whose expertise nevertheless rests on knowledge acquired at school and through experience.

But in the end, it is the health of the child that counts. Nothing more.