Breastfeeding

3,738 Mothers Set Breast-Feeding Record

Now, I'm all for breastfeeding. It makes for happy and healthy babies. I am wondering how many babies in the entire World are actually breast feeding at any one time (you could say they are in the same place, the World, think global!).

From here:
World Population: 6,525,170,264 (July 2006 est.)
Population 0-14 years: 27.4%
Estimated Population 0-2: ~3.8% = 250,000,000
(UNICEF estimates that there are 129,000,000 births in the world per year)

From the same UNICEF publication:

Although global levels of continued breastfeeding are relatively high at one year of age (79%), only around half of infants are still breastfeeding at two years of age. (emphasis added)

Ballpark numbers are that at least 100,000,000 babies are breast feeding at any given time. Now, of course, babies don't breast feed all day (though some mothers claim they do!), so, lets say they are nursing four-five hours a day, or ~20% of the time.

This gives us the new Guinness Record of, TA DA,

20,000,000

simultaneous breast feeders in one place, the World.