Breastfeeding News & Articles...

August 6, 2007 - Portland, Oregon first U.S. city to eliminate formula-marketing hospital discharge bags
Portland, Oregon – To kick off Oregon’s Breastfeeding Promotion Month, Dr. Susan Allan, Public Health Director for Oregon Department of Human Services, presented “Maternity Care Best Practices” awards to 15 area hospitals which have eliminated formula sample packs from the discharge bags customarily given to mothers as they head home with their new babies. Portland is the first city in the nation to have both public and private hospitals ban the formula sample packs since the launch of the national “Ban the Bag” campaign one year ago. More...
 

2/10/2006: Despite risks, market exists for breast milk sales

"Portland, Oregon - It is commonly called 'nature's perfect food.' And with credentials like that, it's no wonder breast milk is worth up to $2 an ounce on the Internet." More...

Breast-Feeding Is Urged for Preemies
Specialists are trying to promote breast-feeding among mothers of premature babies. Breast milk is considered especially important for the most vulnerable babies, those born smaller than 3 1/2 pounds. But they're the least likely to get it, especially if they're born to low-income or black mothers.

Now specialists are targeting frightened mothers of the smallest preemies to try to change that with strategies that range from free breast pumps to bringing breast-feeding "peer counselors" into the intensive care unit to train moms to nurse.

Jameca Benjamin was scared to even hold her premature baby, who weighed just under 2 pounds. The nurses were urging the teen mother to breast-feed yet Benjamin had never known a woman who'd breast-fed a healthy baby, much less one hooked to machines in intensive care.

"This baby has all these tubes, and they're so small. It's scary," says Benjamin, who now is the first salaried ICU peer counselor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, part of a study to see how well the training program works. "But when the baby does well and is sucking, they're surprised, and it's a good experience."

She remembers watching her own daughter, now 4, fatten up. "It's a good feeling to say, 'I made this baby grow.'"

Such programs are a big change for neonatal intensive care, brought about because of research in just the last few years proving that breast milk markedly lowers the chances of infection and a life-threatening bowel inflammation in very low birth weight babies.

At Rush, 97 percent of the smallest preemies are breast-fed for at least a while far better than the national average for healthy babies and 64 percent still get some breast milk once they go home.

"We emphasize to the mothers how the milk is really a medication for their babies," says Paula Meier, a Rush nursing professor who heads the hospital's lactation program and recently published its techniques in a medical journal.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies be breast-fed exclusively for the first six months. Breast-fed babies suffer fewer illnesses such as diarrhea, earache and respiratory infections; their brains seem to develop faster; and they may be less likely to develop asthma, diabetes or get fat later in life.

The government's goal is to have half of mothers following that advice by 2010. Today, 70 percent of mothers initiate breast-feeding for the first weeks of life, but only 33 percent breast-feed for six months. Even fewer black mothers do, 22 percent.

Those figures track all babies; there are no national statistics on the tiniest preemies. Some hospitals, however, report rates than range from 20 percent to 80 percent of preemies receiving at least some breast milk, says Meier.

Undoubtedly, these mothers face more hurdles

At first, they must pump their milk babies so tiny can't suckle. The milk is stored and dripped into a stomach tube.

Often they're told to skip the more watery first milk from each pumping for the more fat-laden hindmilk. At Rush, Benjamin helps teach mothers to bring in milk with about 30 calories per ounce, measured by putting a few drops into a machine called the creamatocrit.

As soon as babies are taken off the ventilator, they'll get their first taste, just a drop or two, of milk while carefully cradled at mom's breast. As the babies strengthen, they'll learn to suckle and regular breast-feeding can take off, Meier says.

But the challenges are more than medical and that's where peer-counseling comes in. While often offered to mothers of full-term infants, only a handful of hospitals are experimenting with peer counselors in the neonatal ICU. Meier calls it particularly effective for low-income black women, who are most likely to have very low birth weight babies but less likely to have relatives or friends who can offer breast-feeding advice.

It can cost $1 to $2 a day to rent an electric pump; some hospitals and health departments, including the Rush Mother's Milk Club, provide free pumps for low-income women. And establishing a good milk supply means pumping every two to three hours, hard for mothers trying to hold a job.

Benjamin had her daughter, Jamia Johnson, at age 17, and says she would have opted for easier bottle-feeding had Rush nurses not declared breast milk best. Benjamin's experiences pumping while working at McDonald's and on her high school diploma encouraged Sene Garrett, a bus driver, that she could make breast-feeding work, too.

"Jameca just kept on me, ... telling me, 'Your baby needs everything from you,'" said Garrett, of Sauk Village, Ill., who learned to discreetly pump while sitting alone on her bus. Last month, she brought 5-month-old Jamari home from the hospital, a healthy 6 pounds, five more than at birth.

Source: Washington Post website (www.washingtonpost.com) - 27th June 2005

Breast-Feeding Cuts Risk of Myopia

Nutrients in breast milk thought to help eye development

Here's yet another reason to breast-feed babies: a new study finds it may reduce a child's likelihood of growing up to need eyeglasses.

Researchers who compared a group of breast-fed infants with formula-fed babies found that breast-fed infants were a bit less likely to be nearsighted at ages 10 to 12.

"It may have to do with some constituents in breast milk but we can't be sure," said Dr. Richard Stone, an ophthalmologist at the University of Pennsylvania and a co-author of a research letter on the study in the June 22/29 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Stone and his colleagues, led by Dr. Yap-Seng Chong of the National University of Singapore, evaluated 797 Singapore children at ages 10 to 12, including 418 who had been exclusively breast-fed and 379 who had not been.

While 62 percent of the breast-fed children had myopia, or nearsightedness, 69 percent of those not breast-fed did. "It's really a modest effect," Stone said.

69 percent of those not breast-fed did. "It's really a modest effect," Stone said.

Even after the researchers controlled for factors such as the parents' nearsightedness, maternal age at delivery and birth weight, the association still held.

In developed countries, nearsightedness is the leading cause of visual impairment, the authors noted, and in the United States, more than 30 million adults are nearsighted. The prevalence of myopia has been increasing among urban Asian children, they added.

While the study is believed to be the first to observe an association between breast-feeding and myopia, other studies have found that breast-feeding is good for the development of children's eyes and is associated with better school performance by children.

Several of these studies have been conducted by scientists at the Retina Foundation of the Southwest in Dallas, Texas.

Dennis Hoffman, director of the visual biochemistry laboratory at the foundation said the new study findings are consistent with those done by his group.

"We've shown that breast-fed infants have improved visual maturation at one and a half years, compared to those fed formula," he added.

Stone and his colleagues speculate that a substance in breast milk, docosahexaenoic acid or DHA, may underlie the decreased risk of myopia. DHA is a fatty acid crucial for the growth and functional brain development in infants and it's also required for maintenance of normal brain functioning in adults.

It is also important, the study authors noted, for the development of photoreceptor cells in the retina, which play a major role in whether children become nearsighted.

The retina lines the inner eyeball and is connected by the optic nerve to the brain. The eye's lens focuses light on the retina, which then converts this light into signals sent to the brain. In nearsightedness, the eyeball is too long and light rays focus in front of the retina, rather than on it, causing the person to be able to see objects up close but not at a distance.

While the effect of breast-feeding on nearsightedness was modest, "on this basis, it seems sensible to breast-feed," said Stone, citing the numerous other benefits attributed to the practice.

Source: HealthCentral website (www.healthcentral.com) - 21st June 2005.