Wrap up of Breastfeeding News Stories in 2007

A great wrap up of news stories by Tanya at Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog.

Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense

I just started reading Child of Mine by Ellyn Satter and I have found that the preface provides some great information on infant feeding history:

At first, everything I found was somebody's opinion, presented as if it was a rule set in stone. I became interested in the history of child feeding, and that was helpful, mostly because it demonstrated that there was no real logic or reasoning behind infant feeding recommendations. The only consistency was in attitude: advisors about infant feeding were convinced that they were right and extremely plausible -- if poorly founded -- in their reasoning.

Not only does the preface provide historical information, it also provides names of researchers related to this topic. I look forward to reading the rest of the book.

Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense by Ellyn Satter. p. xv ISBN: 0923521518

World Breastfeeding Week in the USA, 2007

"LLL in the USA 2007 WBWC theme is The Power of One. Groups may also use the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) theme: Breastfeeding: The 1st Hour - Save ONE million babies! Or, as always, any other theme that meets their needs.

The Power of One may refer to the first hour after birth, the first hour a preemie nurses at the breast, the first pumping of breastmilk for a baby in the NICU, a mother's first LLL meeting, etc. Some other suggested ideas include:

The Power of One...
...drop of colostrum
...pumping
...phone call
...LLL meeting
...conference
...Leader working with a Leader Applicant
...feeding at the breast
...hour, the first hour of bonding
...hour, your baby's first hour
...milky smile
...answered email
...WBW Celebration
...event promoting breastfeeding
...look from your newborn as he or she is nursing for the first time
...mother told "You can do it"
...supportive father
...Gold Standard, breastfeeding
...Leader helping one baby at a time
...pebble of accurate information and its ripples in the community
...mother supported, encouraged, listened to, informed, enlightened

We'd love to hear other ideas of The Power of One... to add to the list above."

(from http://www.lllusa.org/wbw/)

Your ideas are welcome here too :-)

More on World Breastfeeding Week

What is World Breastfeeding Week?

World Breastfeeding Week (WBW) (...) celebrates the signing of the Innocenti Declaration* on the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding. It is celebrated in 120 countries on various dates.

* The Innocenti Declaration was produced and adopted in 1990 by participants at
the WHO/UNICEF meeting on “Breastfeeding in the 1990s: A Global Initiative.” The document lists the benefits of breastfeeding, plus global and governmental goals.

(Extracted from http://www.lllusa.org/wbw/)

World Breastfeeding Week Website: http://www.worldbreastfeedingweek.org/
World Breastfeeding Week USA: http://www.lllusa.org/wbw/

History of WBW (from LLLI)
WBW around the world
WBW in the USA (from LLL, USA)
WBW 2007 photo contest
Previous WBW themes

World Breastfeeding Week, August 1-7 2007

Press Release
World Breastfeeding Week (WBW) 2007

Early Initiation of Breastfeeding

Can Save more than
ONE Million Babies

Immediate initiation of breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding for six months can save more than ONE million babies. This year’s World Breastfeeding Week (WBW) calls upon policy makers, health workers, families and community members to ensure conducive conditions for mothers and babies to start breastfeeding during the first hour of birth.

An examination of 37 countries, covering some 60 per cent of the developing world population, by the Bellagio Child Survival Group, published in Lancet in 2003, has revealed an increase in the rates of exclusive breastfeeding from 34% to 41% in the first six months of children's lives. Some studies even suggest an additional 1.3 million children would be saved annually if this rate were increased to 90%, while neonatal mortality would be reduced by 22% when children are breastfed within an hour of birth.

In a recent study published in Pediatrics in 2006, babies who started to breastfeed in the first hour of life in rural Ghana were more likely to survive the neonatal period than those who did not. Babies who did not start breastfeeding until after 24 hours from birth were 2.5 times more likely to die than babies who did.

“In a world where more than 10 million children die before their firth birthday due to preventable causes, and where malnutrition is still rampant and associated with over half of all childhood deaths, there is simply no time to waste. Let’s start with the first hour,” said Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of World Health Organization.[i]

Immediate skin-to-skin contact of the mother and baby is an important factor for successful initiation of breastfeeding as it restores the connection between mother and baby once the baby is out of the womb. This will keep the baby appropriately warm, induce maternal oxytocin release and ensures that baby receives colostrum during the first feeds. The late Mary Kroeger, in the book Impact of Birthing Practices on Breastfeeding, urged, “Advocate for the mother-baby continuum by taking the stand that breastfeeding cannot be the physiologic norm without including physiologic childbirth and immediate and uninterrupted mother-baby contact.”

WBW 2007 will once again be celebrated in over 120 countries worldwide on 1-7 August with the theme Breastfeeding: The 1st Hour - Early initiation and exclusive breastfeeding for six months can save more than ONE million babies! This theme emphasises that ONE simple action of allowing the baby to initiate breastfeeding in the first hour of life could potentially save ONE million babies.

ONE action that individuals and country groups could do during WBW is to join the first ever attempt to create the Guinness World Record on Synchronised Breastfeeding in Multiple Sites. Children for Breastfeeding, in partnership with the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), is recruiting committed groups to be part of this solidarity to show that ONE can make a global difference by participating in creating this inaugural world record.

The effort to gain a new world record will bring attention from policy makers to the communities to recognize the importance of breastfeeding initiation during the first hour. “The challenge we face is to find creative and convincing ways at the community level to encourage breastfeeding and to provide national authorities with solid evidence of the advantages of promoting breastfeeding at the national level,” said Ann Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF.[ii]

Join the World Breastfeeding Week in responding to this challenge!

For further information, and to participate in the Guinness World Record on Synchronised Breastfeeding in Multiple Sites, contact:
Liew Mun Tip
International WBW Coordinator
Tel: (604) 658 4816
Fax: (604) 657 2655
Email: waba[at]streamyx.com
http://www.worldbreastfeedingweek.org/

[i] World Health Organization (WHO) WBW 2007 Statement, http://worldbreastfeedingweek.org/pdf/who_support_letter.pdf
[ii] United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) WBW 2007 Statement, http://worldbreastfeedingweek.org/pdf/unicef_support_letter.pdf

The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) is a global network of individuals and organisations concerned with the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding worldwide based on the Innocenti Declarations, the Ten Links for Nurturing the Future and the WHO/UNICEF Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding. Its core partners are International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), La Leche League International (LLLI), International Lactation Consultant Association (ILCA), Wellstart International and Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM). WABA is in consultative status with UNICEF and an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).

WABA, PO Box 1200,

10850 Penang, Malaysia

Tel: 604-658 4816

Fax: 604-657 2655

Email: waba[at]streamyx.com

Website: www.waba.org.my

The Black Breastfeeding Blog

"I am on a near-daily treasure hunt of sorts. I scour our American past to help understand modern breastfeeding. I hope you enjoy what I dig up. "

Jennifer James, Black Breastfeeding Blog

Link to her breastfeeding history posts

Video: La Leche League - 50th Anniversary

"We weren't gonna be organized as an international organization. We were going to be helping our friends and the people in our community."
Marian Tompson, LLL Founding Mother.

(Thanks to Dave at www.rattlingthekettle.com)

The theory and practice of infant feeding: with notes on development.

"It has often been stated that an artificial food for infants should contain nothing that is not found in mother's milk, and that it should contain just what is found in other's milk. To prove the suitability of various substitutes for mother's milk chemical analyses of both have been published, to show how closesly the substitutes approximate mother's milk. At first sight this seems a rational procedure, but when it is remembered that there is no difference between a diamond and a piece of charcoal chemically, and that mixtres of butter, cheese, sugar, salts, and water, or of beef set, raw beef, sugar, salts, and water can be made which when analyzed by the usual methods will show the same composition as mother's milk, the fallacy of judging the suitability of a food for an infant, or for an adult for that matter, by its chemical analysis only will be aparrent. Physiological chemistry has not advanced sufficiently to make it a safe guide by itself." (pp 6-7)

The theory and practice of infant feeding: with notes on development.
Chapin, Henry Dwight, 1857-1942.
Wood,
New York :
1902.
http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=hearth;idno=4273407

Am J Clin Nutr. 1987 Jul;46(1 Suppl):168-70.

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/46/1/168 (free full text)

History of infant feeding practices.

Barness LA.

Human milk was the one successful infant food until the advent of scientific pediatrics, the invention of electric refrigeration, and the development of formulas containing the major nutrients in concentrations similar to human milk. Infants apparently thrive on artificial formulas but the current formulas represent only a stage in the journey to optimal nutrition for infants. Better analyses of the composition of human milk are likely to lead to an improved understanding of the infant's nutritional requirements and thus to better feeding practices.

PIP: Human milk was the 1 successful infant food until the advent of scientific pediatrics, the intervention of electric refrigeration, and development of formulas containing the major nutrients in concentrations similar to human milk. Improvements such as modification of protein by heat or lactc acid to improve digestibility, and development of dextri-maltose as an energy source had a large impact on quality of formulas. Direct advertising of new products and formulas to physicians probably influenced use of formulas. Infants apparently thrive on artificial formulas but the current formulas represent only a stage in the journey to optimal nutrition for infants. Better analyses of the composition of human milk are likely to lead to improved understanding of the infants nutritional requirements and thus to better feeding practices.

PMID: 3300255

Baby Bottle Museum

This picture as well as other interesting articles about infant feeders can be found at http://www.babybottle-museum.co.uk/

A Vignette of Infant Feeding in the 20th century

I had been thinking about starting this blog when this message was posted on a discussion list. Virginia Thorley, a researcher in this subject, has allowed me to post it here. If you would like to use this material, please contact Virginia at [vgthorley AT optusnet DOT com DOT au]

Dear Lactnetters

It has been fascinating, following the strands on "BF history" (some of which could have been titled "NOT BF history") and "Old enough". I have held off commenting as my research over the years has provided so much information that it is hard to know where to start. Beliefs in the inadequacy of human milk, that it might "fail', and that anything made up in a kitchen or factory had to be as good or better, have been persistent for generations, and your posts are illustrative of that.

A textbook for the artificial feeding of infants, collected in c.1894 from a series of lectures in paediatrics given by a Dr Cheadle in the 1880s, has some fascinating information about what mothers *really* were giving their artificially-fed infants. These included anything that looked milky, e.g. cornflour or arrowroot flour in water. Of course, desptie the huge intake, the babies were deficient in calories and nutrients, and failed to thrive. Oatmeal or baked flour without animal protein were other culprits, described as worse than the patent baby foods. A recipe he mentioned took about 8 hours to prepare and assumed a nursery staff. Cheadle's book would be difficult to find in libraries, but details are in an article I published in 1978 (under my former surname, Phillips), from supervised research I did in 1976. [Phillips V. J Trop Pediatr Envir Child Health 1978 (Aug);24(4):158-166.]

What follows below is only a vignette of infant feeding in the 20th century, mainly in Australia. Space means this is not comprehensive, but it will give you a taste.

"Regularity" and schedules for breastfeeding were advocated by a number of authorities in the early-20th century, but it was 2-hourly at the start and was only stretched ut to 4-hourly a few months later. Some products were advertised as galactogogues (milk-making supplements), which for many years included Lactagol tablets and some tonic foods.

One of my sources (the Glaxo history by R.P.T. Davenport-Hines and Judy Slinn, Cambridge University Press, 1992) mentions that, in London, UK, when the Glaxo brand started in 1906, it was competing against about 300 products sold for artificial feeding of infants. ( I suspect that, as in Australia, many of these products would in fact have been promoted to a broad market of "infants, invalids and the aged", though some products were marketed exclusively for infants.) I don't have a count to provide the number of artificial-feeding products in Australia in the first decade of the 20th C, but there were many. Many of them contained some form of cereal as well as cow's milk powder. The type of feeding bottle used with them was likely to be the widely sold long-tube bottle, so diffiult to clean. There were also many brands of canned condensed milk in Australia, and one of the uses for these was as an infant feeding. Other foods included "baked flour", which took a very long time to prepare, and didn't completely die out for a long time - though the time it took to make probably deterred mothers from making this choice.

Wet nursing? "Wet nurse wanted" ads appeared regularly in the very early 1900s, but petered out. Some specifically sought women whose babies had died. Years later some household management books and other sources still recommended a wet nurse if the mother wasn't breastfeeding, but obtaining a wet nurse was well nigh impossible by the 1920s and '30s.

My mother, who was born in England in 1905 and married later than most women of her generation, told me she was artificially fed from birth, by her mother's choice, and she believes the long-tube bottle was used. She thought she was fed one of the proprietary brands of food. This was in Weymouth in south-west England. She nearly died (pneumonia?) at 4 or 5 months of age and the doctor said he'd come back in he afternoon to write the death certificate. He didn't think the dying baby should be fed, but her father wanted to try something, and the doctor said he could but he didn't think it would make any difference. My grandfather cooked up a traditional food used as a weaning food or as an artificial food - "bread and milk". It consisted of (stale) bread broken up finely, cow's milk, and sugar, and was boiled. (When my mother made it once or twice as a treat for my brother and me when we were school age, we didn't like it.) After being fed on the bread and milk, my mother perked up and survived, and it became a family story that this was a life-saving food. So much so that she received lots of it, and this would have been the main factor in her developing anaemia. As a little girl, she had to have a home-made preparation made of liver, some sort of liver cocktail, that she loathed. To her dying day she rejected my comments that the "bread and milk" diet had been a factor, so strong was the belief that "bread and milk" was wholly beneficial. By the way, although she came from a bottle-feeding family, she was proud that she breastfed me and my brother, on the advice of an elderly English doctor in Australia, who advised delaying weaning till after the tropical summer. So I got 6 months or breastfeeding and my brother got 4 months. She always held the bottle.

To return to early-20th C Australia: Among the products used here for artificial feeding were "milk arrowroot biscuits". Arrowroot is a rhyzome, not a cereal. I have come across other brands, but Arnotts was the market leader and was very savvy about advertising from the 1890s, with parents encouraged to send in pictures of their biscuit-fed babies for use in further ads. Ads in 1900-1905 included recipes for feeding very young infants on the biscuits, with only boiling water added, on the grounds that the biscuits already contained (cow's) milk. By about 1906-7, the recipes in the ads advised using half boiled water and half boiled cow's milk. Over
time, introduction of the biscuits at birth or soon after wasn't mentioned any more, but they were still used by mothers decades later, and it appears they didn't tell the maternal and child health nurses, who didn't approve. (Actually, compliance with the MCH nurses' advice was less than many of the nurses realised, a number of studies having shown that - in Australia - attendance didn't equal compliance.} Some families, as late as the 1950s/'60s, were giving the arrowroot biscuists with cow's milk in a bowl, or as rusks.

In the inter-war years and during and after World War II, the maternal and child health baby clinics preferred home-modified cow's milk (or goat's milk "in the dry west"), over the factory-made products. Lactogen (a brand name bought by Nestle in 1920-21) and Glaxo were the market leaders by the mid-20th C, but nurses interviewed for my earlier research on the post-World War II period said that mothers "couldn't afford" them, and they only recommended these products if the family was more affluent. The duration of breastfeeding was in decline, and "breastfed' usually meant breastfeeding + water bottles + juice + vitamins. New brands of artificial baby milk came onto the Australian market in 1958-59, starting with SMA. Evaporated (cow's) milk became fairly popular in the 1960s here in Australia, as one of the artificial feedings of the time, with the Carnation mother book distributed to new mothers from the hands of the midwives. The Carnation booklet stressed that their product was able to be more individualised than a commercial ABM that came ready made.

I'll stop at 1960. I thought I'd write all this so that it is in the Lactnet Archives, and then if in the future anyone is doing a university assingment or research on these topics, and needs more information, I am willing to be contacted.

Virginia
Virginia Thorley, OAM, PhD, IBCLC
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Breastfeeding promotion in New York City, 1914

I found out about this on Mocha Milk, who found out about this on Breastfeeding Daily Tip and News, who found it on Scott's Simple Story, who hat tipped Tulip Girl.

Why a blog on infant feeding practices?

I admit, I never really liked history when I was growing up. It seemed like a bunch of facts, sometimes interesting, but mostly boring and irrelevant. The sciences always came easier to me and it was far more intriguing (although I didn't like dissecting a frog).

Gradually, I started finding history mostly interesting and relevant. I still don't consider myself a history buff, but I now understand that a knowledge of history helps us understand where we are now.

In comes this blog: Infant Feeding in History.

I live in a nation where the best source of infant food is the most shunned and is greatly misunderstood. Not only that, we are now suffering of diseases which for the most part could be prevented by our lifestyles.

It was not always this way. As far as our civilization has come, there are some wonderful things that we have lost along the way. Mother-to-daughter advice has been labeled old wives tales, and replaced with the newest scientific discovery. Don't get me wrong, I am not against science, and there are definitely some dangerous old wives tales out there. But there are so many areas that I believe that we were wronged under the cover of "science", starting with how we feed our babies.

With this blog, I intend to ask questions, and share stories, perspectives, resources and more. I do not have a political agenda, neither am I cruzading against the formula or baby food companies. I am simply wondering why things are the way they are now.

I also don't have much time to write frequently. As a mother of three small children, I will write as I have the opportunity. If there is enough interest, I can set up an RSS feed or something like that for those who really want to follow this blog closer.

So, in the hope this blog goes beyond this post, enjoy!