New CDC Rates

In today's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report, the CDC released the report "Breastfeeding Trends and Updated National Health Objectives for Exclusive Breastfeeding --- United States, Birth Years 2000--2004."

I didn't find anything terribly surprising in these figures. Just over 70% of mothers initiate breastfeeding in the hospital, and then the rates plummet. 30% of babies born in 2004 were still breastfeeding exclusively at 3 months, and at six months only 11% were still exclusively breastfeeding. White infants are more likely to be exclusively breastfed than their black peers, and babies born to unmarried mothers were less likely to be exclusively breastfed.

What I did find interesting was the way this was reported in the media. Here's a sampling of the headlines:

Breastfeeding Statistics Up, says CDC, (WebMD)

Breastfeeding at a high, but tapers fast (Los Angeles Times)

New Mothers Stop Breastfeeding Too Soon, CDC finds (Kansas City Star)

Study: Babies Off Breast Too Early (Boston Globe)

U.S. Breastfeeding Rates Rise to Record High (Scientific American)


Most of these papers are working off the same AP or Reuters story - the difference is in how the editors have chosen to spin it. Kind of fascinating when you think about it.

Here's the bads news... the CDC is tracking the breastfeeding rates as part of the Healthy People 2010 project. One of the goals of HP2010 is to increase breastfeeding rates, because the CDC recognizes that

"Breastfeeding is associated with decreased risk for many early-life diseases and conditions, including otitis media, respiratory tract infections, atopic dermatitis, gastroenteritis, type 2 diabetes, sudden infant death syndrome, and obesity. Breastfeeding also is associated with health benefits to women, including decreased risk for type 2 diabetes, ovarian cancer, and breast cancer."

What are the Healthy People 2010 goals?

* 75% of mothers breastfeeding in the early post-partum period
* 50% of mothers breastfeeding at six months
* 25% of mothers breastfeeding at one year

We have a long way to go. It's not enough to get breastfeeding started right after birth - we need to provide support and encouragement well beyond that initial postpartum period.

Babies pay for poverty with their lives (Yorkshire Post Today)

BABIES in Yorkshire are dying needlessly because of poverty, poor housing and a low level of mothers breastfeeding, a major new investigation has revealed.
A study into why babies born in Bradford are more likely to die before their first birthday than anywhere else in the region is to be published today by the district's Infant Mortality Commission.

A copy of the report, obtained by the Yorkshire Post, identifies poverty as one of the reasons for the high number of babies in Bradford who die and highlights poor nutrition, women not breastfeeding and poor take-up of immunisation as issues to tackle.


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Irish mums ‘least likely to breast-feed’ (The Sunday Times)

IRISH mothers are the least likely in Europe to breast-feed their babies, according to a European commission survey of 23 countries.

More than two-thirds of Irish mums opt for the bottle, in striking contrast to their counterparts in Scandinavian and Eastern European countries who shun formula milk. The commission’s report on health and food found that just 34% of Irish women breast-fed their babies.

One reason for the low figure is that a high percentage of mothers are embarrassed about feeding their babies in public. Irish restaurants and hotels are still likely to ask breast-feeding mothers to move out of public areas, despite legislation banning the practice.


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Breast-feeding and the workplace (The Oregonian)

Oregon moms say time and space is often lacking despite recognition of the benefits to their babies

For two years, federal health officials have tried to cajole more moms to breast-feed their infants, launching a nationwide ad campaign that likened the risks of formula feeding, in one TV spot, to riding a mechanical bull while pregnant.

But the campaign has done little to help moms overcome one of the biggest barriers to breast-feeding -- the workplace.

Federal and state lawmakers have declined in recent years to force companies to guarantee female employees a time and place to nurse or express milk at work, with business lobbyists successfully arguing that a one-size-fits-all approach isn't effective in the workplace.



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Low breastfeeding rate due to fear (Irish Health.com)

Fear and embarrassment have been cited as the main reasons why Ireland has such a low breastfeeding rate, according to the latest irishhealth.com viewers' poll.

We asked our registered readers why they thought Ireland has such a low breastfeeding rate.


Twenty-four per cent said this is due to a lack of practical support, for example, from hospitals; while 42% said it is due to fear or embarrassment.



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Advocates for breast-feeding question formula giveaways (Daytona Beach News-Journal Online)

By the time 9-pound Campbell Bundza debuted at Halifax Medical Center on Monday, her parents had received mountains of information about how feeding from her mother's breast is best -- along with a stockpile of free infant formula.

Janet Bundza said boxes of complimentary infant formula came to her Port Orange home after she signed up for Publix Supermarkets' Baby Club. She collected more free formula samples when she went to Lamaze classes at the hospital.

"From the research I've read, breast-feeding has benefits for her and for me, so I thought it'd be the way to go," said Bundza, 31, as her first child slept cradled in her arms.

But she also read that breast-feeding doesn't work for everyone.

"I had a question in my mind," Bundza said. "So I thought I'd take it (the formula) as a just-in-case kind of thing."

Sending new mothers home with free infant formula -- practiced to some degree at all of the area's birthing hospitals -- has become more controversial as the benefits of breast-feeding have become more incontrovertible.


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Breastfeeding needs boost (London Free Press)

Half of new moms who breastfeed give up within months.

While 88 per cent of women giving birth in the London area start out breastfeeding, by six months half of them have stopped.

The majority of those quit within the first three months.

These are statistics the Middlesex-London Health Unit wants to improve because they fall far short of the recommendation that a woman breastfeed her child for two years.

The first week of October is World Breastfeeding Week and the local health unit is trying to spread the word on the importance of breastfeeding and to encourage mothers to keep going.



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Everyone wins when breastfeeding is promoted (The Charleston Gazette)

I WAS quite surprised this summer after reading a New York Times editorial of July 2, “About Breast-Feeding...”. I thought I might be in a time warp, recalling the April Fools Day prank by the Harvard Lampoon in 1968, when in isolated parts of the country the front page of the Times was replaced by an exquisite reproduction. If memory serves me, one of the most prominent articles on that page reported the finding of a talking walrus in the Central Park Zoo.

The recent editorial was written in response to a hard-hitting June article in the Times on a new government-sponsored advertising initiative advocating breastfeeding. Although the tone of the article created considerable controversy, the content was factual and attempted to articulate clearly the risks of exclusive formula feeding and the sad statistic that the United States has the lowest prevalence of breastfeeding in the industrialized world. West Virginia, not surprisingly, ranks near the bottom of all states.

The premise of the July piece was to look for middle ground amidst the increasing emotionalism and contentiousness of this debate. Now, I have always been a proponent of the “middle ground.” Unfortunately, although much of the editorial seemed reasoned and helpful in dealing with a complex issue, there were some comments and oversights that struck me as uncharacteristically out of touch for this media giant.



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New bid to boost breastfeeding (Irish Examiner)

Family members were today urged to help create a supportive environment to aid breastfeeding mothers.

As part of National Breastfeeding Week, both fathers and grandparents were given more information on breastfeeding as part of a campaign to encourage women to choose the option.

Maureen Fallon, National Breastfeeding Co-ordinator in the Department of Health, said breastfeeding was what nature had intended for newborn babies but the numbers breastfeeding among Irish mothers was low.

Ireland’s breastfeeding rate of 43% at discharge from maternity care is one of the lowest in Europe – compared with 99% in Norway.


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Partnership's goal is to fight obesity in South Carolina

A new fight against obesity - a rising challenge here in the Palmetto State and across the United States - is being spearheaded through a public-private partnership designed to help South Carolinians lead a healthier lifestyle.

The plan, Moving South Carolina Toward a Healthy Weight: Promoting Lifestyles and Healthy Communities, was developed by the South Carolina Coalition for Obesity and Prevention Efforts and is being promoted by the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

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CBC New Brunswick - Breastfeeding numbers low in N.B.

FREDERICTON – A new study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information says mothers in New Brunswick are the least likely in the country to breastfeed.

The institute found that only one out of four new mothers in the province chose to breastfeed their babies for the first four months. The national average is one out of two.

The information was contained in the institute's annual report on health indicators, released Wednesday.


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Mother nature gets a helping hand to nurse

FOR TENS of thousands of years, it was what women did naturally. Yet since breastfeeding fell out of fashion in the 1960s, the health service has faced an uphill struggle to get babies off the bottle. Public health campaigns have long extolled the benefits of breast milk for mother and baby. Infants who are breastfed are protected against a long list of conditions, including diarrhoeal illness, lower respiratory tract infection, middle ear infection, urinary tract infection, and juvenile onset diabetes.

Women who have breastfed experience long-term health benefits, reducing their risk of premenopausal breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and hip fractures in later life.

Despite the mounting evidence in favour of breastfeeding, rates in Scotland have remained stubbornly low. The latest statistics show that the average breastfeeding rate for babies aged six to eight weeks is only 35.9 per cent - well short of the Executive's target of having 50 per cent of mothers breastfeeding by 2005. In Lanarkshire, the rate is as low as 25 per cent.



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