NEC and human milk

Abstract

Human milk is widely acknowledged as the optimal food for normal term infants. However, the extremely low birth weight infant has nutritional needs that cannot be met with human milk. Most nurseries caring for these infants now promote the use of a mother's own milk for her infant, and pasteurized human milk available from milk banks is being used more frequently when the mothers' milk supply is inadequate or not available. However, once good oral feeding is achieved, the human milk is nutritionally supplemented to achieve the caloric metabolic needs of the infants.