Breastfeeding Advice Research Articles

Does WIC participation improve breast-feeding practices?

The effects of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) on breast-feeding behavior have been sometimes found inadequate. The determinants of breast-feeding initiation and duration among WIC participants and nonparticipants were modeled by using retrospective cross-sectional data from the 1988 National Maternal and Infant Health Survey. This study corrects for self-selection bias as far as the data allow, in addition to controlling for parents' ages, education, race, and family income. Findings suggest that prenatal WIC participation, combined with breast-feeding advice, significantly increases the initiation of breast-feeding but does not affect duration. The exact nature of effective breast-feeding advice given prenatally at WIC clinics is unclear and warrants further research.

Mothers' advice about facilitating breastfeeding in a neonatal intensive care unit.

Admission of newborn infants to neonatal intensive care units (NICU) has been considered an obstacle to breastfeeding because of mother-infant separation and hospital feeding routines. In order to obtain advice on facilitating breastfeeding, we interviewed by telephone 178 mothers of fullterm NICU patients three months after the infants' discharge from hospital. Mothers' advice, in order of prominence, concerned the disturbing impact of the NICU environment, lack of systematic breastfeeding advice, distance between infants' and mothers' units in the hospital, conflicts about parents' roles, perceived lack of organization of work, dissatisfaction with nurse behavior towards parents, and importance of skin-to-skin contact during the mother's first visit. Adaptation of the NICU environment, nurses' awareness of mothers' perspectives, and nurse attitudes and behavior change appear to be as important for facilitating breastfeeding as are routines for breastfeeding advice.

Variations in breast feeding advice, a telephone survey of community midwives and health visitors

Although 65% of mothers start breast feeding their baby, at six weeks after birth this proportion has dropped to 40%. It is postulated that one of the causes of this decrease might be that women receive conflicting advice from professionals. To examine this hypothesis, a telephone survey was designed to compare a random sample of community midwives (CMs) and a random sample of health visitors (HVs), in regard to the advice they would offer to breast feeding women, and the resources available to help them. On many topics, the advice likely to be offered by the two groups was markedly different. The CMs tended to be more uniform in their advice, which generally followed the Royal College of Midwives' booklet entitled Present Day Practice in Infant Feeding. Both groups recognised the value of lay breast-feeding counsellors, and there was much support for collaboration in the production of a guidance document on breast feeding.

Maternal attitude and practices in initiation of newborn feeding.

The present study highlights the need for due emphasis on initiation of breast feeding of newborn infants over other traditional prelacteal newborn feeds. Knowledge, attitudes and newborn feeding practices amongst 702 mothers with urban background was recorded. Though 83.5% of mothers had attended the antenatal clinics, only 13.24% had been given breast feeding advice at the antenatal clinics. It is a cause of concern that only 26.35% had initiated the feeding by breast milk and only 16% had given colostrum. A large number of newborns were fed with finger tips and other unhygienic methods. However, most (95.01%) mothers had started breast feeding their newborns before discharge from hospital.

Breast-feeding and the Urban Poor in Developing Countries

Journal Article Breast-feeding and the Urban Poor in Developing Countries Get access V. Serva, V. Serva Tropical Child Health Unit, Institute of Child Health30 Guildford Street, London, WC1N 1EH Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar H. Karim, H. Karim Tropical Child Health Unit, Institute of Child Health30 Guildford Street, London, WC1N 1EH Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar G. J. Ebrahim G. J. Ebrahim * Tropical Child Health Unit, Institute of Child Health30 Guildford Street, London, WC1N 1EH * For correspondence Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, Volume 32, Issue 3, June 1986, Pages 127–129, https://doi.org/10.1093/tropej/32.3.127 Published: 01 June 1986