Did your mother breastfeed you? If you’re in your thirties, she probably did not. That’s because the 1960s and 1970s were a low point for breastfeeding in America. Few of our mothers were encouraged to do it and now, few of us are able to ask our mothers for help when the time comes to figure out how to feed our own babies. Times have changed, but experts say not fast enough.
For the last twenty years, medical studies have overwhelmingly demonstrated that breastfeeding is best for babies. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) finds “strong evidence” that exclusive human milk feeding of infants decreases “the incidence and/or severity of a wide range of infectious diseases,” and that in the U.S., “postnatal infant mortality rates are reduced by 21 percent in breastfed infants.” Breastfeeding is also credited by the Academy with lowering the risks of sudden infant death syndrome, obesity, asthma, and leukemia.
And it’s not just good for babies. Studies also indicate that mothers benefit from nursing with decreased postpartum bleeding, earlier return to pre-pregnancy weight, decreased risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and decreased risk of osteoporosis after menopause. The AAP, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), World Health Organization (WHO), and United Nations Children’s Fund all recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life (obviously allowing necessary medicines or individually-prescribed vitamins or minerals).
So Why Are So Few Women Breastfeeding?
It’s not because there isn’t help available. Wendy Haldeman MN, RN, is a certified lactation consultant who credits Dr. C Everett Koop, President Reagan’s Surgeon General, with creating the field of lactation consulting when he mandated hospital maternity units provide new mothers with trained specialists to help them start breastfeeding.
Yet, despite the official support from the medical establishment, breastfeeding is still not as commonly practiced in the U.S. as doctors and public health experts would like it to be.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2003, 70.9 percent of mothers did some breastfeeding in the hospital, but of that group, only 36.2 percent were still breastfeeding when their babies were six months old and a mere 17.2 percent were still breastfeeding when their children reached twelve months. Rates of exclusive breastfeeding trailed those rates substantially.
