INFANT FEEDING PRACTICES

Infant Feeding Practices

Infant Feeding Practices

Introduction

Throughout most of human history, infants' survival depended on a lactating woman, the child's mother or a wet nurse (a woman who breastfeeds another woman's child for payment, charity, or friendship). Available alternatives to human milk were inadequate, indeed often dangerous, and contributed to high infant mortality rates. Studies conducted in l9th- and early 20th-century Europe indicated the differences in the risks of serious infection and death between breast- and bottle-fed infants. The paper discusses the women's choice of breast feeding practices, the differences among these practices, and the midwifery support to encourage breastfeeding.

Infant Feeding Practices

Breast Milk

Almost every one understands the natural superiority of human milk: for example, colostrum (the liquid in a new mother's breasts before her milk is produced) and breast milk provide the antibodies, acid-base balance, and intestinal flora that protect infants against staphylococcus infections, infant diarrhea and E. coli infections. Breast milk provides a natural immunity to most common childhood diseases for the early months; reduces problems with allergies, constipation, and indigestion; and supplies the perfect balance of nutrients for babies' growth (NHS Choices,www.breastfeeding.nhs.uk). The unique biochemistry of human milk has yet to be artificially duplicated, although researchers have come closer in recent decades. As science has become more adept at identifying all the elements in human milk, people have realized how superior it is to formula; therefore, there has been a resurgence of breast feeding on the part of new mothers. Maternal lactation is again becoming the popular way to feed a newborn. Both initiation and duration of maternal lactation have increased (Department of Health, 2004,5-7). Human milk is a living fluid that has many properties that are beneficial to a newborn. It is made up of protein, fat, carbohydrate, vitamins, minerals, immunoglobulins, electrolytes, and antibodies. The ratio of the casein and whey proteins in human milk is optimal for newborns and makes it more easily digested (WHO,1998,5-11). The proteins in formula are cow or soy based and do not fall within the appropriate ratio for newborns. Thus, these proteins are not as easily digested and sit in the stomach longer. This difference in protein ratio is the primary reason that breastfed newborns eat more often than formula-fed newborns.

The composition of human milk changes throughout the lactation process (Riordan, 2004,124-135). It includes the appropriate mixture of ingredients depending on gestational age or months of age of the infant. Research is continuing to discover all the differences between preterm milk, mature milk after birth, and milk at 6 months or a year of age and the continuum between. Research is also being conducted to see how the maternal diet, such as a vegetarian diet, may affect human milk composition.

Bottle Milk

The overwhelming majority of infants were breastfed throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, but by the 1950s babies were routinely bottle fed as their parents followed physicians' advice. This sweeping change in infant-feeding practices has been attributed to a number of factors (Bolling et al, 2007,9-11): developments in bacteriology, ...