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> USA Today Article
blissfulecho
Posted: Mar 23 2007, 05:32 PM
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About breastfeeding....stumbled upon this and thought I'd share.
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-0...POE=click-refer

Nursing moms advised to keep babies close by
By Marilyn Elias, USA TODAY
Nursing babies should sleep right next to their parents' bed, advises the American Academy of Pediatrics in a new breast-feeding policy out Monday that's drawing applause and pointed criticism.
The academy reiterated its 8-year-old policy that mothers should feed babies only breast milk for six months, unless there are special nutritional needs, and continue breast-feeding until the baby is at least 1 or longer if desired.

Mothers should keep babies close by so they can hear early signs of hunger — stirring and mouth-smacking — before the baby cries, says pediatrician Lawrence Gartner, the policy's senior author. "It's harder to get the baby to settle on the breast and start feeding if he's already crying," Gartner says. "If the crib is in another room or even across the room, she might not hear the movement."

Breast-feeding rates have increased for 12 years, but only about one-third of mothers are still nursing 6-month-olds, and slightly fewer than 1 out of 5 breast-feed 1-year-olds, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nursing helps protect babies against infections and diarrhea and significantly reduces the chances of dying in infancy, the policy says.

The new policy also advises pediatricians to support adoptive mothers in their desire to breast-feed.

Many new adoptive mothers would like to nurse, says La Leche League spokeswoman Katy Lebbing. Most healthy women can produce about half the milk they'll need just by putting their babies to the breast or using a breast pump, Lebbing says.

Non-profit milk "banks" and personal donors may supplement this. Some women take hormonal medications to produce breast milk, she adds.

Lebbing favors the new advice to keep babies near overnight. "It's a myth that breast-fed babies sleep through the night," she says. Many continue to wake up overnight even after the first few months of life, "and they need to nurse, they need the nutrition."

But family historian Stephanie Coontz says pediatricians are doing no favors for stressed-out, modern families by making a blanket recommendation that couples keep babies near them overnight.

"These experts are piling higher and higher expectations on mothers," Coontz says. "Half of American women go back to work before their babies are a year old. A woman might need a good night's sleep or to bond with her husband, and that's good for the baby.

"We have whole generations of well-adjusted, healthy people who didn't sleep near their parents as babies," says Coontz, author of Marriage, A History, which arrives in May from Viking Press.



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