Breast-feeding a source of long term benefits for babies

By Rani Rachmani Moediarta

Breast feeding is the perfect source of food for babies as it is full of nutrition and immunities. Besides, it is the cheapest milk in the world. This article explores more benefits of breast feeding to mark The International Breast Feeding Week which starts today and runs until Aug. 7.

JAKARTA (JP): Every study unfailingly affirms a new benefit of breast feeding, encouraging mothers to exclusively breast feed their newborn babies in the first six months of their lives.

Exclusive breast feeding then should be continued along with adequate complementary food up for up to two years and beyond.

"Sadly, the only major obstacle of breast feeding in Indonesia is knowledge," said pediatrician Utami Roesli of the St. Carolus Hospital's lactation clinic in Central Jakarta.

She pointed out that according to recent data, 90 to 98 percent of new mothers breast feed their babies. However, they only breastfed their babies in the beginning and did not continue it. The 1995 research covering the Greater Jakarta area discovered that out of 900 mothers, only 5 percent of them exclusively breastfed their babies.

"I'm afraid the number is decreasing," Utami said. "In the present situation, with the crisis, people do not have time to think about the advantages of breast feeding anymore. Many mothers might be forced to work (outside their homes), earning money instead of learning how to successfully breast feed (their babies)."

For the mothers, breast feeding does not only involve the act of feeding a hungry baby. In practice, both baby and mother "feed" each other instinctively. When the baby is being breastfed, it will naturally make eye contact with the mother.

This eye-contact, according to many researchers, is not just a coincidence. With the strong suckle, the eye contact sends many meaningful, intelligent signals to the mother's system -- relaxing the mother's nervous system and particular spots thus producing more milk at the right time, temperature and volume for the baby.

This process might explain why many mothers prefer to breast feed their babies while lying restfully on one side. For mothers, it will help them to rest, refresh and relax, another way to cope with tiring domestic chores.

In the economic sense, breast feeding is practical. It's available instantly -- at no cost. Given the present economic situation, breast feeding might help save money by not having to buy formula.

Moreover, breast feeding needs no preparation: no need to sterilize bottles, measure and mix the formula, not to mention keeping it warm at night. Besides, there is no need to rush anytime the baby cries.

Apart from these benefits, some studies have also confirmed that in the long term, breast feeding helps reduce a woman's risk of developing, among other things, breast and ovarian cancer, iron deficiency, anemia and suffering hip fractures.

Benefits for babies

Beside its primary nutritional benefits, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), breast milk contains just the right amount of fatty acids, lactose, water and amino acids for human digestion, brain development and growth.

Cow's milk contains a different type of protein than breast milk, which is good for calves but for human infants can cause digestion problem. Bottle-fed infants also tend to be fatter, but not necessarily healthier.

A recent study by Dr. Matthew W. Gillman of Harvard Medical School involving a group of children of 14 years of age, discovered less cases of obesity among the children who were breastfed for six months than those who got it for only three months.

Breastfed babies have fewer illnesses because the milk transfers the mothers' antibodies against diseases, according to FDA surveys. About 80 percent of the cells in breast milk are macrophage -- cells that kill bacteria, fungi, and viruses.

Breastfed babies are protected, in varying degrees, from a number of illnesses, including pneumonia, botulism, bronchitis, staphylococcus infections, influenza, ear infections, and German measles. Furthermore, mothers produce antibodies to whatever disease is present in their environment, making their milk custom-designed to fight the diseases their babies are exposed to as well.

Breast milk is always sterile, never contaminated by polluted water or dirty bottles, which can cause diarrhea in infants.

Newly confirmed benefit of breast-feeding for babies includes higher IQs.

In New Zealand, Dr. L.J. Horwood of the Christchurch School of Medicine recently studied 143 children who were born underweight (less than 1,500 grams). Those who were breast-fed for eight months got 6 points higher in IQ tests than those who were breast-fed for shorter periods of time.

The long term benefit of breast-feeding to babies may also be psychological since it creates an early attachment between mother and child which is crucial for the child's later stages of development.

Many psychologists believe the nursing baby enjoys a sense of security from the mother's warmth and presence, especially from skin-to-skin contact during feeding, something they do not get while being fed with bottles.

Information

Successful breast feeding, Utami believes, is only a matter of knowledge.

First, she said, new mothers have to learn to breast feed since it is not a ready-to-use practice. Second, they have to be informed enough to fight widely-believed myths, especially among Indonesian women who think that breast feeding can lead to sagging breasts.

When mothers were asked why they stopped breast feeding by the Indonesian Consumers Foundation in its 1995 survey, most of them answered that they did it because they were afraid their husbands would leave them because of their sagging breasts.

"They do not know that it is pregnancy, not only breast feeding, which can cause sagging breasts in women. So if women do not want to have sagging breasts, don't get pregnant," Utami insisted.

She revealed that the second obstacle to breast feeding among working mothers was time. But as Utami and her colleagues at St. Carolus Hospital have proved, this problem is also a matter of knowledge.

"Working mothers can breast feed too if only they know how to do it. In St. Carolus Hospital, 80 percent of working mothers successfully breast feed their infants exclusively because they are provided with the right assistance without having to extend their maternity leave.

"What is needed is only a minor adjustment of the company's working hours policy as they need to pump their breast milk twice for 15 minutes each time. Only that," Utami said.

She also found out that some mothers were not encouraged to breast feed because they didn't know who to ask when they had problems breast feeding.

"We have very few sources (such as breast feeding consultants) who can provide information. Breast feeding consultancy work is not a popular profession because we cannot earn money from it," said Utami, who just sat a certified consultant's examination from the International Lactation Board last week.

Information about breast feeding's benefits is also provided by many agencies, such as Maternal Neonatal Health (MNH) in their campaigns, including the one to mark the International Breast Feeding Week this year. St. Carolus's lactation clinic also provides a 24-hour hotline service at (021) 390 4441 for breast feeding mothers.