Bethesda, MD—On February 26, 2018, Dr. Christie del Castillo-Hegyi, Co-Founder of the Fed is Best Foundation traveled to the NIH to raise awareness on the gaps in breastfeeding protocols, research and education that is leading to common and serious complications in exclusively breastfed newborns.
PRGLAC Participant List, February 26-27, 2018
We want to thank you for supporting the Fed is Best Foundation in its mission to support all mothers to feed their babies safely. We want to share with you the progress we have made in the year-and-a-half that we have been in existence.
Watch this short video of moms sharing how the Fed is Best Foundation helped them feed their babies safely and confidently.
We have accomplished all these things with a budget of less than $35,000 a year. The Co-Founders and volunteer supporters of the Fed is Best Foundation work tirelessly, every day of the week, day and night, to provide education, advocacy and support for all parents and all safe forms of infant feeding. We do it because we believe that all babies deserve to thrive no matter how they are fed and that all parents deserve safe, evidence-based, shame-free infant feeding support. Imagine what we can achieve with more?
This year we are asking our supporters to think of one thing they buy every month…a Netflix subscription, coffee at Starbucks, cable television, and consider donating this same amount every month to the Fed is Best Foundation. Whether it be $5 or $1000 a month, it will help us help parents to protect their babies from feeding complications that have become too common in today’s “Breast is Best” world. This will also help us advocate for national and global reforms in infant feeding standards to protect every baby from feeding complications.
We hope you will consider sharing this letter on your social media page. We thank you all for your continued support and we hope you have a joyful holiday season with your friends and family.
Sincerely,
Christie del Castillo-Hegyi, MD and Jody Segrave-Daly, RN, IBCLC
The Co-Founders of the Fed is Best Foundation
Fed is Best Foundation
PO Box 241736, Little Rock, AR 72223
Christie del Castillo-Hegyi, M.D., Co-Founder of the Fed is Best Foundation
In response to a letter written by 1000 Days director, Lucy Martinez-Sullivan and follow-up editorial from Kimberly Seals Allers, we wanted to take an opportunity to set the record straight.The mission of the Fed is Best Foundation is to protect infants from complications and injuries resulting from accidental starvation under currently promoted breastfeeding policies. In order to protect infant safety and ensure the patient and human rights of mothers and babies, we have built a non-profit organization committed to: (1) the study of exclusive breastfeeding complications that can result in brain injury and, in the most severe instances, death; and (2) raising public awareness to signs of infant hunger and the consequences that can result based on peer-reviewed research.
As part of our public health awareness commitment, the Fed is Best Foundation has developed and compiled extensive resources for parents and health professionals to promote safe breastfeeding and safe infant feeding policies based on evidence, including, the science of infant feeding, the caloric and fluid requirements of newborns and the caloric yield of exclusive breastfeeding. These core matters of infant feeding are shockingly absent from current breastfeeding curricula and protocols. Our Foundation is not against breastfeeding; it is for safe breastfeeding and close monitoring to prevent complications and injuries to infants reported in the medical literature, the media and by the thousands of mothers who have sent us their stories, which we receive each and every day. Continue reading
On Sept. 22, 2017, senior members of the Fed is Best Foundation, and guests including a neonatologist from a leading U.S. tertiary care hospital who wished to remain anonymous and a pediatric endocrinologist, Dr. Paul Thornton, M.D, from Cook Children’s Hospital Fort Worth, lead author of the Pediatric Endocrine Society’s newborn hypoglycemia guidelines met via teleconference with top officials of the WHO Breastfeeding Program: Dr. Laurence Grummer-Strawn, Ph.D., Dr. Nigel Rollins, M.D. and Dr. Wilson Were, M.D. to express their concerns about the complications arising from the BFHI Ten Steps and to ask what, if any, monitoring, research, or public outreach the WHO has planned regarding the risks of accidental starvation of exclusively breastfed newborns. The Foundation members who attended were 1) Christie del Castillo-Hegyi, MD, Co-Founder, 2) Jody Segrave-Daly, RN, IBCLC, Co-Founder, 3) Julie Tibbets, JD, Partner at Alston & Bird, LLP, Pro-Bono Attorney for the Foundation, 4) Brian Symon, MD, Senior Advisor, and 5) Hillary Kuzdeba, MPH, former quality improvement program coordinator at a childrens hospital , managing infant feeding projects and Senior Advisor.
This is a video of the presentation given to the WHO officials:
We believe all babies deserve to be protected from hunger and thirst every single day of their life and we believe that education on Safe Infant Feeding should be free. If you would like to make a donation to support the Fed is Best Foundation’s mission to teach every parent Safe Infant Feeding, please consider making a one-time or recurring donation to our organization.
Thank you from the Fed is Best Foundation!
On September 22, 2017, senior members of the Fed is Best Foundation met with the top officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) Breastfeeding Program. We learned that the WHO has never studied the complications of the WHO Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding and the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI). We learned they have no studies commissioned to monitor the complications. Despite being presented data on the complications caused by allowing newborns to fast for days to achieve exclusive breastfeeding, they declined our offer to help make the guidelines safer and more ethical. To watch the presentation given to the WHO officials, please go to this link. We learned that they have known about the risks of brain injury from exclusive breastfeeding and yet refuse to inform the public and health professionals. We learned that their provision for preventing brain injury consisted of telling health professionals to look out for “convulsions, lethargy and being unable to feed,” which are late signs of newborn brain injury. As a result, the WHO Ten Steps and the BFHI has created to an epidemic of infant feeding complications, hospitalizations, brain injury and disability in the developed and developing world. This constitutes one of the largest and most egregious violations of patient and human rights in the history of public health. They have asked for comments from the public regarding their draft revision of the breastfeeding guidelines, which make no changes to the recommendation, “give infants no food or drink other than breastmilk unless medically indicated,” while providing patients no information on the risks of avoiding supplementation. This is the official response of the Fed is Best Foundation to their request. Continue reading
