Tag: Fed is Best Foundation

Fed is Best Foundations Statement to USDA Healthy People Goals 2030

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Christie del Castillo-Hegyi, M.D.

From December 2018 to January 2019, the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for 2030 published the proposed Healthy People 2030 Objectives for public comment. Of note, the proposed Healthy People 2030 objectives saw a marked change from the 2020 objectives, namely a reduction of the breastfeeding objectives from 8 goals to one, namely, “Increase the proportion of infants who are breastfed exclusively through 6 months” (MICH-2030-15 ). Among the objectives that were dropped from the list were:

  1. MICH-23 – Reduce the proportion of breastfed newborns who receive formula supplementation within the first 2 days of life.
  2. MICH-24 – Increase the proportion of live births that occur in facilities that provide recommended care (i.e. Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative-certified hospitals) for lactating mothers and their babies.
Healthy People 2020 Objectives Baseline (%) Target (%)
Increase the proportion of infants who are breastfed (MICH 21)
Ever 74.0 81.9
At 6 months 43.5 60.6
At 1 year 22.7 34.1
Exclusively through 3 months 33.6 46.2
Exclusively through 6 months 14.1 25.5
Increase the proportion of employers that have worksite lactation support programs (MICH 22) 25 38
Reduce the proportion of breastfed newborns who receive formula supplementation within the first 2 days of life (MICH 23) 24.2 14.2
Increase the proportion of live births that occur in facilities that provide recommended care for lactating mothers and their babies (MICH 24) 2.9 8.1
We applaud the removal of the last two objectives as patient safety issues have emerged from those two objectives, namely increased rates of neonatal jaundice, weight loss, hypoglycemia and dehydration readmissions. We have submitted the following statement regarding the Healthy People Goals for 2030 requesting for a revision of the current proposed objective and the addition of two new objectives.

Exclusive breastfeeding at discharge is a major risk factor for severe jaundice and dehydration. Both conditions can require in-hospital treatment and can result in permanently impaired brain development. Photo Credit: Cerebral Palsy Law

 

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Breast Milk Production in the First Month after Birth of Term Infants

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by Christie del Castillo-Hegyi, M.D.

One of the most important duties of the medical profession is to make health recommendations to the public based on verifiable and solid evidence that their recommendations are safe and improve the health of nearly every patient, most especially if the recommendations apply to vulnerable newborns.  In order to do this, major health recommendations require extensive research regarding the safety of the real-life application of the recommendation at the minimum.

Multiple health organizations recommend exclusive breastfeeding from birth to 6 months as the ideal form of feeding for all babies under the belief that all but a rare mother can exclusively breastfeed during that time frame without underfeeding or causing fasting or starvation physiology in their baby. In order to suggest that exclusive breastfeeding is ideal for all, if not the majority of babies, one would expect the health organizations to have researched and confirmed that all but a rare mother in fact produce sufficient milk to meet the caloric and fluid requirements of the babies every single day of the 6 months without causing harmful fasting conditions or starvation. There have been few studies on the true daily production of breast milk in breastfeeding mothers.  Only two small studies quantified the daily production of exclusively breastfeeding mothers including a study published in 1984, which measured the milk production of 9 mothers, and one in 1988, which measured it in 12 mothers.  After extensive review of the scientific literature, it appears the evidence that it is rare for a mother to to not be able to produce enough breast milk to exclusively breastfeed for 6 months is no where to be found. In fact the scientific literature has found quite the opposite.

In November 2016, the largest quantitative study of breast milk production in the first 4 week after birth of term infants was published in the journal Nutrients by human milk scientists, Dr. Jacqueline Kent, Dr. Hazel Gardner and Dr. Donna Geddes from the University of Western Australia. They recruited a convenience sample of 116 breastfeeding mothers with and without breastfeeding problems who agreed to do 24 hour milk measurements through weighed and pumped feedings between days 6 and 28 after birth and were loaned accurate clinical-grade digital scales to measure their milk production at home. The participants test weighed their own infants before and after breastfeeding or supplementary feeds and recorded the amounts of breast milk expressed (1 mL = 1 gram). All breast milk transferred to the baby, all breast milk expressed and all supplementary volumes were recorded as well as the duration of each feed.

These were the results…

13 mothers perceived no breastfeeding problems while 103 mothers perceived breastfeeding problems.  The most common problem was insufficient milk supply (59 mothers) followed by pain (11 mothers),  and positioning/attachment (10 participants).  75 mothers with reported breastfeeding problems were supplementing with expressed breast milk and/or infant formula.

Of the mothers with reported breastfeeding problems, their average weighed feeding volumes were statistically lower than the mothers who did not report breastfeeding problems with an average feed volume of 30 mL vs. 63 mL in the mothers who reported no breastfeeding problems (p<0.001).  The daily total volume of breast milk they were able to transfer (or feed directly through breastfeeding) were also statistically lower than those who did not report breastfeeding problems. The moms without breastfeeding problems transferred an average of 693 mL/day while those that reported breastfeeding problems transferred an average of 399 mL/day (p<0.001).  The study defined 440 mL of breast milk a day as the minimum required to safely exclusively breastfeed. This is the amount of breast milk that, on average, would be just enough to meet the daily caloric requirement of a 3 kg newborn (at 70 Cal/dL and 100 Cal/kg/day). Babies of mothers with no reported breastfeeding problems were statistically fed more milk than those with breastfeeding problems, 699 mL vs. 567 mL per day (p = 0.007). All 13 mothers who perceived no breastfeeding problems produced and transferred more than the study’s 440 mL cut-off as the volume required to be able to exclusively breastfeed.  What this data shows is that a mother’s perception of breastfeeding problems is associated with actual insufficient volume of breast milk fed to her child.

Based on the 440 mL cut-off for “sufficient” breast milk production, some mothers who report their babies not getting enough in fact produced more than 440 mL.  However, since 440 mL is the amount of milk that is needed to meet the minimum caloric requirement of a 3 kg newborn, if the mother had a newborn weighing > 3 kg as they would expect to be past the first days of life if growing appropriately, many of the mothers reporting breastfeeding problems may be producing more than 440 mL but are still in fact producing less than the amount to keep their child satisfied and fed enough to grow.  A supply of 440 mL would actually be just enough milk to cause a 3 kg newborn to be diagnosed to fail to thrive at 1 month since they would not gain any weight if fed this volume of milk. Failure to thrive has known long-term consequences including lower IQ at 8 years of age.  So their conclusion that some mother’s perception of insufficient breast milk may in fact be inaccurate as a volume of 440 mL is in fact “not enough” for most newborns weighing > 3 kg.

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Fed is Best Foundation Response to U.S. Delegation Actions at the World Health Assembly

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Jody Segrave-Daly, RN, IBCLC and Christie del Castillo-Hegyi, M.D.

The Fed is Best Foundation is dedicated to ensuring safe infant feeding for every single child, a goal that can be achieved with exclusive breastfeeding, combination feeding, exclusive formula feeding and tube-feeding. We have no political affiliation. We support all mothers to help their infant thrive with safe, sufficient and sustainable feeding in order to protect their health and optimize brain development. Recent news has broken about the U.S. delegation at the 71st World Health Assembly opposing the first draft of the Infant and Young Child Feeding resolution. We have provided a line-by-line break down of the first draft of the resolution, which was set to be proposed by delegates from Ecuador, as well as the proposed draft submitted by the U.S. delegation along with our interpretation of the lines that the U.S. delegates opposed.

In an editorial published in the New York Post, two pediatricians, Dr. Alma Golden and Dr. Brett Giroir,  who were key members of the U.S. delegation attending the 71st World Health Assembly, wrote about the rationale for the U.S. opposition of the first draft:

As pediatricians, US representatives at this year’s World Health Assembly in Geneva and supporters of breastfeeding throughout our professional careers, we were shocked to read recent headlines, in the New York Times and elsewhere, claiming that the administration has somehow called into question the importance of breastfeeding for infants.

The administration fully endorses breastfeeding, and the agencies where we work — Health and Human Services and USAID — communicate this unequivocally…We don’t just affirm these priorities in formal conference rooms in Geneva. For years, the US government…has invested millions of dollars to promote breastfeeding both at home and abroad.

All of which is to say: Breastfeeding wasn’t in dispute in Geneva. Rather, we raised objections to an early draft of the resolution we eventually supported, which made references to a controversial 2016 guidance document. The underlying policy goal of this guidance is unsupported by US nutrition guidelines and inconsistent with the practice of most families in our country…

In particular, the guidance recommends that countries impose stringent new regulations on the marketing of any commercially produced foods suggested for children between 6 months and 3 years old. Such restrictions, in our view, prevent parents from having access to all the factual information they might need. The guidance even advocates for the prohibition of free samples of formula — including in countries and conflict zones where supplies of formula could help save babies’ lives.

Most important, there are good and valid reasons, both medical and personal, why some mothers cannot breastfeed, or choose not to breastfeed exclusively. This is particularly true in situations where displacement, other trauma or malnutrition have made it impossible for mothers to breastfeed their children, and these babies’ lives are at risk without formula or other nutritional supplementation. Parents in these dire situations need all the information and choices available.

The issue of child malnutrition occurring in war torn countries has been reported on by CNN reporter Gayle Lemmon in her article, “Don’t make babies rely on breast milk in war zones,” where she interviewed members of Doctors Without Borders who reported taking care of many infants suffering from severe malnutrition as a result of the strict restrictions of the World Health Organization and UNICEF on formula donations.

‘Over the past couple of weeks we’ve seen an increase in the number of malnourished children needing treatment,” Doctors Without Borders’ Iraq country director Manuel Lannaud said in an interview released on the group’s Web site.

The surprising thing is that Lannaud and his colleagues at the humanitarian aid group didn’t place the blame for these underfed little ones just on war and the fact that the city was under siege. They also put the blame on other international organizations and policies that seek to do good.

“It isn’t a problem of access to food. The malnutrition we see here is primarily due to the scarcity of infant formula,” Lannaud wrote. “International organizations like UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) promote breastfeeding … and provide infant formula, but only by prescription. We believe that distributing infant formula in a conflict situation like Iraq is the only way to avoid children having to be hospitalized for malnutrition.”

Doctors Without Borders says it agrees that breastfeeding promotion is a priority, but one that comes after dealing with the immediate crisis of a baby’s survival. Says Lannaud, if mothers “need formula, we give it to them.”

The mothers who need it are those facing down life-and-death situations each day, often while caring for multiple children in the shadow of war. That giving infant formula to them is so controversial speaks to a policy tripwire few outside the humanitarian realm even know exists: global “breastfeeding first” policies.

The WHO breastfeeding policies are not without flaws and aggressive promotion of exclusive breastfeeding has resulted in harm, namely an epidemic of newborn hospitalizations for jaundice, dehydration and hypoglycemia, known causes of brain injury and developmental disability, in the U.S. and across the globe. In addition, there has been a rise in accidental suffocation of newborns, called Sudden Unexpected Postnatal Collapse, from prone positioning during to skin-to-skin care and breastfeeding, made worse by maternal exhaustion from 24/7 rooming-in, practices encouraged but the WHO Ten Steps and by Baby-Friendly policies. The promotion of exclusive breastfeeding from birth has contributed to an epidemic of neonatal jaundice in the developed and developing world, which has contributed to an epidemic of perinatal brain injury and cerebral palsy particularly in the developing world, where few health care resources are available to monitor and treat exclusive breastfeeding complications. Promoting exclusive breastfeeding from birth over the local, traditional practices of supplemented breastfeeding (with wet nursing, animal milk or sugar water) until the onset of copious milk production has discouraged a practice that breastfeeding mothers used to prevent hunger and starvation-related complications like jaundice, dehydration and hypoglycemia, which now are the leading causes of newborn rehospitalization in the world.

Incidence of severe neonatal jaundice (bilirubin ≥ 20 mg/dL) in Low- and Middle-Income countries. The data reported correspond to hospital statistics. [Greco, et al, Neonatology 2016;110:172-180]

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Moms Thank The Fed Is Best Foundation For Safe Infant Feeding Support

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Every day we hear stories from parents who were able to feed their babies safely and confidently with our help.  These stories are the fuel that fills our hearts and motivates our volunteers and advocates to continue our important work to teach parents and healthcare providers about safe infant feeding, and giving babies what they need to thrive and have the best possible start.

#fedisbest #safebreastfeeding #thrivingisbest  #fedismaximum

Read on for their words of thanks and encouragement:

Do you have a #fedisbest story? We’d love to hear from you. Send us your stories.

There are many ways you can support the mission of the Fed is Best Foundation. Please consider contributing in the following ways:

  1. Join the Fed is Best Volunteer group to help us reach Obstetric Health Providers
  2. Make a donation to the Fed is Best Foundation.We do not accept donations from breast- or formula-feeding companies and 100% of your donations go toward these operational costs. All the work of the Foundation is achieved via the pro bono and volunteer work of its supporters.
  3. Share the stories and the message of the Fed is Best Foundation through word-of-mouth, by posting on your social media page and by sending our resources to expectant moms that you know. Share the Fed is Best campaign letter with everyone you know.
  4. Write a letter to your health providers and hospitals about the Fed is Best Foundation. Write them about feeding complications your child may have experienced.
  5. Print out our letter to obstetric providers and mail them to your local obstetricians, midwives, family practitioners who provide obstetric care and hospitals.
  6. Write your local elected officials about what is happening to newborn babies in hospitals and ask for legal protection of newborn babies from underfeeding and of mother’s rights to honest informed consent on the risks of insufficient feeding of breastfed babies.
  7. Send us your stories. Share with us your successes, your struggles and every thing in between. Every story saves another child from experiencing the same and teaches another mom how to safely feed her baby. Every voice contributes to change.
  8. Send us messages of support. We work every single day to make infant feeding safe and supportive of every mother and child.  Your messages of support keep us all going.
  9. Shop and Fed is Best Foundation will earn cash back! We hope to develop our online safe infant feeding classes with these funds.
  10. If you need support, we have a private support group – Join

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.

The Fed is Best Foundation’s Top Priority is Saving Babies’ Lives

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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 →