Tag: Newborn Starvation

World Health Organization Revised Breastfeeding Guidelines Put Babies at Risk Despite Pleas from Experts—Informing the Public “Not a Top Priority”

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By the Senior Advisory Board of the Fed is Best Foundation

A key recommendation of the 1989 World Health Organization Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding which guides the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) is: “give infants no food or drink other than breast-milk, unless medically indicated.” This has led to serious complications from accidental starvation of babies, including dehydration, hyperbilirubinemia (jaundice) and hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) — known causes of infant brain injury and permanent disability. Last week, the WHO issued draft revised breastfeeding guidelines, failing to revise this recommendation. These guidelines define the standard of care for breastfeeding management in all healthcare facilities worldwide. Nearly 500 U.S. hospitals and birthing centers and thousands more worldwide that meet the criteria of the BFHI are certified as Baby-Friendly, adhering to the application of the WHO’s Ten Steps.

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 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 children’s hospital, managing infant feeding projects and Senior Advisor.

Emails confirming meeting between the WHO and the Fed is Best Foundation available here.

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Just One Bottle Would Have Prevented My Baby’s Permanent Brain Damage From Hypoglycemia

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Written by Holly Lake

I wish I had known about the Fed Is Best Foundation before my 1st son was born. I felt enormous pressure to exclusively breastfeed at my hospital. My son was born at 37 weeks, weighing 5 pounds,13 ounces and he struggled to latch-on and breastfeed at each feeding. When I told the midwife, she came back with a leaflet which described how to hand express. She told me to express 1 mL of colostrum into a syringe and feed that to my baby whenever he struggled to latch.  I asked her if 1 mL was enough and she said it was because his tummy was very small and this amount would be fine until my milk came in. Note: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml.

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StomachSize

I was discharged hours later not feeling confident my baby was getting enough colostrum.  A midwife came out to see me at home on day 3 because I said I was worried about his feeding. He became extremely yellow (jaundiced), not very responsive (lethargic) and would let out random high pitch screams and would sleep all of the time and never wanted to feed by this time.  He also would have random body spasms which doctors shrugged off as normal baby reflexes (later we found out different).  The midwife said I could wait and see how he did overnight or go to hospital.  I chose to take him to the hospital. When arriving, we found that he had lost 12% of his body weight and his blood sugars levels dropped dangerously low to 0.2 mmol/L (4 mg/dL) and he was jaundiced. Continue reading →

Jillian Johnson and The Fed is Best Foundation Interview on the Doctors Show

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By The Doctors Staff on 12:00 AM PT, May 9, 2017

Just days after the birth of their first baby, Jared and Jillian were devastated by tragedy — a tragedy that Jillian says was completely preventable.

The couple spent the months of pregnancy preparing for baby Landon’s arrival. Jillian took breastfeeding classes because she had been told that “Formula is bad for the baby, and breastmilk is the best thing for them,” she says.

“I’ll never forget when they handed him to me!” Jillian continues. “I just couldn’t take my eyes off him.” Jillian nursed Landon throughout their hospital stay, and was told she was doing “a great job.” Once home, Landon was constantly at the breast, until Jillian began to suspect that something was wrong. Then when she went to pick up the baby, she found him completely limp and not breathing.

Part 1 of the Doctors Show Interview
Part 2 of the Doctors Show Interview

Just One Bottle Would Have Kept My Baby Off Life Support: The Failure Of Baby-Friendly (BFHI) Care In Canada

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My husband and I were the happiest people on earth to have just welcomed our healthy baby boy Ian into the world [born in an Ottawa Baby-Friendly hospital].   We were anxious first time parents. We had taken all the prenatal classes. I read the book “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” and we felt well-informed to approach this new chapter in our lives.  We made the decision that I would be breastfeeding as that was the “right” thing to do for our baby.  My baby latched on automatically and the nurses were impressed with how he was eating because he fed about every hour and would feed for at least 45 minutes.  I was nervous that I was not doing something right, and I continuously asked each and every nurse that came in to check on us if I was doing it right. I even asked them to just watch us while he fed and see if it was going okay. They all consistently replied, “You are doing great.”

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Ian at 12 hours old.

The next morning came and I participated in a breastfeeding class held in the hospital by a lactation consultant (LC).  The class had about 20 new moms with their babies there and the LC asked us to have our babies latch on  and feed while she teaches and does her presentation.  Again, Ian automatically latched to me and the LC was impressed and commented that I was like a pro already and that he latched perfectly and was doing well.  I brought forward my concern to her as well, saying that he latches on about every hour or so for 45 min or more and she said, “That is great, he is a good eater!”  About 30 min into the 1 hour class,  all the other moms were sitting with their babies resting in their laps as they had all finished their feeding, but Ian was still latched onto me until the end of the class. The LC never brought anything up about the fact that if a baby is feeding for more than 30 minutes that means that they are probably not satisfied.   Furthermore, I asked the LC if I could start pumping and she told me “no,” that I had to wait 6 weeks before pumping and giving him a bottle because otherwise he wouldn’t want to breastfeed anymore and it would disrupt our breastfeeding.  So I kept my pump away as I was told, but this meant I had no idea how much milk I was producing (which later I found out was almost nothing). Continue reading →

Why Was No One Listening To Me Or My Baby At Our Baby-Friendly Hospital? The Signs Were There.

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I was so excited to breastfeed my second child last April. I had my first eight years ago, and thought that perhaps back then I just had not tried hard enough. I also thought maybe the first time I did something wrong, and thought that this time would work out perfect. My first baby was sent to the NICU for jaundice on day three, and then was given an IV for dehydration, which was followed by formula. I did my research and was told that you should not supplement because if you did supplement you could lose your supply of breast milk.

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I started to fret at the hospital when my new baby was struggling to latch. I became frustrated when I could not hand express anything other than the smallest beads of milk. However, I was told that number of diapers was fine and his weight loss was within the acceptable range. I was told to go home and keep bringing him to breast, and to not supplement. So that is what I did. My baby cried endlessly and his throat always sounded dry. His latch was very weak. The milk still had not come in and I never felt engorged. I thought something was wrong and my husband wanted to give him some formula, but I begged him to wait for my milk to come in just liked I was taught.

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On day five of my baby’s life we took him to his first appointment. He weighed in with a 17% total weight loss, and ran a slight fever when they took his temperature. His doctor told us that we needed to rush him to the hospital because she feared he may have a bacterial infection and that he could only have hours to live. The doctor also told us to immediately start supplementing. We gave him formula in the office and rushed him to the children’s hospital. While we were in the emergency room his temperature dropped to a normal temperature. I felt relieved. We stayed there for a while and they came to check on him a little later. They found that his temperature had dropped below a regular reading and that he was developing symptoms of hypothermia. They told us this was serious and he needed to go through testing to run cultures. I had never been so scared in my life. Continue reading →