Increasing the UK’s breastfeeding rates could save the NHS £40m a year, a leading public health academic has claimed. According to recent figures, Britain has the lowest breastfeeding rate in the world.
Amy Brown, an associate professor in public health at Swansea University, says a growing number of British parents are choosing to feed their children with formula milk, despite the increased risk of gastroenteritis and respiratory illnesses. She plans to address the British Science Festival on the issue and to call for more funding and better support for new mothers.
She said: “Breastfeeding should be normal behaviour. However, in this country it sparks high levels of debate in the press and online – much of which can be highly critical of breastfeeding or examples of when a mother has experienced a problem when feeding her child this way.
“Despite the promotion that ‘breast is best’, we do not follow it up with actions to support new mothers. More people here believe that smacking is acceptable than believe that breastfeeding in public is OK. If we could raise breastfeeding rates by just two-thirds, we could save the NHS £40m a year as excess appointments for babies fed on formula milk, who are more prone to illness, would no longer be needed.”
Earlier this year, figures published in the Lancet medical journal revealed that only one in every 200 British children – 0.5% – is breastfed until the age of 12 months. Brown said the figures were depressing and pointed to the 98% rate in Scandinavian countries and 27% in the US, where mothers can only get four weeks’ maternity leave before having to return to work.
She said: “Is the reason for the low figures because of physical problems? No. There are only 2% of women in the UK who are unable to breastfeed because of a physical problem or because of medication that they are on. The situation has arisen because of society creating huge problems.”
As well as “self-styled experts” promoting products that can damage breastfeeding, Brown argues that formula companies also use “clever tactics” in targeting mothers. She said: “Alongside this, new mothers face significant social pressure to ‘get their lives back’ quickly after having a baby – by socialising, getting back in their jeans and keeping their partner happy – which can make breastfeeding so overwhelming.
“Despite more than 90% of mothers in the UK wanting to breastfeed, more than half [of babies] have had some formula by the end of their first week. Overall, the UK has the lowest breastfeeding rate in the world. Until we challenge attitudes and take better care of our new mothers and truly support them, we will not see rates rise.”
Brown will examine the issue further in her upcoming book Breastfeeding Uncovered, which will be published in October. The British Science Festival is taking place in Swansea until 9 September.
Social pressure on new mothers to get their babies into a feeding routine and to sleep through the night is a key factor in why the UK has the lowest rate of breastfeeding in the world, an expert has warned.
Speaking at the British Science Festival, Amy Brown of Swansea University said not enough was being done to support new mothers to breastfeed. In particular, she said, advice given to mothers to impose a feeding regime whereby babies don’t feed frequently, contributed to why many women felt that they weren’t producing enough milk and abandoned breastfeeding.
“One of the key things about breastfeeding is that you have to feed the baby very regularly,” Brown, a GP and member of the department of public health, policy and social sciences at Swansea University, told the Guardian. “That’s easily every two hours.”
But, she says, that doesn’t chime with common advice.
“We are told by so-called experts that you should get your baby in a feeding routine and your baby should not wake up at nights,” said Brown. “But that is really incompatible for breastfeeding. If you try and feed them less, you make less milk. You need to feed at night to make enough milk.”
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Should babies sleep through the night?
Elizabeth Duff, senior policy adviser at the National Childbirth Trust, agreed that frequent feeding is necessary. “It is obviously easier for everyone if they begin to sleep more during the night, but if you are fully breastfeeding you will have to feed for at least once and probably two or three times during the night,” she said. “The daily patterns will come, but it won’t be in the first few days or the very first weeks.”
Duff agrees that mothers are not given enough support to breastfeed. “Understanding a bit about the physiology of breastfeeding can be really helpful,” she added. “Some women who have not been able to find that information think that the baby isn’t getting very much [milk, but] a couple of teaspoons-worth is probably enough at any one time.”
According to a recent report published in the Lancet, the UK has the lowest rate of breastfeeding in the world, with only 1 in 200 women breastfeeding their children after they reach their first birthday. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommend just breast milk for six months, with breastfeeding to form part of a baby’s diet up to two years of age.
“We have known that breastfeeding rates aren’t great in the UK for a long time,” said Brown. “We have about 80% of women starting breastfeeding at birth, but by the end of the first week, over half of those babies have had formula in some way.”
Speaking ahead of the publication of her book, Breastfeeding Uncovered, Brown said that while a large proportion of mothers struggle to breastfeed, few of them have underlying conditions that prevent the process.
Surveying around 300 women who had stopped breastfeeding in the first six months, Brown found that around 80% cited pain and difficulty as contributing, while 40% referenced public attitudes, 60% lack of support from others and 20% blamed embarrassment.
“The vast majority of women who are having problems, it isn’t really to do with a primary inability to breastfeed, it is to do with their experience,” said Brown. “Eighty per cent of women who stop breastfeeding in the first six weeks do not want to. They want to keep breastfeeding but they feel that they can’t.”
Among the issues faced by new mothers, Brown criticised aggressive advertising by formula companies, and negative public perceptions of breastfeeding that have seen women asked to cover up when feeding their baby. “Babies have to breastfeed in public – it is called eating,” said Brown.
Duff agrees that breastfeeding should be welcomed. “Everywhere should be parent friendly and baby-feeding friendly,” she said.
Pressures on women to return to their pre-baby lives is also part of the problem, said Brown, while cuts affecting funding for breastfeeding peer support groups, as well as cuts to midwife services and the NHS more widely, are limiting help for new mothers.
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How you can help to support a breastfeeding mother.
“The way forward is that we need a complete societal change to how we look at breastfeeding, how we accept it, but also how we accept and value mothering in general,” said Brown, adding that raising breastfeeding rates could save the NHS millions due to a reduction in common infant infections. “Women should not be held responsible for this, is the key message,” she added. “We need to raise breastfeeding rates, but it is not their fault.”
Rebecca Schiller, director human rights for childbirth charity Birthrights, said it is of great concern that many women were giving up breastfeeding sooner than they wished, and criticised a lack of support for new mothers. “I think it is a huge cruelty to women to tell them that there is something wonderful that they should be doing and then to make it very difficult for them to do that,” she said. “We also don’t think that anyone should be pressured into feeding in any particular way.”
Dr Nigel Rollins from the department of maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health at WHO, said it was important to acknowledge that breastfeeding can be challenging, and criticised negative public attitudes to breastfeeding, particularly in England. What’s more, he said, whether a particular routine is adopted varies greatly between babies.
“This sense that ‘achieving’ or ‘accomplishing’ breastfeeding is the responsibility only of the mother and therefore [a] judgement as to whether she is ‘adequate’ or not, I think is one that I would counter strongly,” he said. “There are so many things that make it more manageable to breastfeed than not,” he added, pointing out that lack of support from a partner, family, health worker and even negative comments from neighbours can all play a role in making it harder. “All of those things chip away at a woman’s confidence as to whether she has enough milk,” he said.
The Surgeon General’s purpose for breastfeeding by year 2020 is for 81.9 percent of females to breastfeed their infants following hospital discharge, 60.6 % of girls continue breastfeeding at six months of age and 34.1 percent breast feed their infants at 12 months of age. (one)
U.S. Surgeon General wishes for 81.9 % of women to breastfeed their babies following hospital discharge by 2020!
Breastfeeding is not only excellent for mother/infant bonding but breast-fed babies are far more resistant to illness and infection early in daily life. They are also less likely to contract disease later on in life. (2)
A new review reports that breastfeeding is not only more healthy for child but also for mother. Women who have gestational diabetes who consistently breastfeed from the time of offering birth are half as probably to build kind two diabetes in the two years following delivery. (three)
New study displays that ladies with gestational diabetes who persistently breastfeed stick to birth are half as very likely to create sort 2 diabetes two many years following birth!
Gestational diabetes is diagnosed in five % to 9 % of all pregnancies in the U.S. Women with gestational diabetes are up to 7 occasions far more likely to produce sort 2 diabetes following pregnancy. (three)
In a study completed cry Kaiser Permanente Division of Investigation, they located that breastfeeding could reduce the danger of variety 2 diabetes following birth by half. The study did stress the level and duration of breastfeeding as considerable to the research findings. (3)
In this review, ladies who exclusively or primarily breastfed for at least two months soon after offering birth, and those who continued to breastfeed for several months, have been capable to minimize their chance for type 2 diabetes by half. For the examine, in particular person exams which integrated oral glucose tolerance exams had been carried out at the 6 to 9 week mark following delivery. The very same exams have been carried out once more at 1 year and two many years publish delivery. (3)
Females with gestational diabetes who solely feed their little one formula are twice as very likely to produce type 2 diabetes!
The review located that mothers who solely fed their babies formula had been a lot more than twice as likely to produce variety 2 diabetes. The research authors hope that these findings should inspire women to breastfeed, realizing the constructive wellness advantages for both mother and little one. (three)
It was discovered that degree of C-reactive protein (CRP) were twenty per cent reduced in men and women who had been breastfed for at least 3 months and had been almost thirty per cent lower in individuals breastfed for at least a year.
Statins, presently prescribed to far more than seven million people in the Uk at chance of cardiovascular illness, have been proven to lessen CRP by about 15 per cent.
Raised ranges of CRP are connected with an elevated threat of cardiovascular disease – coronary heart disease, heart attacks, angina and strokes – and sort two diabetes in later on lifestyle.
It is considered that breastfeeding may support shape the immune system as it develops, lowering low-level irritation in later on life.
Prof McDade extra: “The longer we comply with this group the far more we will start off to see higher heart attacks and diabetes in individuals folks who were not breastfed.
“I hope this paper will draw attention to this as an crucial social policy concern and aid ladies to breastfeed their infants.
“It is likely that any disease that is relevant to being overweight or obese, and regulation of irritation will be traced back to breastfeeding, that consists of several autoimmune diseases, dementia, cancer. A lot of or all of these could be straight or indirectly impacted by breastfeeding.”
The benefits, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, in contrast siblings who had been breastfed with those who have been not to rule out other family members elements that may have affected the results.
Recent Department of Overall health guidelines suggest exclusive breastfeeding up to the age of six months, and continued breastfeeding till at least one particular year.
Nevertheless, even though a lot more than eight in ten mothers commence breastfeeding, only a single in 4 are nonetheless breastfeeding at six weeks.
Julie Ward, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the British Heart Basis, stated: “This examine goes even more by suggesting that the longer you breastfeed your baby the more healthy your kid will be in later life.
“This supports recent NHS tips, which advocate breastfeeding for the initial 6 months before combining breast milk with far more sound meals.
“However, parents of smaller infants and mothers unable to breastfeed ought to not be concerned about issues they cannot handle. By educating children about healthy eating and creating physical exercise entertaining from a youthful age you can inspire healthy habits to protect their hearts as they develop up.”
Prof Mary Renfrew, Prof of Mom and Infant Health at the University of Dundee, mentioned: “The paper is an crucial stage in the accumulating evidence base that there are critical differences between breast fed and not.
“It supports the thought that breastfeeding mothers must continue feeding for longer. Breastmilk in addition to sound foods helps to lessen irritation as breastmilk is complete of actively anti-inflammatory compounds.
“In the US and the Uk, breastfeeding is not effortless. There are robust socioeconomic factors that for a number of generations, infants have been bottle-fed.
“We need to get the accumulating proof base really critically and get a careful, delicate and proactive technique to support ladies to conquer these socioeconomic barriers.”
From left: Carrie Day and son Jack, Katy Sperling and son Ethan, Emma Patchell and daughter Niamh, Sarah Milligan and daughter Aoife, Karen Connell and son Stanley. Photograph: Zachary Culpin/Solent Information
In a Costa Coffee in Channon retail park, near Eastleigh, Hampshire, sit 5 of the very best adverts for new(ish) motherhood (their infants are all a yr previous) that modern day lifestyle has.
Carrie, 33, with Jack, mentioned: “If you named a single thing that stored us going, it would be each other.” They have the ancient solace of friendship with the modern handiness of Facebook, the cherry-picked best of each century.
None of them had post-natal depression. They met by way of NCT, but all that stuff you hear about NCT – instructors who will not think in pharmacology, aggressive birth strategies – is the opposite of their expertise, where the instructor was warm and open-minded, lifelong friendships have been made, and they function-played a caesarean, utilizing the husbands.
So perhaps their birth strategies did not pan out – “Absolutely nothing went the way I’d desired it, except for the reality that I ended up with a baby,” Sarah, 30, stated wryly of her daughter, Aoife – but on balance, Carrie concluded: “We all went to Winchester [hospital], and we all said, as a lot as our strategies did not go to strategy, it was brilliant.”
In quick, these are not moaners. What they say about breastfeeding need to not, underneath any situations, be written off as the kind of factor folks say who like to moan.
Of 6 mothers in the group (one particular could not make the interview), two bottle-fed. Katy, 31, with Ethan, is plagued by it. “I couldn’t feed due to the fact my milk did not come in. I know that we did the proper thing for him, due to the fact he would have been readmitted [to hospital]. But even now, a year on, I’m thinking, maybe he had a tongue tie. Possibly I need to have experimented with that. I keep pondering of a million items I could have completed differently.”
Carrie recalled: “I had a actually great health visitor and she said: ‘Just do what makes you pleased. In the end, this is a truly short time and you have acquired to appreciate it.’ I took that piece of guidance, and I did just really enjoy him. But the subsequent overall health visitor who came round, I personally felt a minor embarrassed to tell her the choice I’d produced.”
Every person else breastfed some discovered it a great deal simpler than other people. Karen, 31, with Stanley, stated: “We did inquire about a tongue tie in the antenatal courses, and they explained it was very unusual. In the end, 4 out of the 6 infants had one particular.”
A single of them was Sarah’s daughter: “I remember my nipples practically fell off. I was going to every single boob drop-in in the world, I was cracking them out all over the place I went. You get advised: ‘If it hurts, you are not performing it appropriate.’ When you said it hurt, individuals informed you it did not hurt.
“The infant does not latch on effectively so you get mastitis. Due to the fact you have received that, you happen to be on antibiotics, so then you get thrush. I didn’t realise it was going to be so tough.”
Tom, Niamh’s father and Emma’s companion, said mildly: “They totally skirt more than bottle feeding. When you happen to be going through hard occasions, they constantly say ‘stick with it’. They in no way say ‘maybe this is a bit too difficult.’”
Katy puts this a small far more strongly. “Their response to almost everything is feed a lot more. If one thing goes wrong, feed more. If you get mastitis, feed far more. If you’ve got no milk, feed a lot more.”
I have a see on this (of course I do), which is that, in purchase for breastfeeding to have the no-different, liquid-gold status it enjoys in public well being, its advantages would have to be so significantly more pronounced and demonstrable that you would not even require to demonstrate them.
In addition, breastfeeding activists (or lactivists) shouldn’t have to borrow threat variables from the creating world to make mothers in Eastleigh really feel breast milk is the only secure foodstuff for their children.
But I did not say that to these mothers. And maybe, for the public wellness result the establishment is after, the inflexible approach is the correct one, since it absolutely keeps mothers plugging away.
“Because I located it so challenging,” said Sarah, “I think element of the explanation I stored going was since of what other people thought. I’m in no way vital of ladies who pick to bottle feed, but I didn’t want men and women to believe I didn’t want to, and I did not want individuals to think that I didn’t care.”
Emma agreed: “Even now, when people say, ‘so you’ve gone back to perform?’ I say, ‘Yes, but I nevertheless breastfeed.’ It really is really odd, but you want men and women to know you have carried out the right point.”
And of program, not all the strain comes from NHS leaflets and books about infant feeding. Katy remembered: “I wouldn’t allow any person but my husband bottle feed simply because I felt that I was supposed to do it. Perhaps it really is partly primeval.”
And it really is not all strain, Karen added. “On the other side of the coin, when you do breastfeed, they are so encouraging, you get a actual improve from it.” She remembered yet another bonus: “It meant that you could ward off other household members. It was breastfeeding, and no one could do it apart from me.”
I believe one particular day, possibly decades from now, we’ll look back on this problem baffled by the heat it produced. A great deal of babies will be born in the intervening time, but their mothers and fathers will proceed to revel in them. And nobody’s nipples, realistically, are going to fall off.
