Friday, April 10, 2009

A new spin!

I have been doing some more reading on weight charts. I was curious to see how much they have changed over the years. Obviously, we as a society are fatter now than we were 10 years ago. (Present company included!) In this research, I stumbled on to a WHO article about weight charts and how they are trying to get dr's to adopt their weight charts. The discussion went on to address how breastfed babies often gain weight fast and then "level off about 5 months". This often leads dr's to recommend supplementing with formula or stopping breastfeeding all together. I find this interesting. My dr recommended we supplement a little with formula at Brodie's 9 month appointment when he was shown to be in the 10% for his weight. I looked up the WHO growth chart and according to it, he is in about the 50%. So interesting. My point...while dr's are great...they are not the be all, end on instructions for caring for your baby. I am supplementing now with some formula, but I have other reasons also for doing it. I am not saying to not use dr's, just PLEASE do your own research too and do not take everything they say as the gospel. I am blessed to have a very analytical husband whom I trust for many health realted issues. I also have a very close friend in chiropractic school. I count on both of them for alternative advice when my children's health is a concern (or mine for that matter).

No one makes it easy or easier for women to breastfed. I know everyone has good intentions, but until we (this is everyone from dr's to the community) all begin to support these new moms in the way they need, we will continue to see breastfeeding numbers go down.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Interesting:

I was doing research on starting whole milk before age 1 and this is something I ran across. Pay close attention to the last sentence. Very interesting...

"The Canadian Paediatric Society says it’s fine to introduce cow’s milk between nine and 12 months of age. However, in the US and some other countries, the official advice is to wait for at least a year. Why are the guidelines different from those in Canada?

“The main concern is about iron deficiency, and that problem starts in the early months of a baby’s life,” explains Robert Issenman, chief of paediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton. “When babies under six months or so are fed regular cow’s milk, they have minute amounts of blood loss in the GI tract. This blood loss makes them likely to become anemic. By nine months, drinking regular cow’s milk no longer causes this bleeding.”

Anemia develops most often when parents who are not breastfeeding find formula too expensive, so they buy ordinary milk for their young baby.

“A recommendation that babies not drink cow’s milk until they are a year old won’t change what those families are doing, so it won’t solve the problem of anemia,” Issenman says. The advice will be followed by those families who are already breastfeeding or giving formula until their babies are nine months old — and for those babies, it will not make any difference in the rates of anemia.

This recommendation does help in the US, Issenman notes, because a government program provides subsidized formula for a year for babies who are not breastfed. This can be important because the subsidy isn’t enough to purchase all the formula a baby needs, and parents sometimes give regular cow’s milk when the formula runs out.

Why don’t we have a similar program in Canada? “We have a different philosophy here,” says Issenman. “The concern has been that if we offer free or subsidized formula, it might persuade women not to breastfeed, or to wean early.” A 2004 study in Pediatrics did find that program families were less likely to breastfeed than families with similar low incomes who didn’t sign up. More than half of the formula sold in the US is distributed through the program."