Would you like to eat with a blanket over your head? How about enjoying your lunch in a bathroom stall? These are the conditions in which many babies are made to eat when their moms breastfeed.
It’s World Breastfeeding Week.
Because babies who are breastfed have fewer infections, lower rates of asthma. and smaller risks for childhood obesity, The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies be exclusively breastfed---meaning no additional foods or fluids other than breast milk--- for the six months of life. Breastfeeding continues to be beneficial, even with the addition of other foods and fluids, for the rest of baby’s first year and beyond.
However, in the Surgeon General’s 2011 Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding, it was reported that while three out of four mothers in the U.S. start out breastfeeding, at the end of six months, only 13% of babies are exclusively breastfed.
American mothers encounter many obstacles to successful breastfeeding, including hospital practices that make it hard to get started, lack of experience and family support, and a lack of accommodation to breastfeed or express milk in the workplace.
Internationally, mothers have difficulty as well. According to the World Health Organization, globally, only 38% of babies are exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life. The WHO would like to increase that rate to 50% by 2025.
Resources:
http://worldbreastfeedingweek.org/
http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/calls/breastfeeding/factsheet.html
http://waba.org.my/
https://www2.aap.org/breastfeeding/faqsbreastfeeding.html
http://www.who.int/nutrition/global-target-2025/infographic_breastfeeding.pdf?ua=1