Breastfeeding and Losing Weight

Are there any other moms on here who are trying to find the balance between losing weight while still providing nutrition for your baby?

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A Little Formula Might Help Breast-Feeding for Some Babies

Early study looked at newborns who were losing weight

By Robert Preidt

HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, May 13 (HealthDay News) -- Giving small amounts of infant formula to newborns who experience significant weight loss can increase the length of time that they are breast-fed, according to a new study.

New mothers do not immediately produce high volumes of milk and their babies can lose weight during this period, said the researchers from the University of California, San Francisco.

"Many mothers develop concerns about their milk supply, which is the most common reason they stop breast-feeding in the first three months," study author Dr. Valerie Flaherman, an assistant professor of pediatrics and epidemiology and biostatistics, said in a university news release.

"But this study suggests that giving those babies a little early formula may ease those concerns and enable them to feel confident continuing to breast-feed," added Flaherman, who also is a pediatrician at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital.

Flaherman and her colleagues looked at 40 full-term newborns between 24 and 48 hours old who had lost more than 5 percent of their birth weight. Some babies received early limited formula consisting of one-third of an ounce of infant formula by syringe after each breast-feeding session. The babies stopped receiving the formula when their mothers began producing adequate volumes of milk, about two to five days after birth.

The babies in the early-limited-formula group were compared to a control group of infants whose mothers tried to breast-feed only.

After one week, all the babies in both groups were still breast-feeding, but only 10 percent of those in the early-limited-formula group had received formula in the past 24 hours, compared with 47 percent of those in the control group.

After three months, 79 percent of the babies in the early-limited-formula group were still breast-feeding, compared with 42 percent of those in the control group, according to the study, published online May 13 and in an upcoming print issue of the journal Pediatrics.

The researchers said their findings need to be confirmed in larger studies, a point also made by an expert who wasn't involved in the study.

"The results of this study are provocative and challenge conventional wisdom," Dr. James Taylor, medical director for the University of Washington Medical Center's Newborn Nursery, said in the news release.

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Breast-Feeding Won't Prevent Pre-Teen Obesity, Study Finds

Nursing exclusively has no effect on later weight, but many other benefits exist

By Serena Gordon

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, March 12 (HealthDay News) -- Breast-feeding has many benefits, but preventing overweight and obesity later in a child's life probably isn't among them, according to a new study.

The study included nearly 14,000 children from Belarus whose mothers were involved in a study to promote exclusive breast-feeding for longer periods. When the researchers checked on the children around age 11, they found that breast-feeding duration and exclusivity didn't make a difference in child's later weight.

Still, the study authors pointed out that breast-feeding has many advantages, and mothers should still be encouraged to breast-feed their infants.

"Although breast-feeding is unlikely to stem the current obesity epidemic, its other advantages are amply sufficient to justify continued public health efforts to promote, protect and support it," said the study's lead author, Richard Martin, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol in England.

Results of the study appear in the March 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The children in the study were initially recruited with their mothers for a study designed to assess a breast-feeding intervention program. The breast-feeding program was based on the World Health Organization/Unicef Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, which promotes exclusive breast-feeding and breast-feeding for longer periods of time.

Some of the practices included in the breast-feeding program included having a written breast-feeding policy, showing mothers how to initiate and maintain breast-feeding, having babies in the same room as their mothers 24 hours a day, and giving no pacifiers to the infants, Martin said.

The study included 31 hospitals in Belarus, a country in eastern Europe. Infants and their mothers were randomly selected to be in the breast-feeding-promotion group or in a group given the hospital's usual care.

The intervention substantially increased the duration of exclusive breast-feeding, according to the study. At 3 months, 43 percent of women in the intervention group were exclusively breast-feeding their babies, compared to 6 percent of those in the usual-care group. At 6 months, about 8 percent of women from the breast-feeding-program group were still breast-feeding exclusively, versus less than 1 percent of the usual-care group.

Although some previous studies suggested that breast-feeding exclusively for longer periods might curb childhood obesity, the researchers found no significant differences in body mass or in the risk of overweight or obesity when they followed up with the children about 12 years later, according to the study.

Dr. Deborah Campbell, director of the division of neonatology at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, said she doesn't think this study is the final word on whether breast-feeding might affect later weight.

Campbell noted that, unlike a U.S. population, which would be more diverse, most of the people in Belarus have the same ethnic and racial background. They also have universal health care, and a population with higher education levels than the United States. These differences make it difficult to translate these findings to a U.S. population, she said.

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