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World Breastfeeding Week 2002
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Breastfeeding:
Healthy Mothers and Healthy Babies
Breastfeeding provides the best possible start to life, a foundation for fulfilling the rights of a child. Scientific research during the last three decades has rediscovered that breastfeeding provides the ideal nutrition to the baby, protects them against infections, allergies and asthma. Breastfeeding particularly exclusive during first six months promotes physical, physiological, motor, mental and psychosocial growth and development. Breastfeeding has also been related to possible enhancement of cognitive development, it prepares babies for enhanced learning giving them a head start.
Breastfeeding is well-recognised and is a means to protect, promote and support the health and development of infants and young children. Mother's milk fosters optimal growth and development of a baby's brain, immune system, and general physiology and is a vital factor in preventing common illnesses, especially diarrhoea and infections of the respiratory tract (including pneumonia), ear, and urinary tract. The act of breastfeeding releases growth hormones, promotes healthy oral development, and establishes a trusting relationship between baby and mother. Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months reduces the risk of environment-borne illnesses, malnutrition, food sensitisation and allergy.
Breastfeeding also has definite benefits for mothers. It is a fundamental, physiologic continuation of pregnancy and childbirth. Sometimes it is reffered to as “fourth stage of labour”. Beginning exclusive breastfeeding shortly after birth lowers the mother's risk for excess post-partum bleeding and anaemia. Once mother and baby have learned to do it easily, breastfeeding can reduce a mother's stress by keeping her infants or young children healthy and well nourished. Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months saves the family money, energy, and time: nothing to buy, prepare, or clean up. Exclusive breastfeeding can also boost a mother's own immune system, help delay a new pregnancy, and reduce the insulin needs of diabetic mothers. In the long term, breastfeeding can help protect a mother from breast and ovarian cancers and osteoporosis (brittle bones).
Very often, a mother's needs and wants go unrecognised or unsupported. Her physical and emotional health, her level of education, the help she receives from others, and her household economics influences her breastfeeding practices and other aspects of caring for her children. In particular, a woman's pregnancy and childbirth experience can greatly impact the way breastfeeding begins and continues.
This year, World Breastfeeding Week seeks to underscore the urgent need to protect, promote, and support the health and well-being of mothers as well as to protect, promote, and support the health and well-being of babies, through breastfeeding. The Goals for WBW 2002 are:
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To reinstate breastfeeding as an integral part of women's reproductive cycle and health.
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To create awareness of women's right to humane and non-invasive birthing practices.
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To promote the Global Initiative for Mother Support (GIMS) for Breastfeeding as one way to strengthen the support for mothers.
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HEALTHY
MOTHERS
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Health is internationally accepted as a fundamental human right. Women and girls' right to health of the highest attainable standard includes the right to full and reliable medical information; to informed consent, choice and decision-making in health care, reproduction and infant feeding; to privacy and confidentiality; and to safe conditions of work and environment. These rights are reiterated in numerous national and international documents, beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Women in good health have the best chance to have healthy babies. Nevertheless, women who are not in optimal health still become pregnant, have healthy babies, and breastfeed successfully. This is a testament to the marvelous capacity and resilience of the female body! While all mothers need support in caring for themselves and their families, breastfeeding mothers should have extra support to maintain and promote their own health as well as to give the gift of life and breastmilk to their babies. Every year women die from pregnancy and child birth related causes. According to World Health Organization (1999) most such deaths occur in developing countries. In India according to NFHS-2 (1998-99) the Maternal Mortality Rates (MMR) is 540 deaths per 100,000 live births.
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Pregnancy
and Breastfeeding
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Pregnancy should
be the time for preparation of childbirth, breastfeeding and infant
care. 
It
means that factual, objective and comprehensive information should
be given to mother during this period.
There is a need for provision of basic health care, timely treatment during routine and emergencies, prenatal care where risk factors for mother and child can be identified, provided including teaching on physiology of normal child birth, dealing with unexpected complications and techniques for breastfeeding.
Child Birth: Labour and birth needs to be made more supportive and respectful to provide the right environment for breastfeeding. There is need to provide skilled birth attendants and clean conditions and to reduce unnecessary intervention in normal healthy birth. Mother and baby respond naturally to each other, forming attachments vital for survival and optimal emotional adjustment.
Normal pregnancy, labour, birth, and breastfeeding are interdependent experiences. Evidence-based practices can keep birth normal and empower women to make decisions about the care she and her baby receive.
Unfortunately, this fundamental ability of women to give birth to their babies is often poorly supported or even undermined. Many women lack factual information and skilled and assertive support for childbirth and early breastfeeding. They may not be encouraged to participate in decisions about their own care. In fact, they may be encouraged to passively accept practices that are 'routine' rather than evidence-based.
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"The
Fourth Stage of Labour"
Immediate
Breastfeeding
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Babies are
born with the natural ability to find the breast, self-attach,
and feed. 
Babies
left in skin-to-skin contact with the mother remain warm and can
more easily regulate breathing and heart rate. Breastfeeding in
the minutes following birth can help to expel the placenta, reduce
bleeding and reinforce emotional attachment of the mother to the
baby. If left undisturbed, babies may remain in an active, alert
state from 40 minutes up to two hours after birth, after which
they drop into deep sleep. After birth the baby should be cleaned
and wrapped in a dry cloth and breastfeed within half an hour
of birth.
Just as with childbirth, many procedures in the early post-partum interfere with establishing early breastfeeding. Procedures that invade the infant's nose, mouth, and throat may damage delicate membranes, disrupt early sucking reflexes, or create aversion to oral stimuli. Removing the baby from the mother for measurements, inoculations, or bathing can disrupt the newborn's alert state. Eye drops given before the first mother-baby eye contact and breastfeed disrupt the visual contact vital for mutual attachment.
Best practices in the newborn period are the Ten Steps for Successful Breastfeeding, which form the core of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI). By keeping mother and baby together in a supportive environment with minimal interference, exclusive breastfeeding is protected and encouraged. Even if the birth experience was not ideal, help and assistance to a mother while delivery can promote good mother-baby attachment. Empathetic breastfeeding assistance from trained birth attendants, anganwadi workers, nursing and medical staff, or breastfeeding anganwadi workers, ANMs, LHVs and counsellors would make breastfeeding success a reality. Such a motivation would ensure good milk supply from the mother to the baby and could reinforce a mother's own determination and motivation to breastfeed exclusively for first six months.
The introduction of supplementary milks before six months of age may put infants at the risk of malnutrition, because other liquids and solid food are nutritionally inferior to breastmilk. Consumption of liquids and solid or mushy food at an early age also increases children’s exposure to pathogens and consequently put them at a great risk of getting diarrhoea.
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Essentials for Healthy Mothers
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Continuous
Support for the Mother
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Once breastfeeding has been established, mothers continue to need support to maintain their physicial and emotional health. Frequent home visits by a health worker or trained volunteer in the early weeks can check on the health of mother and baby and the progress of breastfeeding, and provide access to a supportive and informative friend. Participation in mothers groups can provide social activity and support as well as role-models for mothering and breastfeeding. Extra care and assistance from the family helps the new mother gradually adjust to her new responsibilities.
The health of a mother and her newborn child depends not only on the health care she receives during her pregnancy and delivery but also on the care she and the infant receive the first few weeks after delivery. Recognising the importance of postpartum check-ups, the Reproductive and Child Health Programme recommends checkups including an abdominal examination and advice on family planning, breastfeeding and baby care.
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Ideas
for Action
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Hold seminars to promote women’s health at all levels.
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Organise seminars to show ‘Best Practices’ on childbirth, breastfeeding and women’s health.
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Organise seminars on healthy lifestyles.
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Organise seminars on suitable birth spacing methods.
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Collect information of District or State level on women’s perinatal health including important issues for safe and informed birth experience and barries to a healthy pregnancy.
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Organise media events to highlight your issue that “Breastfeeding is a major component of safe motherhood”
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Review birthing practices that interfere with suckling and mother infant attachment, advocate for changes.
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Promote 10 steps of the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) to protect, promote and support breastfeeding.
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Inform your colleagues about provision of the “Infant Milk Substitutes, Feeding Bottles and Infant Foods, (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 1992” and support its effective implementation
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Find out if mothers receive support from family, community or health workers after they go home, if not encourage establishing a link to support mothers for exclusive breastfeeding.
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Find out how working mothers manage their children to succeed in exclusive breastfeeding and document this for benefit of others.
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Support the development of creches at your workplaces and encourages others to do the same.
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Organise debates on “Women’s health during pregnancy birth and breastfeeding period” in Women’s colleges, Institutions of Home Sciences, Nutrition and other concerned with women.
Promotion of maternal and child health has been one of the most important objectives of the Family Welfare Programme in India. Health Status of mothers Most of the mothers in rural areas in India are uneducated, mal-nourished and remain ill. They are unhealthy due to wrong community norms like early marriage and gender discrimination. Women can remain healthy if during adolescence they are provided with health and nutrition education, iron and folic acid tablets once in a week and vaccination for tetanus, M.M.R. and Hepatitis B. When adolescent girls will get family education they will be more conscious. For being healthy during pregnancy and giving birth to a healthy baby all pregnant women should be provided with proper nutrition, rest, health services and check-ups and knowledge of adverse condition during pregnancy.
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By
choosing right place for delivery and delivery conducted
by a trained person, both the mother and the baby
can remain healthy and breastfeeding can be made
successful.
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Status
of Women's Health
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| Some key indicatoors | |
| Maternal Mortality Rate |
540/100,000
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| Female Illeterates |
36.9%
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| Malnutrition (Body mass index > 18.5 kg/m2) |
35.8%
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| Any Anemia (during 15-49yrs.) |
51.8%
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| No antenatal checkups |
34%
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| Received Tetanus Toxoid |
66.8%
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| Received Iron |
57.6%
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| Delivery in a healthy facility |
34.1%
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| Delivery by a health professional |
42%
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| Post-partum checkups (with 2 months) |
16.5%
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| Initiation of breastfeeding within 1 hour |
15.8%
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| Exclusive breastfeeding (0-3 months) |
55%
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| Complementary feeding (6-9 months) |
46%
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| Source: NFHS-2, 1998-99 | |
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Important Steps for improving health status of mothers During Adolescence
During Pregnancy
Delivery
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Useful Addresses
******
For more information, please contact
Email: bpni@bpni.org