Less than half of women breastfeed after two months, survey finds

Almost three-quarters of women in England start breastfeeding after giving birth but less than half are still doing so two months later, according to NHS and Public Health England data.

PHE recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, as does the World Health Organisation, because it boosts a baby’s ability to fight illness and infection. But a comparison of initial breastfeeding rates and those after six to eight weeks in the final quarter of 2015 found that they were 40% lower for the latter (44% compared with 73%).

A survey of 500 mothers commissioned by PHE found that fears about breastfeeding among women included that it could be painful (74%), prevent them taking medication (71%) and be embarrassing in front of strangers (63%).

The PHE’s chief nurse, Viv Bennett, said:“We can all help women feel comfortable breastfeeding their baby wherever they are. Creating a wider culture of encouragement and support will help make a mother’s experience all the more positive.”

PHE has launched an interactive breastfeeding friend chatbot, accessed through Facebook messenger, to provide personal support for breastfeeding 24 hours a day. Bennett said it would help women through the “crucial” initial period, after which things generally became easier.

A study published in the Lancet last year found the UK had the lowest rate of breastfeeding in the world, with only one in 200 women breastfeeding their children after they reach their first birthday.

The WHO recommends that breastfeeding form part of a baby’s diet up to two years of age. As well as reducing the likelihood of babies getting diarrhoea and respiratory infections, breastfeeding also lowers a mother’s risk of ovarian and breast cancer and burns about 500 calories a day.

The PHE survey found that many women were not only embarrassed about breastfeeding in front of strangers, but also their partner’s family (59%) and around siblings and wider family members (49%).

The results, published on Thursday, suggested high-profile figures who promote breastfeeding can have a positive influence on other mothers. Just under half of respondents said the example of household names such as The Only Way is Essex star Sam Faiers, broadcaster Fearne Cotton and actor Blake Lively, who have recently championed breastfeeding on social media, had inspired them to do so themselves. About two-thirds (64%) said they felt more confident to breastfeed in public because of celebrity mums.

Other concerns raised by more than half of women were not being able to tell if their baby was getting enough or too much milk and that it could potentially place restrictions on the mother.

Jacque Gerrard, the director for England at the Royal College of Midwives, said: “Any initiative that goes towards helping mothers start and sustain breastfeeding for longer is positive as we know the health benefits from being breastfed last a lifetime.”

Less than half of women breastfeed after two months, survey finds

Is $17.5bn incentive enough for far more mothers to breastfeed?

The advantages of breastfeeding are clear for babies and mothers – how can worldwide advancement groups advertise it? Photograph: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

The Worldwide Little one Meals Action Network (Ibfan) launched a global report in December 2013 calling for an investment of much more than $ 17bn (£10.7bn) yearly to protect and increase the bar on breastfeeding practice.

The hope is that this will help reduce the prospective wellness problems faced by infants who are not breastfed – such as weight problems and diabetes and inhibited cognitive performance, and to shed light on likely well being hazards faced by women who do not breastfeed this kind of as breast and ovarian cancers.

Despite all the proof for the advantages of breastfeeding, of the 135 million infants born every single 12 months, 83 million are not breastfed as a lot as the Planet Well being Organisation recommends. Global prices of optimal infant and young child feeding practices continue to stagnate and have not proven improvement over the past two decades.

There are many prospective reasons for this. Past a broad lack of awareness of the positive aspects of breastfeeding, breastfeeding can be tough if the culture of the mothers’ community is opposed to it. If bottle-feeding is a societal norm and it is deemed equal to breastfeeding, it might turn out to be hard for the mom to stick to breastfeeding and have self-assurance in her milk provide. Mothers could want encouragement and individual support to start and proceed breastfeeding, and this is some thing that wider society can help them to do.

But the underlying fact is that when it comes to infants, there has been no sustained outcry at the millions who die due to inappropriate feeding. If the issue is so relevant to public health, why is missing from the policy agenda?Is it that the comforting messages of the baby foods market have deafened us to hearing the information, and softened the urge to act?

To rise to the commitments referred to as for within the Ibfan report, governments and global companies could consider the following actions:

Recommendations for governments and policymakers

• Plan and price range to employ the WHO’s worldwide technique for infant and youthful youngster feeding.

• Discover gaps in present breastfeeding policies and programmes employing WHO’s assessment resources.

• Primarily based on the policy gaps discovered, produce nationwide and sub-national action strategies for a single to 5 many years with clear budgets to bridge them.

• Produce national, regional and/or provincial monitoring and periodic reporting systems on optimal breastfeeding practices.

• Market the benefits of breastfeeding to citizens, in terms of illness reduction and long-phrase overall health, as effectively as expense financial savings.

Suggestions for international organisations

• Allocate certain budgets for escalating optimal breastfeeding within existing international funds for kid survival, nutrition and health.

• The existing estimates on scaling up nutrition intervention offered by the Globe Financial institution do not entirely reflect the funds needed for to protect, advertise and help breastfeeding. They must for that reason be revisited, taking into account the broad interventions needed for universal solutions for optimum breastfeeding.

• A lot of companies talk a lot about breastfeeding, but they are not able to be taken seriously with no obviously stating how they address it. All worldwide organisations must report annually the cash spent on programmes or enhancing policy for optimal breastfeeding.

Suitable nutrition in the 1,000 days is essential for a child’s advancement. As the global health burden from child malnutrition exhibits no indicators of waning, neither ought to our dedication to action.

Dr Kailash Chand OBE is deputy chair British Health-related Association Council. Comply with @KailashChandOBE on Twitter

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Is $17.5bn incentive enough for far more mothers to breastfeed?

Let mothers breastfeed their babies in workplace meetings, says Dame Sally Davies

Mothers need to be allowed to breastfeed their children at work and even in office meetings, the country’s chief healthcare officer Professor Sally Davies has explained.

Professor Davies mentioned ladies ought to be allowed to feed their babies in the workplace as component of daily lifestyle.

Dame Sally, who earns far more than £225,000 a year as the Government’s prime healthcare advisor, described the time that she shocked male colleagues when she attempted to breastfeed her daughter in the course of a meeting, the Mail reported.

Speaking of the want to make breastfeeding far more ‘acceptable’, she said: ‘I was there in this giant shirt with a child hiding below it and a comment was produced and my response was quite sharp.

Addressing an occasion organised by the Wellbeing of Women charity in London yesterday, Dame Sally, 64, mentioned that one particular way of boosting women’s prospective customers in the workplace would be encouraging them to breastfeed at operate.

Prof Davies claimed that women physicians have been underestimated and poorly paid as properly as far significantly less most likely to be in positions of energy.

She used her speech to try and motivate the NHS to do more to ensure females can ‘make it up the ladder’.

Let mothers breastfeed their babies in workplace meetings, says Dame Sally Davies