Hi Jennifer,
I've just been looking at the recent literature on support for breastfeeding
mothers. There is a pretty large amount of variability between study results
but a general trend is that professional support increases breastfeeding
initiation and lay support increases exclusivity of breastfeeding. Neither
professional nor lay support has consistently been shown to increase
duration of breastfeeding. I can believe that this might be the case with
prof support just because women might see professionals infrequently but 'm
not completely convinced of this result when it comes to lay support because
there is support and *support* and some studies had volunteers who had 2.5
hours of education before starting as peer counsellors and said counsellors
felt they had enough education! There was a cochrane report done looking at
this a few years ago.
Are you linked in with lay breastfeeding supporters in your community? Are
you able to link women in with breasteeding supporters? I know that some
think that professionals see themselves as being in competition with lay
supporters (not saying you're in this category at all) and some lay
supporters feel that professionals are encroaching on their territory. The
reality is that women are best aided when lay supporters and professionals
work in together, they provide different and complementary support to women
and women *need* support if they are to be successful in breastfeeding, they
can't get too much!

Karleen Gribble
Australia


> I have been musing again about the poor continuance rate for breastfeeding
> in my community.  I have pretty good success in encouraging moms to
initiate
> breastfeeding (my patients have the highest initiation rates of any of the
> docs who attend deliveries here) but still have a lot of moms who wean
very
> early, and very few who practice exclusive breastfeeding.

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