The request for participants in the BFing study reminded me about a study
that I participated in several years ago. I was asked  with the birth of my
first child in 1980  to participate in The Infant Feeding Study conducted at
UNC Chapel Hill and ECU. I had to go in for interviews, give milk samples,
and they measured and prodded my babies ( I had two to participate over the
past 16 yrs). I was a young Mom who thought I was contributing to "Scientific
study". When the study was published, the principle author sent a copy to the
Moms who requested it in advance of publication. By then I was a LLL leader.
My best friend, also a Leader was also participating. When we got the study I
had several questions. The first was " How did the author define BFing?". I
called him and had an interesting discussion on how he defined BFing. Also,
where did he find the BFing Moms? Since the BFing rate here was less then 10
% at hospital discharge in 1980 ( the year I started the study) and this is
the more educated and higher income of the counties in Eastern NC, I would
presume this county had about the highest % of BFing in any of the
geographical area. So where did he find all these BFing Moms?  I will bet
money that my friend and I were the only two exclusively BFing moms in the
study. He said he didn't think to make a distinction between BFing
exclusively and supplemented infants. Also, how did he compare exclusively
BFing Moms who didn't start solids for 8-10 months with Moms who started
solids at 3-4 months, which was probably the norm, if not earlier in 1980? So
how valid is a study where the subjects are not clearly defined?
So I would question how this study is going to define "Breastfeeding".

Barbara Whitehead, IBCLC
Eastern NC
PS-I still have to send in my kids report cards to The Infant Feeding Study
so they can follow the "Intellectual development of BF vs ABM fed kids". So
the level of intelligence in teens who were BF   will be calculated by my
son's report cards. Boy, are we in trouble!!

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