If the level of iron in human milk is to be taken as the norm for iron needs in infants (as it should) then there is no point in saying those levels in human milk are low. No, they are normal, levels in other products will very likely be high or too high or increased in order to correct for insufficient availability.
Warmy,
Gonneke, IBCLC, LLLL in southern Netherlands
Safe Passage Birth Services <[log in to unmask]> wrote: No, she did not imply that breastmilk is deficient in any way. She
only said that the iron levels are very low--those were her words.
That said, she explained that the RDI of iron for infants should be
the amount that one could expect to receive in a day's worth of
breastmilk consumption (about .27 mg/day). So, the recommendations are
no higher than the content of human milk. Her point was that babies
need to get iron from somewhere, and the optimal source of that iron
is from their own iron stores, which can only be achieved with delayed
cord clamping. She cautions against prophylactic supplementation of
iron, as that is problematic for a variety of reasons.
I had nothing but admiration for her presentations. I learned so much
from her, and don't doubt her unwaivering support of exclusive
breastfeeding. If anyone wants to read the slides from that
presentation, they can be found here (and I just noticed that in her
conclusions she defines "delayed" as 1-2 mins, as opposed to the 3-5
that I'd remembered):
http://www.lllcoloradowyoming.org/Syllabus%20Files/Saturday,%20October%2020/Session%203%20Iron%20Status%20of%20Breastfed%20Infants/iron%20status.pdf
Gina Gerboth
www.safepassagebirth.com
On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Molly Brannigan
wrote:
> As a former student of Dr Dewey, I feel confident that she did not suggest
> that levels of iron in human milk are "very, very low" in such a way to
> disparage human milk, or to suggest that in any context there would be a
> preferable choice over breastmilk.
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