Tina,
Interesting thought.......I asked the residents in our pediatric hospital to
make a note of babies who were hospitalized to see if there was a difference
if they were breastfed or not in terms of length of hospital stay, severity
of illness, etc.  That maybe we could focus on one specific illness, such as
RSV and bronchiolitis to check this hypothesis.
First of all they told me that in the ER, they relate differently to babies
who are breastfed and those who are not.  They are much more prone to
releasing a baby who is breastfed than to hospitalize him because they are
already aware of the fact that these babies have fewer complications, and
recover much more quickly.  The breastfed babies who are hospitalized
receive antibiotics much less often than the artificially fed ones. If two
babies present with the same illness, one breastfed, one not, the breastfed
one is treated totally differently.  In other words, if a baby is breastfed,
he is not as high risk as his artificially fed counterpart.
If breastfed babies are hospitalized, the length of stay is much shorter,
and recovery is much faster.
Now I have to convince them to design a study to prove this statistically.
I am often called to the surgical ward to work with mothers of babies who
have had surgery.  All the nurses told me that the breastfed babies recover
much more quickly than the artificially ones, and are released much sooner.
They were curious if there could be a correlation!! (Duh)  Another subject
for a study!!
By the way, all of these residents either breastfed their own babies or
convinced their wives to do so because they were so impressed by the
difference between breastfed and non-breastfed.

Esther Grunis, IBCLC
Lis Maternity Hospital
Tel Aviv, Israel

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