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Boston Hospital Pushes Breast Feeding
By JUSTIN POPE
.c The Associated Press
BOSTON (AP) - In the maternity ward at Boston Medical Center, pacifiers are
contraband. The babies are in their mothers arms, not the nursery. And the
posters lining the walls extol the virtues of breast-feeding rather than
infant formula.
The environment won BMC a Baby Friendly designation, granted by the United
Nations and the World Health Organization to hospitals that meet their
breast-feeding standards. Only 32 U.S. hospitals have it, largely because the
standards set infant formula aside as a choice of last resort.
BMC was like most hospitals when Dr. Barbara Philipp arrived six years ago.
Only 6 percent of new mothers fed their babies only breast milk, and infant
formula and calendars advertising infant formula could be found throughout
the maternity unit.
Knowing the health benefits of breast-feeding, Philipp launched a crusade.
``Breast-feeding really happens or doesn't happen in the first week or two
weeks,'' Philipp said, meaning new mothers have to get the message before
they leave the hospital.
Philipp persuaded BMC to discard long-established policies, such as
separating newborns from their mothers and imposing feeding schedules, had
special breast-feeding rooms built, retrained staff and provided guidebooks
for mothers in English, Spanish and French Creole.
In an article in the September issue of the journal Pediatrics, Philipp and
her co-authors credit those changes for a large increase in the number of
mothers leaving BMC with healthy breast-feeding habits.
By 1999, the number of mothers breast-feeding at the hospital was up from 6
percent to 33 percent. And 87 percent of its new mothers had tried to
breast-feed at least once, compared to a national average of 64 percent.
``The numbers in the study support that our mothers want to breast-feed and
the system was obstructing them,'' Philipp said Tuesday as she strolled
through the maternity ward at BMC, where she is director of the
breast-feeding program. ``Like it takes a village to support a child, it
takes a hospital to support a breast-feeder.''
There is good reason to offer that support. Scientific evidence has shown
breast milk protects babies from infection, lowers risk of certain chronic
diseases and seems to foster brain development. The American Academy of
Pediatrics recommends that most babies be breast-fed exclusively for six
months, and that mothers try to continue until babies are a year old.
Sherrice Lewis-Thompson, who delivered her first son, Devon, at BMC on
Sunday, said she hadn't considered breast-feeding until the hospital staff
talked to her.
``They're very persistent,'' Lewis-Thompson, 20, said with a laugh. ``I felt
I really didn't have a choice.''
Earning the Baby Friendly designation requires that hospitals teach new
mothers how to breast-feed; feed newborns only breast milk unless there is a
medical reason not to; allow mothers and infants to remain together 24 hours
a day; and that pacifiers be avoided.
For many hospitals, though, the big obstacle has been another requirement:
that they give up free formula samples to reduce the use, said Cynthia
Turner-Maffei, national coordinator of the Baby-Friendly USA initiative,
which was started in 1991.
``When formula is free, it's so plentiful on the unit that it's the first
thing you think of to solve a problem,'' Turner-Maffei said.
Philipp says BMC, an inner city hospital that delivers about 1,800 babies a
year, initially balked at giving up the free formula until it determined it
needed only about $20,000 worth.
Experts say the formula culture remains ingrained in American hospitals, and
that change will be difficult.
According to the Baby-Friendly USA initiative, at least 45 hospitals are
working on meeting the designation's requirements.
``This hospital in Boston did really a very nice turnaround toward becoming
supportive after delivery and thereafter,'' said Audrey Naylor, president of
the Academy of Breast-feeding Medicine, a physician's group.
On the Net:
Baby-Friendly USA: http://www.mypage.onemain.com/bfusa
Boston Medical Center: http://www.bmc.org
AP-NY-09-06-01 0229EDT
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news
report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed
without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active
hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
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