I will be interested in comments on this article.

Ruth Scuderi
Westfield, MA

--------------

Excessive Weight Gain During Pregnancy Impairs Breast-Feeding Ability


April 9, 2001WESTPORT (Reuters Health) - Women who begin pregnancy at normal
weights but gain more than 35 pounds during the pregnancy have an increased
risk of having difficulty initiating breast-feeding, researchers reported
this week at the Experimental Biology 2001 meeting in Orlando.
Dr. Kathleen Rasmussen, of Cornell University, and colleagues studied the
records of 2494 white women with singleton births during a 9-year period. The
researchers found that almost half of the women who were normal weight before
pregnancy gained more than the 24- to 35-lb weight gain recommended by the
Institute of Medicine during pregnancy. The Institute recommends that obese
women gain less than 24 pounds.
In an interview with Reuters Health, Dr. Rasmussen said that excess weight
gain made the women "74% more likely to be unsuccessful when attempting to
breast-feed."
The women in the study all delivered their infants at Mary Imogene Bassett
Hospital, in Cooperstown, New York, she said.
Dr. Rasmussen believes that there are several possible explanations for the
association between weight gain and difficulty breast-feeding. First, she
said that the areola is often much larger when a woman is obese and "it may
be more difficult for the infant to compress adequately to get a good milk
supply," she said.
Additionally, an obese woman may have difficulty finding a comfortable
position for nursing or, because of psychosocial factors, may be more
uncomfortable continuing breast-feeding. "These women are likely to need more
support to successfully breast-feed," she said.
Another difficulty may be biological. Normal-weight women get progesterone
from the placenta, she said. After delivery that source is gone and that
signals the body to start producing milk. However, fat is also a source for
progesterone, so obese women continue to produce progesterone after the
placenta is removed. "So it can take them longer to develop a milk supply,"
Dr. Rasmussen said.
She added that the study findings indicate the need for additional support
and education of obese women so that they "can successfully breast-feed their
children."

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html