Lyne wrote regarding feeding management of preterm babies in relation to Lucas article in Pediatrics 2001, sept edition. The neonatologist in question has misread the article. Lucas only recommends in his conclusion special post discharge formula for those parents who ELECTIVELY switch their infants to partial or exclusive formula feeding during the first year. He is the same researcher who passionately supports breastfeeding as the result of his research into IQs and the breastfed baby in which he demonstrated BF babies have significantly higher IQs. Also he has done research to demonstrate BF babies have 6-10 times less incidence of decrotising enterocolitis. Your neonatologist has only read into the article what she has wanted to read--and yes there is a myriad of research out there to support fortifying breast milk in premature babies--however the fortification is gradually reduced naturally as the number of BFs increase. There is some debate amongst some of the research community as to whether these babies should still have some feeds with expressed milk and fortifier purely to continue the linear growth in these vulnerable pre-term infants--and they do put forward a valid argument. Often it is a difficult juggling act to balance all the information out there. In the SCN I work in we do fortify EBM but as more and more BFs are intruduced this naturally peters out as the baby goes home exclusively breastfeeding. However, from what I have read (although this is not what we currently practice), I personally believe for those babies whose mothers switch to formula, a specially fortified post discharge formula would be beneficial. But in my eyes the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding wins hands down as the number one choice for a whole host of reasons that we all know about. To access the article you can get a 10 day free subscription to mdconsult; http://www.mdconsult.com You will have access to 0ver 50 journals some of which have loads of info on breastfeeding. Look particularly at Pediatric Clinics of North America both Feb 2001 and April 2001 as they are special breastfeeding editions . Marian Rigney RN _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp *********************************************** 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