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Promoting breastfeeding - key facts

• Breastmilk provides the nutritionally ideal food for human infants.
• Human breast contains many components that aid optimum development and function of the infant's digestive and vascular systems, kidneys, liver and immunity.
• Breastfeeding promotes optimum growth, reduced malocclusion due to the effects of suckling on jaw shape and development, improved visual acuity and psychomotor development due to polyunsaturated fatty acids in the milk, and higher IQ scores either due to factors in the milk or greater cognitive stimulation.
• Reviews of research suggest that breastfeeding protects infants and young children against some short term illnesses such as gastroenteritis, respiratory infections, otitis media, bacteraemia, bacterial meningitis, botulism, urinary tract infection and necrotising enterocolitis.
• Breastfeeding reduces the risk of SIDS and has also been suggested as a possible protective factor for a range of chronic disorders in childhood and later in life. These include cow's milk allergy, asthma, obesity, Type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, atherosclerosis and lymphoma.
• Exclusive and predominant breastfeeding provide greater protection for infants than partial breastfeeding, but any breastfeeding provides greater immunologic and nutritional benefits than no breastfeeding at all.
• Breastfeeding usually benefits women's physical and mental health. Physical benefits include less bleeding postpartum, contraceptive effects, improved bone remineralisation postpartum, less ovarian cancer and less premenopausal breast cancer. Mental health benefits include reduced response to stress and promotion of maternal behaviour and bonding.
• Maternal nutrition before and during pregnancy is important to ensure adequate nutrient stores for breastfeeding.
• Maternal nutrition appears to influence the quality of breast milk.
• A WHO Expert Consultation has recommended that breast milk is the only source of nutrition for healthy infants until they are six months old. WHO also recommends that children should continue to be breastfed up to two years of age or beyond while receiving appropriate complementary foods.
• Initiation of breastfeeding is high but early cessation is also high in NSW.
• Breastfeeding rates in NSW compared to most other states are at the low end of the range for all indicators of initiation and duration.
• Increased breastfeeding rates could potentially reduce costs of hospitalisation due to gastrointestinal illness and necrotising enterocolitis, outpatient and general practitioner treatment for eczema, educational costs associated with neurodevelopmental impairment. It could also reduce costs for children and adolescents with Type 1 diabetes.
• Early cessation of breastfeeding is attributable to many factors including the views and experience of breastfeeding mothers, the influence of others, environmental obstacles and lack of incentives.
• The decision to breastfeed is made before or early in pregnancy.