Experts Dishing Out Pro-Routine Advice, Get With The Times!

One of Australia's leading authors on breastfeeding, Sue Cox, is launching a new book today entitled Baby Magic. You can read about Cox's credentials here in her biography. On her website Cox has fascinating article "Who Messed Up Breastfeeding?" which looks at the bad advice which came from "experts" with the best of intentions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries:

"Sir Truby King was absolutely convinced that breastfeeding was the only way babies should be fed. In his booklet Natural Feeding for Infants (1918) his opening lines were, 'It may be laid down as an axiom that every mother can nourish her offspring in the natural way. The exceptions are so rare and so striking as merely to prove the rule, that practically speaking, the breastfeeding of babies should be, and could be, universal.'

In his zeal to promote breastfeeding, Sir Truby King presumed to know better than the mothers who had managed very well to breastfeed their babies without imposed rules, since time began. The rules he and his European (male) contemporaries made led to the catastrophic decline in breastfeeding rates in the twentieth century."

She goes on to share that King felt overfeeding was the biggest mistake mothers made when breastfeeding. He recommended that babies should not be fed overnight, and only every 3 hours during the day in the first month of life, and every 4 hours throughout the day after the first month. These concerns were shared by a French professor whose focus was "Underfed babies don't suffer from indigestion - the overfed do." Cox notes that despite King's intention to promote breastfeeding his use of a strict routine led to:

• over-engorged breasts at the early morning feed with resultant nipple trauma
• nipple trauma led to the suggestions of toughening up of nipples with rough towels, nail brushes and applications of methylated spirits which resulted in more nipple trauma in the early postnatal period
• nipple trauma also led to the shortening of feeds in the early postnatal period
• with shortened feeds babies received less colostrum, had low gut motility and higher levels of bilirubin
• higher levels of bilirubin led to the separation of mother and baby and the mistaken need to supplement babies whose jaundice was being treated with ultraviolet light.

She goes on to consider the work of Dr Spock in the Twentieth Century and the promotion of controlled-crying. Finally she looks at Dr James McKenna's research on co-sleeping and skin-to-skin contact in part five of the series. Please read the full series here.

Sadly, despite the fact that research shows feeding routines compromise the breastfeeding relationship and make mother's lives needlessly stressful, so-called experts of the Twenty First Century continue to elicit this bad advice! Yesterday I was reading one supposed baby sleep expert's blog (whose advice would get any knowledgeable person in a Tiz ;) ) where she stated that of her friends who breastfed (because observing one person's group of friends always makes for high quality research, right?!) the only ones who had successfully fed "for a year" were those who had adhered to a routine. That says it all really: an "expert" who doesn't actually know anyone who has breastfed to the World Health Organisation's minimum of two years!

More of Sue Cox's Work
Breastfeeding with Confidence
Breastfeeding: I Can Do That!