The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion set very specific and aggressive goals for increasing breastfeeding initiation and duration in its Healthy People 2010 report. Published in 2000, the Healthy People breastfeeding targets identified significant health threats and established goals to reduce them by 2010.
In 2006 we got a sense of how much progress we were making when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the 2006 Breastfeeding Report Card. Breastfeeding advocates and educators shuddered to see that the number of moms who attempted to nurse their babies was slim, and those who continued to breastfeed past the initiation phase quit long before health professionals recommend. Reaching the breastfeeding initiation and duration goals set for 2010 seemed unlikely.
That brings us to today. The CDC just released the 2010 Breastfeeding Report Card. It reveals breastfeeding rates at the national and state levels at the following postpartum milestones:
The CDC's attention to exclusivity rates is especially important. The American Academy of Pediatrics and other major medical organizations around the world recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life and breastfeeding with supplemental foods for a minimum of 12 months.
Unfortunately, the only category in this report card where the U.S. gets an A is initiation. Three out of every four new mothers in the United States try breastfeeding. This statistic puts a check in the box next to the Healthy People 2010 national objective for breastfeeding initiation.
Beyond this, we haven't achieved any of the other Healthy People 2010 objectives, as shown in the chart below. Notice there have been no changes in the categories other than initiation rates in the last four years.
The news is disappointing. Ultimately, a 75 percent initiation rate means very little if duration and exclusivity rates remain low. Currently, 43 percent of moms make it to the six month mark, with 22.4 percent reaching a full year. Exclusive breastfeeding rates haven't budged either since 2006, with 33 percent of moms breastfeeding exclusively at three months, and only 13.3 percent at six months. This is despite increased awareness and research backing up the importance of exclusive breastfeeding for this length of time.
While our national rates remain largely unchanged, some states are showing progress. In Alaska, Colorado, Montana, Oregon and Vermont, the average rate of exclusive breastfeeding at six months is 22.9 percent, compared to a national average of 13.3 percent.
In several other states, breastfeeding rates remain low. Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and West Virginia have fallen to single digit percentages in some categories.
None of this surprises me. But it does renew my sense of urgency. Breastfeeding alone can significantly impact the health and well being of children and their mothers, and I believe that it's the lack of education and support for new moms that are primary factors driving these statistics.
However, we're making inroads. The workplace accommodations for breastfeeding mothers mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will make it easier for moms to continue nursing after maternity leave. Michelle Obama's focus on breastfeeding promotion as part of her Let's Move campaign to end childhood obesity will put our society's ignorance of breastfeeding benefits in the spotlight.
But we must do more. The 2010 Breastfeeding Report Card highlights a few key recommendations for increasing initiation and duration rates nationwide. They include:
The CDC will release a new Breastfeeding Report Card in 2014, bringing breastfeeding rates again to the fore. Every day up until then I'll be doing what I can as a breastfeeding educator to improve those numbers. And I charge every mother out there who is capable of breastfeeding her child to embrace her power to shift this country's breastfeeding behaviors and attitudes.
The benefits of breastfeeding, and the health risks of not breastfeeding, are significant. We can make our children, ourselves and our nation healthier. Let's not wait to implement change and show our support for breastfeeding. Let's not be disappointed again in 2014.
Follow Gina Ciagne, CLC on Twitter: www.twitter.com/GinaAtLansinoh
Gina Ciagne, CLC: Breastfeeding: Becoming a Healthier Nation From the Start
Gina Ciagne, CLC: Breastfeeding: Why Won't The IRS Give Mothers a Break
Breastfeeding.com - Everything for the New Mom
Breastfeeding Tips, Information & Advice | BabyCenter
I didn't breastfeed either of my children, and my mother never breastfed her kids. We are all healthy as horses. Nary an illness among us. How do you explain so many years of healthy Baby Boom kids when doctors advised against breastfeeding at that time?
I wish the La Leche League and other "breast is best" propagandists would stop pressuring women to commit a ridiculous amount of time, sometimes quite painfully, to this method. To what end? When someone shows me clear, statistically significant data that shows breastfed babies in industrialized nations do better than bottle fed babies, I'll concede. But, as Rosin pointed out in her Atlantic Monthly article, that statistical significance just isn't there. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/04/the-case-against-breast-feeding/7311/
What if you were paying a bill, and the woman at the desk taking your money, was pumping her milk with a breast pump when you got there?Would you be offended? Just curious because a lot of the comments here are about having to go back to work and that is one of the huge obstacles nursing mothers face.
I didn't use the word offended, that popped up somewhere else on the post. I am not offended by the human body in any way. For me, it's not about the act of breastfeeding, it's about a weak stomach.
I have never met anyone who "pumped" at work, if they did, I probably wouldn't know it. So maybe I have. Employers should be supportive, I agree. I have absolutely no problem with anyone in the world breastfeeding, or even pumping at work.
I just wish people would be a little more time/place considerate. And I would prefer not to see it while I'm eating. No more, no less. If that throws me into the terrible human category, well, what can i say?
The formula companies (chief among them Nestle of Switzerland) have pushed a "bottle baby over all" policy for generations. I should know--I was bottle-fed (soy formula, yet!) from birth until weaning. Of course, it was the early 1960's, and the climate then was if a woman breast-fed her child in public, the mother got nailed for indecent exposure!
And like it or not, the human breast (both in males and females) are considered "secondary" sexual organs, as well as (in females) milk glands for the nourishment of offspring.
There is no excuse for anybody to go pop-eyed when a woman chooses to feed her baby in the way Nature intended. If it offends you, just turn away...it's just between mama and child anyway, and NONE of your concern, thank you very kindly!
I hope things do get better here...we need no return to The Era Of The Bluenoses/Self-Appointed Morality Police. Just let Natutre take it's course!
--RKJ
Think about what needs to be done to make America better for Americans. Things must change.
That could not happen in the US because the breast is seen only as a sex object. The outcry would be deafening.
Really? You know for a fact that is their only motive? Couldn't be that it is feeding time, right? So how long have you been able to read minds? Impressive.
The best way to make a drastic improvement here would be to extend FMLA to six months to a year, and offer compensation (unemployment benefits, or something) during that period. The moral argument for this is clear, but given the number of lives saved and resulting healthier, smarter, children - there is a strong fiscal argument for this too.
Every other industrialized nation offers a longer period of time and compensation in their FMLA equivalent.