The Decision to Breastfeed

One of the first decisions a new mother is called on to make can also be her smartest. It's the decision to breastfeed.

A smart decision is to breastfeed for six months. A smarter decision is to breastfeed for a year. The longer a mother breastfeeds, the healthier it is for both the mother and the baby.

Fortunately, for Shelby County babies, the number of mothers making the decision to breastfeed is increasing – up 41% overall between 2004 and 2010. Meanwhile, breastfeeding among African-American mothers has significantly increased by 87% and now one out of two African-American mothers give their newborns the best source of nutrition they can have – breast milk.

That said, the percentage of mothers who start breastfeeding in Shelby County – 60.3% - is still significantly lower than the national average of 75%. Therein lies our challenge. Nationally, after six months, only about half of mothers are still breastfeeding, and after a year, about one in four still are. In other words, if the national averages hold true for Shelby County, it means that only about 30% of mothers are breastfeeding after six months and only about 15% of mothers after one year.

It's a troubling statistic that means that too many babies born in Shelby County do not get the nutritional equivalent of a secret weapon for their healthy development. Every drop of breast milk has magical properties for babies. There are thousands of working, living cells and protective antibodies that prevent infections and sickness, and gastrointestinal systems, and study after study has shown that breast milk make babies smarter – 8 points higher than bottle-fed babies on cognitive tests and they get better grades later in school as well.

Breastfeeding strengthens the bond between mother and baby, reducing stress, and it's also thought to lower the risk of breast and ovarian cancers in mothers. The total medical costs are lower for fully breastfed babies, and employers should like this: healthier babies mean that mothers miss less work to care for sick babies.

Here, at The Urban Child Institute, we have a laser-like focus on the first three years of a baby's life as the brain is developing at an accelerated pace never to be repeated again. That's why we are so passionate about breastfeeding: there is no better start in life for a baby.

Improvements in a number of local and national programs, policies, and laws are aligning with increased understanding of the importance of breastfeeding. At a federal level, the Nutrition Services' Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program made changes to encourage mothers to breastfeed and mounted a national campaign to increase awareness. In Tennessee, new laws were passed to promote and protect mothers' right to express breast milk at work for their infants and to permit mothers to breastfeed an infant under a year of age in public. In our community, the Shelby County Breastfeeding Coalition used positive images and messages to support mothers breastfeeding their babies.

It may seem that there's nothing left to be done, but we can do more. Each of us should become part of a constituency advocating for breastfeeding in hospitals, in our churches, in our neighborhoods, and in our families.

We can encourage and support mothers to give their babies their best start in life. We can foster work environments that support nursing mothers and provide a place for mothers to nurse and pump breast milk. We can advocate for government programs that promote and encourage breastfeeding. We can call for programs and policies in our hospitals that are supportive of breastfeeding. We can become educators to others about the nutritional value of breast milk for infants.

In the end, perhaps we can change signs that now read "Breastfeeding in Progress" to "Brain Development in Progress."