Breast-feeding – A Natural and Inexpensive Way to Improve Maternal and Infant Health

In Africa, millions of pregnant women and children under five die because of poor maternal and pre-natal care. But health care specialists say those numbers can be dramatically reduced by following a few easy and inexpensive methods to ensure the good health of mothers and their newborns. From Washington, reporter William Eagle tells us about one – breast-feeding.

Forget expensive medicines and complicated instructions. Some solutions for saving the lives of mothers and infants have been around for centuries and continue to work today.

One of the simplest is feeding newborns exclusively with the mother’s milk for several months. The method is not universally followed. In some cultures, taboos discourage dependence on breast-feeding; in others, the use of enriched powdered or dry milk has been encouraged. But experts warn that adding other liquids can introduce germs into the baby’s system that may lead to diarrhea and other illnesses.

Mary Beth Power is a reproductive health advisor for Save the Children in Westport, Connecticut.

"When you look at children exclusively breast-fed in many countries, it is low – like one percent in Niger," she said.

"In many hot and dry places," she continued,"people assume the baby needs water, because they can’t see how much milk the baby is taking in. People [also] introduce other foods that are considered necessary, like…special teas or honey water to sweeten a child’s disposition. All those things introduce potential for infection, whereas breast milk is not only the best food for babies, but has anti-infective property. If you expressed breast milk into a cup it would kill germs in the cup – it’s like [the commercial disinfectant] Lysol in the milk – it can reduce the infection or any infective properties inside baby’s gut."

Especially nutritious is colostrum, the first of the breast milk, which is rich in carbohydrates, proteins and anti-bodies. Doctors say it also promotes an infant’s first stool, which includes dead bloods cells and other waste and helps prevent jaundice.

She said, "The other taboo against breast milk is that…colostrum does not look like milk. It is usually yellowish in color. Many people think there is something wrong with that – that it is something to be expelled. So people will express the milk and not feed the baby for a few days until the mother’s milk came in, or feed the baby something else and throw out the colostrum and provide breast milk later, but that colostrum has those anti-infective properties. It is like the baby’s first vaccination, so the immune properties inside the mother are transferred to baby through breast milk. That’s another reason why these breast-feeding practices are sub-optimal in many countries."

Prolonged breast-feeding is also a natural way to promote birth-spacing, another way of ensuring the health of mother and her newborn. Health experts say an optimal period between births is between three and five years.

Power says a woman who breastfeeds exclusively is not likely to ovulate for six months. She says in some countries health experts recommend LAM (Lactational Amenorrhea Method), whereby a woman breastfeeds for six months and also adds another method of family planning.

LAM has been used successfully in Egypt, where Save the Children health experts say even local religious authorities have accepted the idea.

According to the group's country director in Cairo, Patrick Crump, "In Islam as in Christianity, there are the same sorts of debates [over controlling births]. Originally, the position of Islam was that birth control was not something that you find in the Koran – it was a foreign concept. But over time, public health officials [and] religious authorities have found citations in the Koran that promote birth spacing."

"There is a sura [chapter] of the Koran," he continued,"that says if a mother is still breast-feeding and gives birth, she is penalizing or killing both children. So, Muslim authorities have started promoting the concept of birth spacing…. You should wait 24 months; the normal breast-feeding period is 18-24 months. Mothers are encouraged to not have another child until breast-feeding the previous child."

Religious authorities have not come out in support of any particular family planning method to help space births. But experts say women receive counseling after delivery and many use a wide range of available birth control methods, including condoms, inter-uterine devices (IUDs) and depovera, the shot that includes the hormone progestin to suppress ovulation.

Save the Children says the Egyptian government has made impressive gains in improving maternal and child health over the past 15 years. Maternal morality has been cut by 52 percent. Meanwhile, infant deaths in the first year of life have been reduced by over 63 percent and mortality in the first month of life by a third. Health experts also credit Egypt not only for ensuring improved care in cities, but also in rural and other needy areas of the country.
by www.voanews.com

Babies only sleep safely in crib with just a baby blanket

A report released by Ontario's Office of the Chief Coroner says babies are dying needlessly because they're in overcrowded cribs and sleeping in beds with others.

The 28-page document by Dr. Jim Cairns says there has been a noticeable rise in child deaths from unsafe sleeping environments, such as crowded cribs and babies sharing beds with siblings or parents.

It seems twenty-one children died from unsafe sleeping environments in 2005, a rise from the 16 in 2004 and of the 30 infant deaths in 2006 and the first months of 2007, twenty were caused by "co-sleeping" with adults or in other unsafe sleeping environments.

In the report Dr. Cairns does not pull any punches and says there are no 'ands, ifs or buts', the only safe sleeping environment for a baby is in a crib with a proper-fitting mattress.

Dr. Cairns says there should be no bumper pads, no toys, no blankets, no anything in the crib other than a small baby blanket which must be tucked in and the baby should be placed face up.

To illustrate his point he gives the dramatic example of a five-week-old baby which suffocated in a crib filled with adult-sized pillows, comforters and stuffed toys, and he says such situations are not rare.

The doctor says parents should not share beds with young children because of the risk of rolling onto them or suffocation from the bedding.

Some groups, however, say the advantages of parents sleeping with their children shouldn't be discounted, if co-sleeping is done safely.

The Canadian breastfeeding support group La Leche League of Canada says some research shows that mothers who have babies either in the bed with them, or very close by were more likely to be able to continue breastfeeding longer.

But Health Canada warns parents not to sleep with infants under the age of two and the coroner also adds that the weight of the argument is in the number of dead infants.

A recent review of 10 autopsy reports from the Hospital for Sick Children showed that eight were the result of unsafe sleeping accommodations.

Warnings have been issued in Canada, the U.S. and Britain about the risks of sleeping accommodations for babies, and from the Canadian Paediatric Society and the American Medical Association.
source : Child Health News

10 tips: How to hit the jackpot at yard sales

Whether you're a devotee of yard sales or the kind of person who simply gets dragged along to them, you can greatly improve the experiences you have at these events with a little bit of advance planning.
By Laura T. Coffey, Times Correspondent
Whether you're a devotee of yard sales or the kind of person who simply gets dragged along to them, you can greatly improve the experiences you have at these events with a little bit of advance planning:

1 Map out your route. Check your newspaper's classified section and look for geographical concentrations of good sales. You can do the same thing online at this Craigslist link for the Tampa Bay area tampa.craigslist.org/gms/. Decide where you want to go before you leave home so you don't get lost or waste time and gasoline.

2 Know the drill. Neighborhood or streetwide sales and sales at churches, schools and nonprofit organizations tend to offer the biggest and best variety. Sales in affluent neighborhoods typically have higher-quality items, although they may be overpriced. It usually isn't practical to shop for baby clothes in a retirement community or antiques in a neighborhood with jungle gyms in every backyard.

3 Strategize about when and how to shop. If you go early in the day, you'll get the best selection; if you go late in the day, you'll get the best prices. Always try to get the seller to name a price before blurting out what you'd be willing to spend.

4 Remember, you're after bargains. Be aware of how much it would cost to buy an item new, and pay 10 percent or less for it. Pay up to 25 percent for something you really want. Bring plenty of small bills and change.

5 Haggle. It might not be nice to haggle over some purchases - say, items in the $1-and-less bin - but don't be afraid to haggle over items you care about. Leave your phone number with the seller if you can't agree on a price.

6 Take items on a test drive. Examine the condition of any item. Open the drawers, plug in appliances, check clothing and books for mildew and hold vinyl record albums flat to see whether they're warped. Look inside boxes.

7 Expect great deals on clothes. You can find plenty of inexpensive clothes because they're generally poor sellers. When buying for kids, don't put complete confidence in the size on the label. The garment has likely been washed many times, so it may have shrunk.

8 Know when to say no. The Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends you do not buy certain items at yard sales, including: soft bedding for babies, car seats, cribs, accordion-style baby gates, zippered bean-bag chairs and hair dryers with plain plugs. If you have a question about a specific item, call the commission's hot line tollf-free at 1-800-638-2772.

9 Care for potential purchases. Pick up any items you may want and carry them around with you until you make a final decision. If you don't, chances are someone else will snatch them up. Drive around with a bag or bags and some extra newspapers so you can wrap up breakables and prevent purchases from rolling around inside your vehicle.

10 See the big picture. Examine items not only for their primary uses but for their potential uses. Imagine how an item could look in the future with a little TLC. But if you know you'll never restore an item that needs some help, don't buy it.

Laura T. Coffey (laura@tentips.org)

Tips on buying bedding

Consider a duvet. You can tuck a comforter inside the outer duvet cover, so a duvet is more easily laundered and stored than the traditional comforter.

Decide how warm you want to be. An extra-warm down comforter will likely be toasty in July. Some prefer a comforter in a year-round weight.

Think about thread count, a measure of threads per square inch. Some consumers want a very high thread count -- and you can buy luxurious, baby-soft sheets in thread counts of 1,000 -- but others prefer lower count sheets, praising them for their crispness.

Buy extras. Extra pillows for style, extra sheet sets for later use. Linens wear out. If you have your heart set on using a particular pattern well into the future -- maybe they match your comforter or window treatment -- you will need duplicates. And two years from now, stores may not have your favorite pillow cases on their shelves.

Know that price varies. You can get a pillow for under $10, but you can also buy a nice set of sheets for more than $100. If you add up all the pieces for the bed, you can figure on spending hundreds of dollars. Small boudoir or tambourine pillows may cost $35 apiece, and since the style is to fill the bed with decorative pillows, the cost will mount. Of course, you can also look for sales, or go through the bins in discount stores for bed-in-a-bag sets.)

Know your style. Florals are usually, but not always, more traditional in style. Stripes and solids tend to look more contemporary.

To update the bed without spending much money, add a throw.

-- Judith W. Winne

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