Surely on more than one occasion you will have heard a mother say that her son was hungry, that he began to give him formula milk and that that was the beginning of the end of breastfeeding, because he wanted more and more artificial milk and held less to his chest. Perhaps you have even lived it in your flesh. Well, it seems logical, because when artificial milk is used as a solution, the usual thing is that when the child cries demanding more food, because he has grown and gained weight and needs more, he will be given more formula milk and, more prepared, less breastmilk.
However, yesterday I woke up with a headline who came to say the opposite, because he said that those mothers who supplement breastfeeding with formula milk end up breastfeeding for longer than those mothers who do not. As always, we cannot stay in the headline and you have to read what research is behind and what it is based on to get that conclusion. Thus we will know the nuances of the premise and the factors of the study that may be able to deny it.
Let's talk about the study
The study has been carried out at the University of California San Francisco, in the United States, and as they explain administering small amounts of formula milk early to babies who experience significant weight loss in the first few days It can help increase the time they are breastfed by their mothers.
To carry it out, a sample of 40 babies between 24 and 48 hours of life that had lost more than 5% of birth weight. Half of them were given 10 ml of formula milk after each feeding and the other half they were told to continue breastfeeding their babies on demand. Those ten milliliters of formula milk were administered with a syringe, to avoid confusion of the child between the nipple of the bottle and the nipple of the mother and the idea was that they only take it for the first two to five days, until the mother had already transitional milk
They compared the number of children who drank artificial milk at the week of life and saw that, although all were drinking breast milk, only 10% of the babies who had taken formula in the hospital continued to do so, in front of a 47% of those who received the advice of giving only breast milk (9 of the 19 children were already drinking artificial milk by parents' choice).
Three months later they saw again which children in each group continued to drink breast milk and which did not and found that of the children who took the 10 ml in each drink the first few days 79% were still exclusively breastfed (15 of the 19 children), while in the other group, the one who did not drink artificial milk and received the recommendation to continue breastfeeding only, 42% did (8 of the 19 children).
Valerie Flaherman, lead author of the study, said the following:
So far we have not explored whether it is possible to identify babies who could benefit from the use of the initial formula milk. This study provides the first evidence that the formula limited at the beginning may provide important benefits to some newborns ... Based on our results, doctors may consider recommending the temporary use of a small amount of formula for new mothers whose babies are experiencing a significant loss of weight ahead of time.
Possible limitations and biases in the study
Reading what I just explained and the author's conclusions it seems clear that the best thing to do for a baby who is losing enough weight the first two days is to give her artificial milk, however there are several issues that we must consider before Reason what we just read.
The first thing to keep in mind is that the number of children included in the study is very low. A sample of 40 children is a very small sample and the results may not be significant, it being necessary to repeat the experiment with many more children to see if the results occur again.
The second is that while some children perform an intervention (they are given 10 ml of artificial milk in a syringe), over the others nothing is done, they are only told to remain the same. For the study to be valid something should also be done with the children of the control group, either give them 10 ml of the mother's milk, or give them glucosated serum. This would serve to show if the best breastfeeding rates a posteriori they have to do with artificial milk or the feeling that something has been done for a baby who is losing weight faster than usual.
Value what gives you more confidence: "Mommy, your child is losing weight faster than usual, we are going to give him some artificial milk to stop this tendency until you have more milk so that it is already you alone that makes him grow "o" Mommy, your son is losing weight faster than usual, let's see if we stay the same, only with breast milk, so when you raise the milk you will make him grow alone. " As a general rule, when a child is losing more weight than usual parents need a solutionWell, the last thing they want is to harm the health of their children. As the mothers of the second group nobody solved anything, five days later, when they had turned a week, half of the children were already drinking artificial milk (logical, if I have no confidence in my possibilities and I see that by giving only breast milk my son may have health problems, I will look for the solution that nobody offers me).
The third thing we have to keep in mind is that 10 ml is very little. It is true that artificial milk is usually the cause of the end of many lactations and the reason is that there are children who when they see that a bottle comes out of a lot of milk without hardly any effort they end up rejecting the breast. To avoid this, the researchers decided to give the milk with a syringe and also give very little, so that there was not too much effect on the production of breast milk. The concept is adequate, however, I do not believe that 10 ml of milk per dose save anyone's life.
In other words, the mothers who received the intervention continued to breastfeed, not because their children had taken artificial milk, but because they saw something being done for them, because they felt that they were given a little more time until the milk went up and so they took their children's food with more tranquility and less distrust. Actually, we all know that until milk rises, children take colostrum, and we know that that is enough for all babies. Maybe these children were sucking little or maybe they were taking badly and the technique had to be reviewed. I comment on this because perhaps with a little interest in solving that weight loss by reviewing the position and helping mothers to trust their abilities they could achieve the same results without giving formula milk, which is still modified cow's milk with the consequent risk of allergic reaction for babies.
I do not say that the invention is wrong, because most children were still breastfed at three months, however, I think the same is achieved with support and interest towards the motherWell, as I say it seems that success comes more for the confidence and self-confidence that mothers acquire when someone helps them than for the fact of drinking small amounts of artificial milk. The headline should then change, I think, to something like "Support and early education for mothers who breastfeed make them breastfeed for longer." I say this because saying that "supplementing with formula milk can help mothers breastfeed for a longer time" may mislead many mothers who, trying to do mixed breastfeeding, get to achieve precisely the opposite, that your children stop breastfeeding.
