Over 2,000 mothers were studied from the third trimester of pregnancy through the first year of their infants’ lives. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveyed the mothers about their infant feeding practices. Results from this Infant Feeding Practices Study II will be available publicly from the CDC at the end of 2008, but in the meantime the American Academy of Pediatrics reports:
Among the study findings were that one-fourth of mothers do not place their child on their backs to sleep, as recommended by the American Academy of …read more

A study for the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases revealed new ideas about the ability of breastfeeding to prevent rheumatoid arthritis. BBC News reports:
They found women who had breastfed for 13 months or more were half as likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis as those who had never breastfed. Those who breastfed for between one and 12 months had a 25% decreased risk. The study also found that simply having children and not breastfeeding did not seem to protect the women against developing rheumatoid arthritis.
More study is needed in this area to determine exactly what role breastfeeding and lifestyle choices play …read more

Researchers just released results from a study of 14,000 children over the course of six-and-a-half years (the abstract claims it’s the largest randomized trial ever conducted in human lactation!) The study attempted to determine whether any associated link between breastfeeding and IQ is due to breastfeeding alone, or the differences between mothers who choose to breastfeed and mothers who formula-feed. To take out the differences between mothers, the 14,000 mother-baby pairs were divided randomly into two different groups, one of which was given encouragement to breastfeed and one of which was not. The encouragement group was more likely to breastfeed …read more

Study results just released yesterday indicate that the breastfeeding rate in the United States has risen to three out of every four mother-baby pairs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reported the breastfeeding initiation rate at 77% for babies born in 2005-2006. Key points of the report include:
~ The percentage of infants who were ever breastfed increased from 60% among infants who were born in 1993-1994 to 77% among infants who were born in 2005-2006.
~ Breastfeeding rates increased significantly among non-Hispanic black women from 36% in 1993-1994 to 65% in …read more