Is your doctor supportive of breastfeeding?
Saturday July 7, 2007
With breastfeeding in the news again, it's hard to ignore that breastfeeding has some pretty amazing benefits for moms as well as their babies. This most recent is another study in a line of studies, showing that breastfeeding helps prevent breast cancer in moms who breastfeed, particularly moms over the age of 25.
Given all of the press, you may think it's an automatic thing to have a pediatrician who is supportive, but it's not always true. The American Academy of Pediatrics released it's new guidelines for breastfeeding recently. Does your doctor know about it? And do you know how to tell if they are supportive of breastfeeding?
Most doctors will tell you that they are supportive of breastfeeding. But the truth of the matter is that most don't know enough to help you and many actually undermine your efforts without realizing it. So how do you find out if they are really supportive or just giving you lip service...
More breastfeeding information:
Comments
I recently read a blog where a pediatrician told someone that they needed to move their infant out of their bed and into a crib. As I see it, not only is the doc not supportive of co-sleeping, they are not very supportive of breastfeeding either - since most moms find cosleeping to be an easy way to nurse!