It is commonly known that the benefits of breastfeeding are numerous. Pediatric researchers at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia stress this importance by emphasizing how even the sickest of newborns are not beyond the benefits of breast milk.
When a child is born with serious medical problems, breastfeeding is likely to be one of the last things on a worried mother’s mind. But during a recent nurse–lead education program for mothers of very sick newborns at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the nurses stressed how the nutritional importance of breast milk cannot be overlooked, especially when it comes to sick babies.
“Breast milk protects an infant in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) from necrotizing enterocolitis – a devastating disease of the bowel – and from a host of infectious diseases,” said nurse researcher, Diane L. Spatz, PhD.
Although some mothers of sick newborns may have to wait days or even weeks to hold their babies, the nurses leading the program taught them how to pump breast milk shortly after their delivery.
The program was aimed primarily towards getting sick infants to be able to breast-feed by the time they were discharged from the NICU. Fifty-eight of the 80 infants involved in the program were able to successfully breast-feed before being discharged from the hopsital.
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