An Alphabet of Breast-feeding

In this third year of war the saving of food is an urgent duty, and the waste of food is strongly and rightly denounced. It is timely, therefore, to draw attention to the serious waste of breast milk caused by the prevalent neglect or mismanagement of breast-feeding. Breast milk is the ideal and complete food of the infant for the first six months of life and can continue to be its principal article of diet for the remainder of the first year. The gross quantity of breast milk consumed by a baby in six months is about 210 pints (on the basis of 3/4 pint daily for the first month and 14 pints daily for the next five months). Deducting the 41,459 infant deaths in Great Britain during 1941, there were 635,062 survivors, and their requirements in breast milk for the first six months were 16million gallons. It is a reasonable estimate, and probably an under-estimate, that one-third of this quantity, 52 million gallons, of essential ideal infant food was lost through unnecessary weaning of babies. Of babies weaned early the great majority are weaned in the first month of life. In my ward at the Edinburgh Children's Hospital 62% of a consecutive series of 100 babies had been weaned by the end of the first month, and by the end of the second month the figure was 80%. It 'will be agreed that this early weaning of babies is due to the failure of mothers, nurses, and doctors to overcome the numerous difficulties in breastfeeding that occur in the first weeks of lactation. For a generation the pre-eminent value of breast milk has been taught and accepted ; but this has had little effect in practice, because, on the occurrence of difficulties, weaning is advised for reasons that are far too often trivial and unnecessary. The results are not only a colossal waste of the best infant food available but also a waste of money, time, and trouble, and a loss of thousands of lives. This is bad enough in times of peace; it is worse in time of war, when the substitute, cows' milk, is scarce and urgently needed for older children, and when the conservation of infant life and health is a paramount duty. The following simple account of breast-feeding, its normal processes, and difficulties is offered to nurses and doctors in order to assist them in their duty of securing and maintaining breast-feeding in every possible case. It might be called the A B C of the subject-an alphabet of breast-feeding.