With plenty of new moms ‘fessing to the benefits of breastfeeding (we’re looking at you, Alanis Morissette) it comes to a surprise that while the majority of women hope to breastfeed, very few succeed in their goal.

According to a report from the Daily Mail the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention interviewed 1,500 pregnant women about how they planned to feed their newborn, then followed up each month for the next year.

The study revealed that 85 percent of new mothers intended to breastfeed for the first three months but many gave up, with only 15 percent of babies who are six-months-old still being nursed.

The study came from a “breast is best” campaign that’s pushing to ban hospitals from giving free baby formula to new mothers.

Breastfeeding is known to have a wide range of benefits from reducing obesity to boosting immunity, and doctors recommend that babies get breastfed until they are six-months old.

HollyMoms, did YOU breastfeed for the recommended six months?

[Daily Mail]

– Lorraine Chow

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3. Controversial ‘Time’ Breast Feeding Cover: Moms And Experts React

A new study says that women who take pain medications early in their pregnancy may be exposing their babies to a higher risk of birth defects.

Take note. If you are early-on in your pregnancy, do not take codeine, oxycodone and other opioid pain drugs. A new study suggests that these medications could increase the risk of birth defects in your babies.

“Opioids and their receptors act as growth regulators during embryologic development, which may explain our findings,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study’s lead author Cheryl S. Broussard tells The New York Times.

Though the overall numbers were low, babies whose mothers took pain medications were considerably more likely than others to have congenital problems — including a potentially fatal syndrome that affects the development of the left part of the heart — spina bifida and gastroschisis, which causes the intestines to stick out of the body.

The study, which appeared in The American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, used data from the National Birth Defects Prevention Study about mothers in 10 states who gave birth from 1997 to 2005.

Out of 17,449 whose babies were born with a birth defect, 454, or 2.6 percent, say they took opioid drugs a month before or during the first trimester of their pregnancy. In a comparison group of 6,701 women, the rate of opioid use was 2 percent.

What do you think of this?

–Leigh Blickley

New study says drinking while pregnant is OK!Pharmicist mistakenly gives a pregnant woman an abortion drug! How does this happen?

According to a long-term study, babies could be considered overweight or obese as early as 9-months-old. In the study of more than 7,500 babies across the country, nearly 32 percent of the infants were considered too heavy. “It definitely raised eyebrows when we saw how early it was showing up,” said Brian Moss, an adjunct professor at Wayne State University and author of new research in the American Journal of Health Promotion to MSNBC. And experts say the only way to monitor weight gain is focus on the quality and quantity of a baby’s diet.

Parents of “pudgy” babies are putting their kids on diets!

“Parents often don’t realize that children’s portions are far smaller than those of adults,” Dr. Goutham Rao, clinical director of the Weight Management and Wellness Center at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center says. “The rule of thumb at our center is that your portion of any sort of food should be no bigger than your fist. For a 1-year-old, that’s pretty tiny.” But still, parents shouldn’t be concerned if their child is ‘too fat,’ too early. If they make the appropriate changes to their child’s diet, the extra pounds should easily fall off. “It can take just a few tweaks to a baby’s diet to make a difference,” said Dr. Wendy Slusser, an associate clinical professor and medical director of the Fit for Healthy Weight Program at the Matell Children’s Hospital at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s probably only about 150 calories a day difference that we’re talking about.”

Mother forces her child to live on a 700 calorie-a-day diet!

The children in the study were all born in 2001 and were measured at both 9-months-old and two-years-old. Then researchers compared the measurements for both age groups to standard growth charts created between 1963 and 1994 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Children who landed in the 85th percentile with weight compared to height were considered overweight, if they landed in the 95th percentile they were deemed obese.

Researchers were happy to see that those babies considered obese at 9-months-old had lost the excess pounds by the time they were two. Sadly, some babies who were not sigificantly overweight at 9 months ended up being so at two-years-old. “It means that in that age group, weight is a lot more fluid than it is in an obese 14-year-old,” Dr. Rao says. “And that means that these children are not necessarily condemned to be obese.”

Eating disorders are on the rise among tweens!

But despite this idea, parents who have heavy children need to take charge and make changes in their baby’s diet. “Every child that has a healthy diet will get to a healthy weight,” Rao said.“You would be surprised at some of the foods and drinks kids are given. You see a lot of very young children eating French fries, because that’s what their parents are eating. Sometimes you’ll even see parents putting regular soda into a baby’s bottle.”

The fact that a third of the babies in the study were considered significantly overweight should be a hint to parents to start getting smart about their children’s diets. “This could be a red flag telling us that we need to be aware and to be focusing on healthy eating habits early on,” said Dr. Slusser. What do you think of this study, Hollymoms?

–Leigh Blickley

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