Pushing formula on new moms is wrong.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Cathy Rasmussen For The Register-Guard

We know that the hours and days immediately following delivery are critical in the breast-feeding success of new moms and their precious babies. We also know that breast-feeding can be impaired by birth experiences that include medications and other interventions, and by a postpartum hospital environment that may include outdated practices such as `supplementing' the diets of healthy, intact babies with sugar water or formula, offering artificial teats or pacifiers, and giving free formula samples.

Yet the discredited practice of giving new mothers free samples of infant formula persists in many areas. And it continues to be defended by formula manufacturers and their sales representatives.

Studies demonstrate that immediate suckling of a newborn baby within the first hour of birth results in an 83 percent increase in the duration of breast-feeding. And rooming-in of babies with their moms in the absence of supplements increases breast-feeding duration by 61 percent. Early, high-quality breast-feeding support - not easy access to breast milk substitutes - can help get new moms through those first days when fatigue, engorgement, soreness and self-doubt can interfere with what nature intended.

The global gold standard for maternity services in hospitals, now defined as `baby-friendly' care, was described by the World Health Organization and UNICEF in a 1989 statement entitled `Protecting, Promoting and Supporting Breast-feeding: The Special Role of Maternity Services." This statement includes the evidence-based `Ten Steps to Successful Breast-feeding," implemented to some degree in more than 19,000 maternity care facilities worldwide as part of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, launched in 1991.

Locally, the PeaceHealth Nurse Midwifery Birth Center is one of fewer than 60 hospitals and birth centers in the United States to have achieved the prestigious Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative designation.

Manufacturers of breast milk substitutes know what they are doing when they seek to link their products to hospitals and health care providers, often through deceptive and devious means. Historically, the worldwide abuses of this industry were so flagrant as to warrant development of the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, adopted by the World Health Assembly in 1981 as a recommendation for all governments to implement nationally.

It includes a provision against sending company sales reps dressed as nurses to `help' poverty-stricken mothers in Third World countries by `educating' them about using the companies' unaffordable, inferior products rather than breast-feeding for free.

Although this code carries no legal weight, it carries a moral and ethical weight. It precludes giving free formula samples to mothers, as well as promoting infant feeding products with coupons or pro-formula literature.

So when Gail Woods, spokeswoman for the manufacturer of a breast milk substitute, disputes statements in the April 10 Register-Guard that the issue is one of public health and states that it should not be publicly debated, she's clearly expressing the fervent wishes of her employer rather than making a rational argument.

It's estimated that worldwide adoption of exclusive breast-feeding for newborns would save the lives of more than 1 million infants each year. This is in addition to the economic benefits to families and the environmental, family-spacing benefits.

Free formula samples given by hospitals (especially when handed out by nurses) are a dubious `gift' indeed.

The Centers for Disease Control Guide to Breast-Feeding Interventions notes that distributing formula samples to new moms during their hospital stay has a disproportionately negative effect on women who are the most vulnerable - including first-time moms, minorities, the less educated and those who are ill during the postpartum period.

CDC data indicate that lower income, younger or minority women have lower breast-feeding rates than other women. They are the least likely of any of us to be able to afford formula as well as loss of the valuable health benefits of breast milk to their babies.

Want to bet formula literature fails to mention that?

Cathy Rasmussen of Eugene is a registered nurse, a certified lactation counselor and community health director for the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.