[Breast feeding in Spain. Current situation]

Throughout the ages, breast-feeding as a biological need has been the most used method on infant feeding during the first year of life. Because of its nutritional and protective characteristics, it is still the best system of feeding in spite of the present advances in the composition of formulated milks. In order to know the present situation of natural feeding in Spain we have performed a study in which the fieldwork consisted of the participation of 1,061 mothers and 152 pediatricians. The most important results are detailed in the present work. At birth, 73.5% of the mothers began to nurse their babies, a 19.2% used formula, and 7.3% used the feeding methods. The decision related to the type of feeding was taken by the mother in the majority of the cases (92.6%) with a surprisingly low incidence of prenatal advice (1.8%). Of the mothers, 90.7% clearly had positive opinions about breast-feeding. Negative opinions included concerns about their jobs or social obligations (18.5%). The most normal reason for not nursing was related to hypogalactia (61.2%). At 90 days of age, 22.8% of the breast-feed babies were still being suckled, whereas only 28.0% those receiving mixed nutrition were being nursed at 30 days of age. Supplementation of breastmilk is established early since at one month of age 32.1% of the infants were receiving mixed nutrition after beginning with only breast-feeding. The decision to give up the natural lactation corresponded equally to the mother (45.2%) and the pediatrician (54.2%) with the general motive being hypogalactia (74.2%). After giving up natural lactation, 8.4% of the mothers introduced the beikost.