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Breast feeding preterm infants

T R Gunn1

  • 1St Helens Hospital, Auckland.

The New Zealand Medical Journal
|May 8, 1991
PubMed

Breast feeding is the optimal way to feed infants but may be difficult in preterm infants. In a study of 43 mothers with 49 preterm infants admitted to a neonatal unit during a 10 week period-84% (36 of 43) wished to breast feed and 92% (33 of 36) of these mothers left hospital breast feeding. Their infants were from 30 to 36.5 weeks gestation, weighing a mean 2590 (SD 530) g and were in hospital 16 (11) days. Only three mothers who wished to breast feed failed to do so. The 10 bottle fed infants were smaller, younger and remained longer in hospital. The majority of mothers (88%) who were discharged breast feeding were still successfully breast feeding their preterm infants three months later. This is in marked contrast to a previous study of mothers, of full term infants, where there was a marked decrease in breast feeding by three months. The mothercraft teaching described is an effective method of providing preterm infants and their mothers with the advantages of breast feeding.

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