Article about feeding premature babies. Confused

[mawbroon]

I don't know very much about it, but I am a bit puzzled about this article

They don't seem to mention what happened to the babies who were fed their mother's milk.

Am I missing something?

[nickytwotimes]

I read a similar article in the Guardian today but it basically said at the end that the study was small and inconclusive. Breastmilk helps immunity anyway, which is surely the most important thing?

[theyoungvisiter]

I agree it's weird - it specifically mentions the babies who were given bank milk but doesn't make any mention of babies fed their own mother's milk.

Maybe the study was only to find out what the best alternative was when the baby's own mother's milk was not available? Ie they took as read that this would be the preferred option?

[fruitfulinotherways]

TheYoungVisiter - yes, you're right. Ds2 was born in Dec, 7 weeks early and we didn't know if I'd be able to bf straight away so I've been looking into this recently!

The mum's own milk is the first choice. Breastmilk from a mum who has given birth prematurely is different to breastmilk from the mum of a term baby, its clever stuff.

But something like 50% of prem babies never get any of their mum's milk. So they're saying that the next choice is preterm formula, rather than standard formula or even bank breastmilk. This last is because banked milk is usually from mothers with older babies.

[mawbroon]

Well that makes a bit more sense then.

But the bloody article could have said so.

It will leave people with the impression that breastmilk isn't as good as formula.

Grr

[morocco]

v interesting
wonder why they didn't also look at the impact of giving milk from their own mothers, that would also have been interesting. I also wonder if it is pos to supplement the bank milk?

[mawbroon]

Here's the abstract but it doesn't say anything about it either

[theyoungvisiter]

fruitful that is so clever! (about pre-term bm being differnt from term bm). The body is so clever, isn't it?

I'm not so surprised that the abstract doesn't say anything about it, because presumably that would be aimed at paediatricians who would (hopefully!) already know any guidelines re: mother's own milk as first choice.

But I agree it's odd of the BBC/Grauniad not to make the point, given that their articles are always going to be aimed at the lay reader.

[FromGirders]

The full text is here.
Haven't read it all myself, but someone on another board (who I presume has) said that they put the results from the babies who were fed banked ebm in with the results from those fed ordinary formula, and compared these with the "super"formula.
which sounds like a dodgy practice to me, but like I said, haven't read the whole thing.

[lizzytee]

I too have found the reporting of this article rather irresponsible, for the same reasons. The media articles imply that it's automatically better for very premature babies to receive high nutrient formula instead of breastmilk - which isn't the case, for the reason fruitful points out and because of the protection against infection that breastmilk provides. I really really REALLY hate it when journalists take the narrow conclusions of a medical paper, which cannot speculate about things outside the scope of its specific research and which assumes a high level of knowledge in the reader, and then morph them into a "Hey everybody, despite evolutionary imperatives and all that, breast milk isn't as good as we thought it was..have some formula!" type message.

[Swaliswan]

That explains why the BM bank were so happy when I donated about a litre of my milk that was expressed whilst DD was still prem but was surplus to requirement. It made her have really bad tummy ache when we tried to give it to her when she was just past term so it seemed that the best place for the milk was with sick premmies.

[theyoungvisiter]

really shocked that the mumsnet parenting roundup just repeated this story, again without clarifying.

Their exact words were: preterm babies fed enriched formula milk in their early weeks outperform other premature babies in IQ tests in childhood and beyond, according to new research (BBC Online 20.02.08)

Tcha! Do they not read our words of wisdom?

[mawbroon]

Hmm, I didn't actually read my parenting news

Will email them I think....