Todays story on ABC at lunchtime.
Please circulate to relevant email lists.
If you disagree with Kay Gibbons from the Murdoch Children's Research
Institute, who says ' I don't think there's been a widespread practice of
people stopping breastfeeding because they believe their child wasn't
growing adequately' let her know of your experience!
WHO announces new baby growth charts
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The World Today - Friday, 28 April , 2006 12:34:00
Reporter: Alison Caldwell
EDMOND ROY: Just how well is your baby doing?
Most parents have followed their child's growth as a series of dots on
graphs charting what's normal at the infant's age.
But now the World Health Organisation has announced new charts, saying the
old figures for a child's normal weight were set too high and might even
have encouraged obesity.
So today the organisation has released new growth charts and in a major
break from the past, those figures recognise breastfeeding as the
biological norm when it comes to measuring what a healthy baby should
weigh.
Alison Caldwell reports.
ALISON CALDWELL: For over a generation, new parents and doctors thought
bouncing bonny babies were the picture of perfect health, but not anymore.
Today the World Health Organisation is releasing new baby growth charts.
Paediatrician Dr Gillian Opie says they're long overdue.
GILLIAN OPIE: The problem that we've had with our growth charts for many
years is that we've not had well-developed, well-referenced growth charts.
For some years now in Australia we've been using growth charts that were
developed in the United States of America, and we know that there's a huge
problem with obesity in America.
And children there are predominantly formula-fed, and those children tend
to be heavier than a normal breastfed baby would be.
ALISON CALDWELL: Since 1997, the World Health Organisation has studied
8,000 children from six different countries where breastfeeding, good
diets and prevention and control of infection prevailed.
The study concluded that the old growth charts pitched target weights too
high, in some cases by as much as half a kilo.
The old charts were based on calculations using the growth patterns of
babies fed for the most part on formula milk.
The difference is the new charts establish breastfeeding as the biological
norm.
Dr Gillian Opie from the Mercy Hospital for Woman in Melbourne says the
study will give breastfeeding mothers more confidence.
GILLIAN OPIE: Breastfed babies tend to grow about the same or a little bit
more than formula-fed babies for the first two to three months of age in
terms of their weight, and then breastfed babies start to regulate
themselves much better and so they don't actually grow as much.
And in fact, if we compared them with a formula-fed baby, we would have
said in the past that the breastfed babies were actually not growing
appropriately.
And we now know that that's not true, that in fact the children that are
not growing appropriately are the formula-fed babies. They're actually
being, perhaps, overfed.
The implication from that has been is that our health professionals,
thinking that they were doing the right thing, have been saying to mothers
who were breastfeeding their babies that those children have not been
getting enough calories.
And therefore mothers have been urged to give their babies maybe solids
too early, because now we recommend exclusive breastfeeding to six months
of age.
And mothers therefore, once they start supplementing their breastfed
children with other foods, their breast milk supply drops off and that is
contributing to our reduction in duration of breastfeeding.
KAY GIBBONS: We do know that breastfeeding is moderately protective toward
childhood overweight and obesity.
But I don't think there's been a widespread practice of people stopping
breastfeeding because they believe their child wasn't growing adequately.
ALISON CALDWELL: Kay Gibbons is a research fellow at the Murdoch
Children's Research Institute.
She says the new charts will help increase awareness about childhood
nutrition.
KAY GIBBONS: What it will do is make health professionals more aware of
interpreting the charts and perhaps also having those charts as a
reference point to refer to or use as a resource if needed.
The other important thing, I think, about something like these charts is
that they will perhaps be very effective in a research sense: that what we
do in practice is one thing, but if we're thinking about research in the
area then these charts would obviously be a standard we'd want to look to
and they would be very useful in a research context.
EDMOND ROY: Kay Gibbons from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute,
speaking with Alison Caldwell.
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