Introduction
Studies have shown that breast feeding has a very significant impact on child development. Taking into consideration that child development takes the multidimensional aspects of physical, psychological, and social growth, breast feeding has been noted to play critical roles in ensuring that children under the age of six get the nutritional and health benefits of breast (ARACY, 2008), with the exceptions of mothers who are not medically fit.
Several evidences have also shown that breast feeding has a consistent benefit to the intellectual development of a toddler (Kawachi, Kennedy & Glass, 2009). Recent studies suggest that despite the knowledge that breast feeding improves child’s emotional, mental, and physical health, a significantly few number of mothers consistently breast feed their children below the age of six. Several contributory factors have been noted to cause the mothers’ complacency in breastfeeding their young ones. According to several research findings, educated and working mothers tend to ignore the role of breast feeding, preferring to use bottle feeding.
Those with the lowest education level, up to 6th grade, and college level educated women have the lowest tendency to breastfeed, presumably due to lack of knowledge and more commitment to career respectively. Young school going mothers also prefer bottle feeding for their children, ostensibly to give them time to study. In various studies in United States and other developed nations, it has been revealed that white mothers breastfeed more than their non-white counterparts.
Cultural believes among some groups of non-white communities have also contributed to this low rate of breastfeeding, especially among the Pacific Islander mothers. The lack of sufficient breastfeeding for children under six has profound impact on their health, namely; lack of psychological attachment with the mother; mothers from low income groups have general feeling that they have low supply of milk, thus early complementary foods which affect the general physical growth. Good nursing practice suggests that it is important for registered nurses to be well equipped and be ready to spearhead the breastfeeding campaigns.
Definitions
- GOBI: “Growth, monitoring, oral rehydration therapy, breast feeding and immunization” (CSDH, 2008).
- ANMC: Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council
- Child: “any person between the age of birth and puberty” (CSDH, 2008).
- Toddler: age of a child between birth and learning to walk, mostly referred to as that gap between infancy and being a child (WHO, 2010).
- Breastfeeding: the process of feeding a young child or toddler directly from mother’s breast milk, mostly through sucking the teats.
Backgrounds
Infants are known to rely on breast feeding just like adults depend of specific types of staple foods for survival. Other than providing children with the needed nutrition, a mother’s milk is one way of building the relationship between child and mother; the child being the receiver while the mother is the giver. Studies show that breast feeding is the single most source of balanced diet for the newborn, and that lack of it for children below the age of six would subsequently lead to a form of ‘malnutrition’ (Labonte, Schrecker & Gupta, 2005; Kawachi, Kennedy & Glass, 2009). According to World Health Organization’s report, if infants below six months receive exclusive breast feeding and complementary food is integrated at later periods for up to two years, approximately below five 1.5 million children’s lives would be saved annually (WHO, 2010).
Malnutrition has been known to cause approximately 35% of all 9 million children under five who die annually (WHO, 2010). Other than directly causing death to children under five, it is the single most significant factor that causes ill health to this group of children (WHO, 2010). Approximately over 60% of these deaths are caused by poor feeding approaches such as bottle feeding or insufficient and less-timely complementary food during the first month after birth, thus complicating the underdeveloped digestion system of the infants.
However, the recent World Health Organization (WHO) report shows that only 35% of children below the age of six months get exclusive breast feeding from their mothers. This is despite the fact that studies revealing that breast feeing is safe and increase healthy child development (WHO, 2010). Moreover, breast feeding increase children’s survival chances, as it provides them with the needed nutrients to shield them from common illness. It’s from this perspective that WHO emphasizes on the need for healthcare providers and nursing fraternity to offer adequate information to the mothers to enable them feed their babies up to a minimum of six months, to increase their chances of survival and health status in adulthood.
Discussion
Having the experience of watching a child playing and at the same time breastfeed at intervals is one such interesting encounter. It’s worth appreciating how breast milk can lead to a bonding relationship between the mother and the child, other than provide the needed nourishment every newborn would require. At first, its common scene how babies love breasts, and it would not be far from truth when one says that toddlers first start to smile at the site of their mother breasts.
According to Leon& Walt (2006), a mother’s breast is not only the source of food for the child, but acts as a source of security as well as comfort, something that other purported possible substitutes like bottle cannot provide. Katherine Dettwyler, a nutrition expert states that women need to realize that breastfeeding can calm a noisy child, as it leads to the needed relaxation, thus making the latter feel loved and cared for more than anything else (Kelly, Bonnefoy, Morgan & Florenzano, 2006).
Studies have also suggested that breast is the best pacifier, considering the fact that it’s natural (Kelly, Bonnefoy, Morgan & Florenzano, 2006; Leon & Walt, 2006). Basically, breasts offer the children the ‘food security’ aspect every human need, and helps improve the bond between mothers and their children. After conducting a study on the psychological impact of breast feeding and its process on children under-10 months, Labonte, Schrecker & Gupta (2005) reported that mothers who spent more time nursing and holding their children close were able to establish long term mother-child love relationship that extended to adulthood.
Laboratory findings indicate that a mother’s act of nursing and having close contact with the child releases Oxytocin, a substance believed to enhance love-relationship between two persons with frequent and regular bodily contacts. This kind of experience makes the child calmer, thus improving his or her overall well-being. Additionally, breast milk has been found to contain some hormones referred to as cholecystokinin, a sleep-inducer for both the mother and the child (Labonte, Schrecker & Gupta, 2005).
The nursing practice to children by mothers can be boosted if the collaborative breastfeeding campaign is adopted by the stakeholders, led by nursing fraternity (Raisler, Alexander & O’Campo 2009). For example, many mothers do not know that allowing for more skin contacts with the newborn enhances complete growth development of the latter. Moreover, it is has also been established that premature babies have better growth if they receive regular message and touching by an older person, and the same would also apply to babies born at the right time (Labonte, Schrecker & Gupta, 2005).
As if not to exhaust the points on merits of the act, other scientific findings have also revealed that its is imperatively important to facilitate exclusive breast feeding for the first 6 months after birth so as to help babies develop fully functional lungs (Kelly, Bonnefoy, Morgan & Florenzano, 2006). The simple physical contact between the mother and the child may lead to better lung development for the child, which extends to adulthood. However, this does not mean breast feeding need to stop after six months, but should constitute a major food complement for up to two years. All these can be achieved only through initiatives that are all inclusive.
Social determinants of health such as politics and economic conditions demand that primary healthcare be part of the wider population of a nation. However, it’s a known fact that intra-governmental dynamics have generated a lot of complex problems, especially in falling short of supporting health policies for various sectors. The other complexity has been hinged on ambiguous effort to implement a full version of primary healthcare, which evidently overlooked the nitty-gritty aspects of maternal health as well as child health.
Selective primary healthcare improves both maternal and child health, thus reduction in illness and premature death of toddlers. This was illustrated by a program to reduce child mortality, popularly known as GOBI (Leon & Walt, 2006), advocated by UNICEF. By such initiatives, primary healthcare experts have intimated that a nation’s health can largely be improved by developing effective programs to create awareness on breast feeding. It has been established that such programs would appeal to potential financiers as well as political class willing to engage in quick and long term results.
Collaborative healthcare initiatives have been known to remarkably improve the breastfeeding practice. Such projects normally involve all nurses, strategic health authorities, political class, government, and all organizations involved in primary healthcare programs (National Health & Medical Research Council 2006).
The development of collaborative approach will help in the identification and promotion of values of nursing within the specified criteria (The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners 2005). It consequently leads to adoption of unique aspects of nursing care for the newborn and good practice. It’s through collaborative approach that the people involved would be able to actively support and develop local change programs to ensure mothers take the initiative in the change process.
It’s important to note that clear values, supported by on-going initiatives would be critical in allowing for the achievement of annual targets
Recommendations
The determinants of healthcare are known to political, social and economic factors. According to ANMC, registered nurse is supposed to provide nursing care, which entails issues like educating the public, championing for the necessary legislation on nursing care standards. This involves using evidence based approaches to ensure necessary knowledge is instilled in the people. This would therefore call for the registered nurses to:
- Spearhead the implementation of childcare programs that include breastfeeding initiatives;
- Do the necessary assessments of all the collaborative nursing care to encourage more; mothers to embrace breast feeding as an integral responsibility that cannot be substituted; and
- Acquire the needed multicultural skills for nursing practice. This would mean embracing training schedules for multicultural nursing to ensure different cultural practices such as belief child illness and are taken into consideration.
Conclusion
Breast feeding is known to be the single most important aspect primary care for the newborn. Several studies have backed this belief, hence the need to take it as necessity rather than an option. This is more significant for children below 6, who need to have exclusive breastfeeding period, and continuously complement it with other foods. Various organizations and nursing researchers emphasize on the need to have registered nurses take necessary steps in ensuring mothers are mobilized and encouraged to take breast feeding as a necessity. These would involve participate in policy development, training sessions, educating the population on the importance of breast feeding and teach mothers of newborn the necessary requirements for best practice of breast feeding.
Reference List
ARACY (2008). Report Card: The Wellbeing of Young Australians. Web.
CSDH (2008). Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Inequity Through Action on the Social Determinants of Health. Final Report of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Kawachi, I., Kennedy, B.P., & Glass, R. (2009). Social capital and self-rated health: A contextual analysis, American Journal of Public Health 89(8): 1187-1193.
Kelly, M.P., Bonnefoy, J., Morgan, A., & Florenzano, F. (2006). The Development of the Evidence Base about the Social Determinants of Health, WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health, Measurement and Evidence Knowledge Network, Geneva.
Labonte, R., Schrecker, T., & Gupta, A.S. (2005). Health for Some: Death, Disease and Disparity in a Globalizing Era. Toronto: Centre for Social Justice Research and Education.
Leon. D., & Walt G. (2006). Poverty, inequality and health: an international perspective. New York: Oxford UP.
National Health & Medical Research Council (2006). Dietary guidelines for children and adolescents in Australia, incorporating the infant feeding guidelines for health workers. Canberra: NHMRC.
Raisler, J., Alexander, C., & O’Campo, P. (2009). Breast-feeding and infant illness: a dose response relationship? Am J Public Health, 89:25–30.
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (2005). Guidelines for preventive activities in general practice (the ‘red book’). 2nd edn. Melbourne: RACGP.
WHO. (2010). World Health Report 2010: Health Systems Financing: The Path To Universal Coverage. Geneva: WHO.