Breastfeeding: It helps soothe the baby, doctors confirm 150,000 years of anecdotal evidence

Less than 20 years ago doctors genuinely believed that newborn babies didn’t feel pain.  As a result, babies were even operated on without any analgesic whatsoever.
 
This thinking was enshrined in the august medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, as recently as 1987 (see volume 317; pages 1321 to 29).  Since then, medicine has made the remarkable discovery that: a) babies are human, and b) this even applies to babies that have only recently been born.

In a new study, researchers have gone even further, and have found that breastfeeding is a great way of calming a baby if it’s stressed or in pain.  While the researchers concede that this has been known ‘anecdotally’ by millions of mothers – actually, it’s been known by every mother since before homo sapiens stood erect – it has finally been proven in a medical trial.  And that, after all, is what counts.

(Source:  The Lancet, 2007; 369: 721-3).


E-news broadcast 8 March 2007 No.340 [Subscribe]