More American Moms Breast-feeding their Babies

More and more American babies are receiving one of the most nutritious foods in the whole world - mothers' milk - a federal report says.

According to a team of researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of mothers who started breast-feeding their babies has gone up 4 percent between 2000 and 2008. Apart from that, they also found a 10 percent increase associated with the number of women who continued breast-feeding six months after giving birth.

Though mothers from all the ethnic groups were found breast-feeding their babies more compared to the past, researchers found that African-American mothers had the lowest rates of breast-feeding duration and that they required more breast-feeding support than others.

"Breastfeeding is good for the mother and for the infant - and the striking news here is, hundreds of thousands more babies are being breastfed than in past years, and this increase has been seen across most racial and ethnic groups," CDC director Tom Frieden said in a news release. "Despite these increases, many mothers who want to breastfeed are still not getting the support they need from hospitals, doctors, or employers. We must redouble our efforts to support mothers who want to breastfeed."

Experts from the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend new moms to exclusively breast-feed healthy babies until the sixth month, as formula milk is not as effective as breast milk in preventing much illness among babies.

Babies who do not receive breast milk are at higher risks of developing diseases, including lower respiratory tract infections, diabetes and childhood leukemia. Mothers who do not breast-feed have higher chances of having breast cancer, ovarian cancer, diabetes and post-partum depression.

Efforts to convince new moms about the benefits of breast-feeding their newborns have been going on from a long time. However, a study published in Pediatrics in June 2012 found a significant number of U.S. mothers who planned to exclusively breast-feed their babies during pregnancy, failing to reach their goal after the baby's arrival, due to lack of support from hospitals.

In April 2012, Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer rights advocacy group in Washington, launched a campaign against hospitals and formula makers for distributing free pouches of branded baby formula (Similac, Enfamil) to new mothers. The organization found that a majority of the hospitals distributed the free samples even after mothers preferred to breast-feed their babies.