Why Breast milk is very Important to Preterm Babies ?

Let’s make breast milk nutrition available to preemies

Know the nutritional importance of preterm milk for a better healthy society

Making breastfeeding at work, work, makes societies work!

The Theme for this year 2023 for World Breastfeeding Week ‘Let's make Breastfeeding and work, work’ is a very apt and required theme for these days as many women worldwide are working and find it difficult to breastfeed their newborn babies, especially when it is a preterm baby.

Breast milk is a vital food that provides vital health and nutrition for children which give good impacts lifelong building a healthy population and workforce for society.

Women should breastfeed their baby minimum of 6 to 8 months for the baby to get sufficient nutrition from the mother’s milk. Moreover, a preterm baby requires more periods of breastfeeding than a normal baby, as their nutritional needs are much higher than the normal baby.

To achieve this for working women, the workplace must provide adequate time and support to the mothers. Very few countries have implemented 6 months of maternity leaves for working mothers. This time period is required to give enough nutrition to the babies through the mother’s milk. It would be good that every country provides a minimum of 6 months of maternity leave for this purpose.

Nutritional importance of breast milk for a preterm baby:

Mothers of premature babies produce breast milk slightly differently for the first few weeks to meet the premature babies' particular needs.

• More nutrients than term milk: Premature breast milk is higher in proteins and minerals such as sodium, chloride, and iron.
• Easy to digest: It has a different type of fat which is even more easy to digest than the breastmilk of the normal mother. Moreover, human milk is easier to digest than the formula.
• Brain and nervous system development: The fat and the fatty acid chains are important for the growth and development of the infant's eye, brain and nervous system.
• Body tissue building: During the last week of pregnancy, the infant develops a lot of body tissues, because the preemies are born early, they need to develop these tissues after birth. The proteins in preterm milk are in such a way that it is easily available to the infant's body and helps in building the tissues.
• Better than formulas: Formulas created for premature babies have cow's milk protein, to which the infant's premature intestinal lining is exposed when given to them. Preterm babies fed with breast milk are less likely to get intestinal infections than babies who are fed with formula milk.
• Immunity: Breast milk for the first few weeks are high in antibodies which help them to fight digestive and respiratory infections.
• Digestive health: Babies who are breastfed are less likely to have diarrhea and other serious digestive illness like necrotizing enterocolitis.
• Gut health: Substances in breast milk are friendly to the good bacteria in the infant’s gut and help build their immunity.

Working mothers if had a maternity leave of a minimum 6 months can easily utilize this time to provide adequate nutrition to their preemies as this stage is more important for the growth and development of the preterm babies and they need their mother’s love and affection emotionally too for a happy mind, because a happy mind helps for a healthy growth.

Mothers who don’t have enough support to feed their babies, can extract milk, store it, and fed the baby, this helps both the baby to get the nutrition and the mothers to get more and more milk secretion.

So, let’s make preterm milk available for the preemies be it any situation.

Happy feeding!

Dhanalakshmi Umachandran M.Sc., M.Phil. Foods and Nutrition

Consultant Nutritionist and Dietician