Help Your Partner Breastfeed

There are so many reasons to breastfeed. The health benefits to mom and baby are enormous.

But that doesn't mean it's easy.

New dads need to do everything they can to support their partners and encourage breastfeeding.

You can:

1) Bring her water when she's nursing.

2) Make sure there is a bowl of fruit and nuts by her favorite nursing spot and replenish it often.

3) Help her get enough sleep by taking the baby out during the day so she can nap.

4) Encourage her to learn to nurse lying down in bed so night nursing is easier.

5) Do more than your share of the housework so she can enjoy the baby and not stress about dishes. Being relaxed and bonded with a baby helps facilitate successful breastfeeding.

6) Encourage her to breastfeed as long as she and the baby are both happy doing so.

7) Forget about the twins being your favorite horizontal toy. While your partner is nursing she probably won't want you touching them a lot during sex.

Need another reason to breastfeed? A new study shows that formula feeding increases the risk of leukemia.

As reported by Charles Bankhead, a staff writer for MedPage Today, the longer a baby's on formula, the higher the leukemia risk.

According to the MedPage Today article:

Action Points

• Prolonged formula feeding may increase the odds for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
• Note that each additional month of delaying solid food increased risk by 14%.
• Breastfeeding exclusively for at least six months is the best health insurance policy for infants and their mom."Prolonged formula feeding may increase the odds for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), investigators in a case-control study concluded.

"Each additional month of formula feeding was associated with a 16% increase in the relative risk of ALL compared with a control group. Every additional month of delay in the start of solid foods increased the odds by 14%.

"The findings might reflect the recognized association between breastfeeding and development of an infant's immune system, Jeremy Schraw reported at the American Association for Cancer Research Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research meeting in Anaheim, Calif.

"One explanation for this co-risk may be that it's the same effect being picked up twice," Schraw, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a statement. "Children being given solid foods later may be receiving formula longer."

"ALL is the most common malignancy in children, and several studies have suggested interaction between feeding practices and its development. Some of the evidence suggests interaction among diet, normal immune-system development, and levels of insulin-like growth factor, said Schraw."