Mother's milk feeding in a NICU sample of preterm infants with birth weights of at least 1500 grams

Mother's milk (MM) should be the norm for premature infants because of its nutritional properties and host protective factors. Although MM feeding (MMF) is initiated for many premature infants, initiation rates vary considerably among NICUs and there is limited literature describing precisely how samples of premature infants were being fed at discharge. The study question was: What were the MMF initiation and continuation rates, and proportion of MMFs at discharge, among appropriate for gestational age infants born preterm weighing at least 1500 grams and admitted to one NICU in an inner city hospital in the upper Midwest in 2003 and 2004? Data from both years have been collected from infant hospital records and will be presented. Only 2004 data have been analyzed to date. In 2004, 148 preterm or low-birth-weight infants were admitted to the study NICU; 67 met the criteria for this sub-sample. Mothers of the 67 infants were: US-born Blacks (30%), Whites (18%), and American Indians (5%); and foreign-born Blacks (13%), Latinas (31%), and Asians (3%). Based on multiple logistic regression analyses, infants with foreign born mothers were significantly more likely have MMF initiated and continued until discharge than other infants. Of the 67 infants, 62.7% ever received MMFs; of those 42 infants, 34 were receiving MMFs at discharge. Twenty-five of those infants were receiving only MM by some combination of breast, bottle and gavage, including 7 who were entirely breastfeeding. These results illustrate the need for increasing initiation, continuation, and exclusivity of MMFs in this population.