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The Black Breastfeeding Blog was created by Jennifer James as a way to reach black mothers who are currently breastfeeding or who want to breastfeed in the future. As a former breastfeeding mother of two daughters (who she breastfed for two years each), Jennifer believes in the powerful healing properties of breast milk and believes all black moms should at least start the nursing process to increase the health of their babies.


Send your breastfeeding photos to me at info (at) mommytoo (dot) com.

Infant Formula Companies on the Hot Seat
Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Why would an infant formula company refuse to rid their cans of bisphenol A? Indifference? Perhaps. Greed? Probably.

Four of the largest infant formula makers -- Wyeth, Nestle USA, Abbott Nutrition, and Hain Celestial Group -- will have to face a congressional committee today to explain why they use bisphenol A in their cans and if the chemical leaks into the liquid.

No matter the agency you ask, whether it's the FDA, CDC, American Chemical Council, or the Environmental Working Group, they all say bisphenol A gets into bodies, but they argue how much of it people can consume before becoming ill or developing life-threatening diseases.

That begs the question: Why would companies that make infant products even use the chemical in the first place even in small amounts? Why are parents so trusting of these companies that clearly don't have their children's interest as their number one priority?

If these companies cared about babies they would have gotten rid of the chemical yesterday. It's amazing how many mothers come after us because we advocate for breastfeeding which keeps babies healthy, but they give these huge companies a pass.

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posted by Jennifer James @ 9:34 AM, , links to this post


How Times Have Changed: Modern-Day Milk Depots
Tuesday, December 11, 2007

I was reading an article yesterday about the growing need for local milk depots in Orange County, California where nursing mothers can drop off their extra breast milk for babies in need.

In the early twentieth century mothers also frequented milk depots, or milk stations, where they could take their infants for well baby check-ups and receive "pure" cow's milk to feed their infants. My, how times have changed since then. Now some mothers are giving their breast milk away instead of receiving artificial milk in return. I know WIC offices are also seen as modern-day milk depots, but at least these days there are various forms of milk transfer.

Above nurses were weighing a baby at the Cincinnati pure milk station in 1908.

George Grantham Bain Collection, LC-USZ62-43678

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posted by Jennifer James @ 9:52 AM, , links to this post


Upcoming Breastfeeding Symposium
Wednesday, September 12, 2007

On September 24-25, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Public Health will be hosting the Third Annual Symposium on Breastfeeding and Feminism. The focus of the symposium will be reproductive health, rights and justice.

There are several well-known scholars, writers, and activists who will be in attendance. A few that jump out at me and whose books I've read are:

 Bernice Hausman, PhD, Professor, Virginia Tech, Author of Mother’s Milk: Breastfeeding Controversies in American Culture

Jacqueline H Wolf, PhD, Assoc. Prof., Ohio University, author of Don’t Kill your Baby: Public Health; The Decline of Breastfeeding in the 19th and 20th Century

Plus, there are very interesting discussions slated for Saturday, September 25 surrounding the issue of breastfeeding inequalities including:

Diversity, Health, and Breastfeeding
Barbara Pullen-Smith, MPH, Director, North Carolina Office of Minority Health & Health Disparities

Parenting and the Workplace: The Construction of Parenting Protections in United States Law
Maxine Eichner, JD, PhD, Professor, UNC School of Law

Is breastfeeding really invisible, or did the health care system choose not to notice it?
Chris Mulford, RN, IBCLC, Coordinator, WIC BFInitiative, Southern New Jersey Perinatal Coop., Women's &Children's Services at Kennedy Health

Click here for more information and to register.

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posted by Jennifer James @ 8:30 AM, , links to this post


My Quest to Find the Reasons Behind Low Black Breastfeeding Numbers
Tuesday, June 5, 2007

One of the biggest mysteries that plagues my mind day in and day out is the reason behind low breastfeeding rates among black women. What I'm finding is there is no easily blamed lone culprit, but instead we find a tight-knit mesh of historical racism, wet nursing, slavery, current and past socioeconomic factors, and cultural trends that play into exacerbating the dangerously low breastfeeding numbers we see today.

[ Picture: A free lunch / Geo. Barker, photographer, Niagara Falls, New York. c1890. ]

When I first started this blog I wanted to blame slavery and wet nursing alone, but as you can see from my post on Sunday slave women did indeed nurse their children, although I do not know how widespread a practice it was. I suspect, however, that more slave women nursed their own children than we even realize. In fact, in Louis Hughes' autobiography called Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom (1898), he also mentions "sucklers" who were "women with infants".

Inch by inch I'm slowly putting the pieces together through documented research that explain these low numbers without having to read all about it in a book dedicated to the subject. I'm a bit of a sleuth, so I enjoy the thrill of chasing this mystery down myself. I'm trying to figure out where, when and how black women became disconnected with breastfeeding.

When I first became a mother I remember trying to answer this same question then. Nine years ago I read a book that said black women wanted the same economic privileges as white women, so in the early twentieth century most of them moved from nursing to formula. It was a way of essentially keeping up with the Joneses. But later in the century while white women moved from bottle back to breast, black women unfortunately stayed with the bottle. But why?

Here are a few more pieces of the puzzle I found today that answer some of my questions.

I've been wondering about pro-breastfeeding campaigns that date to the early 1900s. Here is a WPA poster that dates from September 2, 1938. Clearly this campaign wasn't designed for black women in those days, but they did exist and that's all I wanted to confirm. If there's one, there's more.


I also found out that breastfeeding promotion for WIC moms wasn't in place until 1989 based on two Congressional Reports (linked above) I found, although I must admit, I may be a tad wrong about the date. I have to do more digging.




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posted by Jennifer James @ 7:45 AM, , links to this post


I Need Some Clarity: Vitamin D, Breastfeeding and Black Children
Monday, May 14, 2007

A couple of weeks ago, I posted information about vitamin D deficiency and rickets in black children. In the source I linked to doctors and researchers attributed the increase in rickets to more black mothers who are breastfeeding due to sweeping WIC initiatives to raise breastfeeding rates among the nation's black and poor mothers. They contend that black breastfed babies don't get enough vitamin D because there is none present in breast milk.

Today, I found an article in Science News, Childhood Vitamin D—A Dark Side? , that says black children who live in urban areas have higher concentrations of lead when their levels of vitamin D go up. From the article:

In the April Environmental Health Perspectives, Bogden and his team report that among urban African-American youngsters, blood concentrations of lead can rise to potentially toxic concentrations in summer, when their vitamin D concentrations also rise, presumably due to regular sun exposure.

So, now which is it: should black breastfed children be given a vitamin D supplement to prevent rickets? Or, should they not, because according to this latest study, when concentrations of vitamin D rise, so do black children's lead levels.

When the researchers tested Hispanic children who came from the same economic backgrounds and neighborhood as the tested black children, their lead levels were very low.
However, blood tests from the black children told a different story. In winter, lead averaged about 12 µg/dl of blood in children 3 and under, and roughly 5 µg/dl in the older kids. Come summer, values in both groups spiked dramatically: to about 22 µg/dl in the younger group and 9 µg/dl in the older children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers blood-lead values of 10 µg/dl and higher as excessive.
I know the answer is relatively simple: black moms should take their children outside more to get ample sunshine and live in a lead-free environment. My concern, however, is that for a lot of black mothers who live in urban areas, they may not know what may be causing a lack of development or even lack of academic progress in their children. According to the latest study,

Bruce P. Lanphear of Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati and his colleagues have shown that in kindergarteners, IQ can fall as blood-lead values climb above 5 µg/dl (SN: 5/5/01, p. 277: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/20010505/fob4.asp).

Honestly, I don't know what to make of these two studies. It's almost like the old saying goes...you can't win for losing.



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posted by Jennifer James @ 1:12 PM, , links to this post