If you breastfeed, have ever breastfed, have ever needed help breastfeeding, or have ever recieved help from Dr. Jack Newman, please read this article. A Canadian icon in the world of breastfeeding needs our help, spread the word!

Funds for breastfeeding clinic nearing end

Centre of ‘last resort’ for 2,400 mothers a year with breastfeeding issues makes appeal to public

Sep 22, 2008 04:30 AM

Andrea Gordon
Family Issues Reporter

A renowned Toronto clinic that has helped thousands of mothers successfully breastfeed their infants is pleading for financial help to keep its doors open.

The Newman Breastfeeding Clinic & Institute, which sees about 2,400 mothers a year and is a popular resource for educators and health-care professionals, has been financed privately by a family foundation since 2005.

On Sept. 30 that arrangement will end, clinic founder and pediatrician Dr. Jack Newman said yesterday. The clinic will only be able to operate for a couple of months without more money. Newman is prepared to use his own savings, but only for a little while.

“We tend to be the place of last resort for mothers who aren’t able to find help from other clinics or from private lactation consultants or public health nurses,” he said. “This will mean a lot of those mothers are not going to make it through” breastfeeding.

Kari Crawford, 30, of Markham is among the many new moms who have turned to the clinic for emotional and practical support. Her son Andrew, born a week ago by Caesarean, had trouble breastfeeding, which became more difficult after he was fed by bottle in hospital.

Overwhelmed by frustration and conflicting opinions, Crawford sought help at Newman’s clinic on her sister’s advice. Yesterday, during her second visit and with the help of clinic co-founder Edith Kernerman, her son latched on for his most successful stint yet.

“I just assumed it was going to be natural, but no,” said Crawford. “I’m happy, it makes me see there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”

This isn’t the first time Newman has faced financial obstacles in his crusade to champion breastfeeding. He began running clinics from hospitals in 1984 but three years ago was forced out as a result of government budget cuts to health care.

That was when the family foundation came forward, enabling Newman and Kernerman, a lactation consultant and educator, to set up shop in rented premises at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, on Sheppard Ave. E. in North York.

That arrangement is also in doubt because the college is growing quickly and needs the space back.

In the meantime, demand for Newman’s services has increased. Groups like the World Health Organization and the Canadian Pediatric Society recommend breastfeeding for at least the baby’s first year. And increased public awareness about the importance of breastfeeding to a child’s nutritional, emotional and social well-being means more pregnant women now plan to nurse their babies, which means increased demand for lactation support.

A year ago, the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario called for provincial funding for breastfeeding clinics staffed by trained nurses across the province.

Newman estimates 90 per cent of Toronto mothers start out trying to breastfeed but when problems happen – ranging from cracked nipples to babies who won’t latch – there aren’t enough places for them to turn. As a result, as many as a third may give up in the first weeks.

While most services at the Newman clinic are covered by OHIP, it recently started charging clients who could pay an administrative fee of $30 for the first visit and $20 for the following two.

I recently watched a documentary which detailed the differences in maternity policies around the world. The Montreal Gazette also recently posted an interesting article about maternity benefits in Canada. I gotta say, the first few lines had me asking, breastfeeding breaks? Did you get breastfeeding or pumping breaks? I just snuck them in.

Canada weak on worker benefits: Report
 
Mike King ,  Canwest News Service
Published: Monday, September 01, 2008

MONTREAL - Canada is perennially a top-10 finisher in United Nations rankings as one of the best countries in the world to live in.

But a new McGill University study indicates that Canada lags behind many other countries on some basic worker benefits.

The school’s Institute for Health and Social Policy conducted recently an international survey that is the first research of its type to measure Canadian laws and practices versus those of 180 other countries in areas such as maternity leave, annual paid vacations, sick leave and breaks for breastfeeding mothers.

The Work Equity Canada index, conducted by the institute’s Jody Heymann, Martine Chaussard and Megan Gerecke, found Canada scores well for having policies that guarantee paid leave to care for dependants with serious illnesses. But Canada fared worse in other areas.

The 78-page report notes:

. In nearly 90 other countries, workers are guaranteed three weeks or more of paid leave a year, while most Canadian workers with a year’s tenure are guaranteed only two. In Ontario, Prince Edward Island and the Yukon, even workers with long service are guaranteed just two weeks of vacation.

. At least 156 countries provide leave for sick workers, 81 of them offering full wage replacement. Canada guarantees just more than half as much, 55 per cent of insurable income, with most provinces and territories not guaranteeing job protection during leaves of more than 12 days.

. More than 100 countries officially provide new mothers in the formal workforce with complete wage replacement during maternity leave. Most women in Canada are only guaranteed 55 per cent of their insurable income during maternity leave. Quebec is the exception, with women receiving 70 to 75 per cent of their insured income.

. Since breastfeeding has been proven to dramatically reduce illness and death among infants and toddlers, 114 countries have laws guaranteeing women the right to a break to breastfeed at work. Not a single province guarantees the same benefit.

On leave for dependents with serious illnesses, Canada is one of 39 countries with such leaves with pay.

Institute director Heymann notes there’s a wide variation in laws and practices from province to province, especially when it comes to helping parents handle pregnancy and childbirth.

“Quebec offers parents more choice, higher wage replacement rates and five weeks paternity leave for men’s exclusive use,” Heymann said.

“In addition, Quebec allows self-employed workers to opt out into parental benefits,” she added. “No such provisions exist for self-employed workers in the rest of Canada” - a group that makes up 15 per cent of the employed workforce.
© Montreal Gazette 2008

Just a quick pointer to another good article on the CBC. 

Breastfeeding may help reduce risk of aggressive cancer: study

Breastfeeding for at least six months may help reduce a woman’s risk of an aggressive form of breast cancer, according to a study that explored how reproductive factors influence different types of breast cancer.

In the aggressive “triple negative” breast cancer, tumours do not respond to a key regulatory protein called HER2 or to the hormones estrogen and progestin.

Because of that, hormone-based treatments are of little help for triple negative breast cancers, which is more common among younger women. Previous studies have found women with triple negative cancer are more likely to have a relapse.

The latest study looked for patterns among women with three types of breast cancer:

Estrogen-sensitive, also called luminal — the majority of breast cancers that tend to grow slowly.
HER-2 positive — cancers that grow rapidly and tend to have poor prognosis, but can often be treated successfully with Herceptin, according to the American Cancer Society.
Triple negatives.
In the Oct. 1 issue of the journal Cancer, Amanda Phipps, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and her colleagues found triple-negative breast cancer was half as common among women who said they breastfed for six months or more compared with women who hadn’t breastfed.

Estrogen-sensitive or luminal breast cancers were also 20 per cent less common among those who breast fed, the researchers said.

“Our data do support the premise that risk factor profiles vary by breast cancer subtype and that hormonal risk factors have a greater impact on luminal-type breast cancers than HER 2-overexpressing or triple-negative tumors,” the researchers said.

Hormone exposure
Until recently, researchers have grouped breast cancer subtypes together when looking for risk factors, but that could miss those found in only certain types.

To help fill this gap, Phipps’s team looked at how reproductive factors such as breastfeeding and age of first menstruation and menopause influenced subtypes of breast cancer.

Starting to menstruate before age 13 was linked to a higher risk of HER2 breast cancer, the researchers found.

Entering menopause late, after age 55, and taking estrogen-plus-progesterone hormone therapy were linked to risk of estrogen-sensitive breast cancer.

The study involved women ages 55 to 79 and included 1,023 cases of luminal breast cancer, 39 cases of HER 2-overexpressing breast cancer, 78 cases of triple-negative disease, and 1,476 controls.

Such an observational study does not prove that breastfeeding helps prevent cancer or that not doing so increases the risk. The small number of triple-negative and HER-2 cases also limits the researchers’ ability to draw conclusions, and it is possible that some subtypes were misclassified.

Researchers have speculated that since women don’t menstruate while breastfeeding, they are exposed to fewer hormones. Another possibility is that the structure of breast cells change during breastfeeding, making them less susceptible to mutate.