Overweight mothers and breast-feeding

A newborn baby's suckling triggers the production of the hormone prolactin, which is responsible for stimulating milk production early in lactation. However, new research shows that for new mothers who are overweight or obese, the prolactin response is diminished in the first week after giving birth. The current study shows that heavier women need even more support to be successful breast-feeders. In practical terms, this means encouraging heavier women to seek help from lactation counsellors and scheduling early follow-up appointments in the first days and weeks after birth. Researchers from the Cornell University in Ithaca observed that while overweight and obese women are as likely as normal-weight women to initiate breast-feeding, they are less likely to continue. In their other research, psychosocial characteristics such as self-efficacy for breast-feeding in heavier women did not seem to explain their short duration of breast-feeding. The researchers proposed in their study that the normal increase in prolactin concentration in response to infant feeding might be affected by obesity. They measured prolactin and progesterone concentrations before and 30 minutes after the beginning of a suckling episode. The researchers found that women who were overweight or obese before becoming pregnant had a lower prolactin response to suckling than normal-weight women at 48 hours but not 7 days after delivery. This would be expected to compromise the ability of overweight or obese women to produce milk, and may contribute to early discontinuation of breast-feeding, according to the researchers. In the current study, concentrations of progesterone were not markedly different between overweight and normal-weight women, a finding that does not bear out the idea that higher progesterone concentrations in overweight women might delay milk production.

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