The Fed is Best Foundation works to identify critical gaps in current breastfeeding protocols, guidelines, and education programs. We provide families and health professionals with the most up-to-date scientific research, education, and resources to practice safe infant feeding with breast milk, formula, or a combination of both. To be fully informed, parents must be taught the risks of insufficient breast milk intake when supporting exclusive breastfeeding in order to prevent hospitalizations for insufficient feeding complications. Finally, we strive to eliminate infant feeding shaming while prioritizing perinatal mental health.

Click here to read the Fed is Best Letter to Parents and Health Professionals.

Fed is Best Campaign Letter

Information for Hospitals

Fed is Best Photograph 2018, Abbie Fox of Fox Photography

The Fed is Best Foundation has summarized the current recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control for Pregnant and Breastfeeding Mothers in the wake of the Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. This information is intended to inform health care professionals and pregnant mothers who are confirmed positive for COVID-19 or persons under investigation (PUI) for COVID-19 in the hospital and postpartum settings.

Fed is Best featured in the New York Times

Do ‘Baby-Friendly’ Hospitals Work for All Moms?

“A small but vocal group of pediatricians and nurses, led by the nonprofit Fed Is Best, has begun to criticize some of the strategies that Baby-Friendly hospitals use,” writes Carrie Arnold for NYT Parenting.

Jan. 6, 2020

Read more at the New York Times Parenting Page

We are proud to introduce the Rush Family-Friendly Initiative!

A new alternative to hospital newborn infant feeding support

Respectful, judgment-free support of exclusive breastfeeding, supplemented breastfeeding and exclusive bottle-feeding before and after birth

Prenatal education and lactation support

Support of safe skin-to-skin care, rooming-in with nurseries available on demand

Complete patient education on all infant feeding choices and respect of parent choices

Learn More about Family-Friendly

From Philadephia Magazine

More Philly Hospitals Are Becoming “Baby-Friendly.” Maybe That’s Not a Good Thing.

The rigid, confounding, densely bureaucratic Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative has morphed into a system that diminishes a mother’s ability to make the best choices for her child. by

“CHRISTIE DEL CASTILLO-HEGYI is an affable 43-year-old with an impressive résumé. Based in Arkansas, she’s an ER doctor and a former National Institutes of Healthscientist who got her undergraduate degree at Brown University, where she studied brain injuries. She’s also a mother of three. In March of 2015, she published an open letter detailing the heartbreaking story of her first child’s birth in Albuquerque. Her newborn had jaundice, hypoglycemia, and severe dehydration after having suffered accidental starvation in the early days of exclusive breast-feeding. She wrote about the misinformed breast-feeding advice she got from hospital staff and how her child, now nine, lives with long-term developmental disabilities and seizures as a result of the starvation. “We are potentially putting ourselves at odds with the protective natural instinct to respond to a baby’s cry by telling mothers that their colostrum is enough (which for many it may not be) and by making them fear failure by giving their child supplementation when they need it,” the letter declares. She says the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative’s exclusive breast-feeding guidelines are dangerous.”

“A year after she wrote that letter, del Castillo-Hegyi and Jody Segrave-Daly, a lactation consultant and NICU nurse, launched Fed Is Best, a nonprofit that promotes safe infant feeding and serves as a resource for parents who breast-feed, bottle-feed or both. It’s one of the first organizations to publicly question the breast-feeding-only policies adopted by hospitals and proselytized by Baby-Friendly USA.”

Read more at Philadephia Magazine.

Unfortunately, serious starvation-related complications occur routinely among infants who undergo the Baby-Friendly exclusive breastfeeding protocol, namely excessive jaundice, excessive weight loss, dehydration, hypernatremia and hypoglycemia. These complications make up the leading causes of extended and repeat hospitalizations of healthy, term newborns. They not only result in the need for phototherapy, intravenous fluids, dextrose and rescue supplementation, but they can result in infant brain injury and life-long disabilities. We would like to help your family protect your baby’s future.

For Legal Advice

Dr. del Castillo-Hegyi and Jillian Johnson Raise Awareness at the USDA Dietary Guidelines Committee Meeting in Washington, DC

Washington, DC — On July 11, 2019, Dr. Christie del Castillo-Hegyi, Co-Founder of the Fed is Best Foundation and Jillian Johnson, Fed is Best Advocate and mother to Landon Johnson, who died from hypernatremic dehydration while exclusively breastfeeding, traveled to Washington, DC to provide testimonies to the 2020 USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. This is the first year that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) have included pregnancy and birth to 24 months.

Dr. del Castillo-Hegyi provided the Committee data on the rates of insufficient feeding complications, namely jaundice, hypernatremic dehydration and hypoglycemia among exclusively breastfed newborns and the risk of brain injury and developmental disabilities caused by those conditions. She discussed the failures in patient education and patient management that come from Baby-Friendly policies and how they result in thousands of newborn admissions a year.

Jillian Johnson spoke about her son Landon, who she attempted to exclusively breastfeed under the guidance of her Baby-Friendly hospital. He developed cardiac arrest from dehydration and underfeeding 12 hours after discharge despite 2 days of constant crying and nursing in the hospital, which her health professionals deemed normal. He died after 2 weeks on life support. She asked the Committee, “How is a mother to know if her child is in danger if everyone tells her the constant crying and nursing are normal?” She asked the Committee to put in place standard practices and patient education guidelines to prevent these complications from happening to other infants.

Please send your own comments and stories to the USDA Dietary Guidelines Committee and help the Committee write guidelines that protect all newborns and infants from insufficient feeding complications. Deadline is May 1, 2020.

Submit Comment to USDA

We are honored to have been invited to write a safe, evidence-based guide, “How to Breastfeed the First 2 Weeks of Life” for the new New York Times Parenting page. Our very own Jody Segrave-Daly, RN, IBCLC, Co-Founder of the Fed is Best Foundation was invited to write this very important guide to help mothers who want to breastfeed meet their goals while ensuring their babies are safely fed and receiving all they need to thrive.

New York Times Parenting: How to Deal with Low Breast Milk Supply

Fed is Best Foundation was given the honor of contributing to the New York Times Parenting article, “How to Deal with Low Milk Supply,” written by Susan Reslewic Keatley. This article provides mothers with low breast milk supply safe, evidence-based ways to maintain their breastfeeding relationship while ensuring her child safely receive all the nutrition she needs.

“Estimates of the prevalence of low breastmilk supply vary. While a handful of studies suggest low supply affects 10 to 15 percent of mothers, the lactation consultants I spoke to said it is one of the top reasons they receive calls for help.”

Among the leading causes of newborn extended and repeat hospitalizations are complications of insufficient feeding in exclusively or near-exclusively breastfed newborns. The most common reasons for insufficient feeding are insufficient colostrum/breast milk production and delayed onset of copious milk production. These can lead to the complications of dehydration, excessive jaundice, hypernatremia, and hypoglycemia, which not only lead to preventable hospitalizations but can also result in impaired infant brain development. These not only put newborn patients at serious risk but also put health providers and hospitals at risk. The Fed is Best Foundation has created a page dedicated to providing information to health care providers and hospitals on how to ensure patient safety related to infant feeding, particularly for exclusively breastfed newborns. Click the photo below to learn more.

Fed is Best Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with a strict policy of not accepting funds from any company, organization or entity that obtains revenue through infant feeding products and services, including breast- and formula-feeding companies. All resources on FedisBest.org are free because we believe that safe infant feeding is a human right.

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