Health, Wellness and Nutrition
Breastfeeding: A Wellness Issue for African American Families
By Lisa Loving
Of The Skanner News
T
he Multnomah Coun-
ty Health Department
last month held a spe-
cial
celebration
commemorating news that
Oregon has been named as
the number one state for
breastfeeding.
State nutrition workers
Shafia Monroe
credited Multnomah Coun-
ty’s Women, Infant and
Children’s Program for pushing the local breastfeeding rate
above 90 percent.
County and state officials met at the Northeast Health
Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard on Feb. 7 to
congratulate local health workers; Multnomah County
Commissioner Loretta Smith accepted a plaque from the
state to honor the county’s efforts.
The Skanner News this week caught up with Shafia Mon-
roe of the International Center for Traditional Childbearing
to talk about the one bad aspect of Oregon’s breastfeeding
trend – the fact that African American mothers suffer some
of the worst birth outcomes and have the lowest rates of
breastfeeding
The Skanner News: Why is this a wellness issue that
everyone should be paying attention to?
Shafia Monroe: We’re doing well as a state but we’re not
doing well as a racial community – let me break it down,
those communities would be Lake Oswego and Southeast
Portland. But in terms of breaking it down by race we’re not
doing so well.
People should be really understanding why breastfeeding
is not debatable. It’s essential; it’s a public health priority
that saves lives on the mother’s side and the baby’s side and
The black community should
embrace women who
breastfeed and make them
feel comfortable in all areas,
because that’s the thing that
we hear – where can I feed
my baby?
Last month Multnomah County and Oregon state officials celebrated reaching the highest breastfeeding
rates in the nation. From left, Char McKay, Shantae Johnson, David Brown, Commissioner Loretta Smith,
Diane Garrett and Loreen Nichols with the plaque honoring the work of health educators.
the community’s side.
I was talking to a pastor, he didn’t
know that mothers who breastfeed past
one year, those women are less inclined
to get breast cancer — that’s document-
ed. But we only hear people telling
black women to get a mammogram—
I’ve never heard anyone tell black
women that if you breastfeed for one
year it can reduce your breast cancer
risk. So that’s important.
Also we don’t hear that women who
breastfeed, it delays their diabetes. So if
you get gestational diabetes when
you’re pregnant, I hate to quote another
statistic, but you’re prone to getting dia-
betes, I believe, within 5-6 years. By
breastfeeding, it delays your onset of
Type 2 diabetes. This can be major,
when you have a high diabetic rate within the black com-
munity in Portland, and more black women dying from
late-stage breast cancer.
And this is kind of philosophical, but
with all this stress over the Trayvon
Martin case – it’s driving all of us
crazy across the country. I think that,
just to breastfeed your child does
increase the endorphins for more peace
and relaxation because we live in such
a stressful situation, particularly moth-
ers of African descent.
I don’t want to say ‘of color’ because
Mexican women are breastfeeding
their babies better, data show that.
African-born women are also success-
fully breastfeeding their babies past six
months. And Asian women are. But
African American women are not.
So I want to be very specific about
African American women. Women
who identify as African American need
more support, more information about the importance of
breastfeeding. And breastfeeding for a long time – not just
for a couple of weeks, but really looking to breastfeed until
the small interior fontanel closes, which is the top of the
head. It takes one year for what we call “the soft spot” to
close because the brain has one year to grow. I tell moms,
you have one year to give your child the best food possible
for the best living development.
And of course if you can’t breastfeed for medical reasons,
medication, fine.
But it’s important to understand too that breastfeeding is
not just about putting breast milk in a bottle. It’s an actual
act. You’re actually holding your baby, skin to skin, where
the child has a certain distance from the mother’s face. And
the way the baby is in the arm – only God would know there
is some kind of neural click that happens at that distance of
a child looking into the mother’s face. So just filling the
bottle and giving it to Dad and propping it is not the same.
It’s the whole thing – holding the baby, skin to skin, the
baby smelling the mom, the heartbeat – all of that creates
things that science is still trying to prove. And I feel that we
really need to celebrate that more, I feel that we’re in a
state, thank God, where people are not being kicked out for
breastfeeding at church or at the store. However we still
want to make breastfeeding more acceptable in the normal
life of African American families, so they feel there’s no
shame that comes from doing it. And that the black com-
munity would embrace women who breastfeed and make
them feel comfortable in all areas, because that’s the thing
that we hear – where can I feed my baby? People feel that
it’s not a good thing to do; it’s for us to break the stigma.
And also black people in this country, we have a strong
breastfeeding history up to 1970 in the South. However, as
we know that was eradicated by the formula industry for all
people, but I think it made a very strong impact on African
American women for many reasons.
We are holding an African American mothers breastfeed-
ing circle for women to come into an accepting
environment and support each other and learn more about
the benefits. The schedule will be up on the website by
Thursday for people to sign up.
We still want to
make breastfeeding
more acceptable in
the normal life of
African American
families, so they feel
there’s no shame
that comes from
doing it.
Find out more about the International Center for Tradi-
tional Childbearing at www.ICTC.org
Page 6 The Portland Skanner March 21, 2012