Premature Infants and Breastfeeding

Mother’s own milk, appropriately fortified, is the standard for feeding premature infants providing short- and long-term health benefits. Neonatal providers play an important role supporting lactation in the neonatal intensive care unit with education, milk expression, skin-to-skin care, and breastfeeding. Promotion of human milk and breastfeeding requires multidisciplinary and system-wide adoption of lactation support practices. Pasteurized human donor milk is recommended instead of formula when mother’s own milk is not available or sufficient. To optimize infant survival and health outcomes it is essential to reduce disparities in provision of mother’s own milk according to demographic and social factors. A complete and openly discussed discharge feeding plan is crucial to enable the mother to exclusively breastfeed and achieve her breastfeeding goals at the same time as providing the infant with optimal human milk nutrition for growth and development.