ACOG Calls for Broad Breastfeeding Support NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Jan 31 - The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is calling for healthcare providers, employers, and hospitals to support women who elect to breastfeed their infants, according to a statement released Wednesday. Breastfeeding offers a number of benefits for the mother and infant and is the preferred method of feeding, according to ACOG. Moreover, the group emphasizes that nearly all women are capable of breastfeeding their child. There are only a few contraindications to breastfeeding: use of illegal drugs of high alcohol intake, HIV or certain other infections, and an infant with galactosemia. ACOG continues to recommend exclusive breastfeeding for at least the first 6 months of life. The US Public Health Service for Healthy People 2010 goal is to have 50% or more of women breastfeeding at 6 months and 25% at 12 months. ACOG acknowledges that there is still a long way to go in achieving this goal, but emphasizes that with proper support services and education, it is attainable. "Women should be supported in integrating breastfeeding into their daily lives in the community and in the workplace to enable them to continue breastfeeding as long as possible," according to the statement, which appears in the February issue Obstetrics and Gynecology. Obstet Gynecol 2007

Breast-Fed Babies Better at Coping

Breast-feeding's calming effects seem to be long-lasting.

Years after being weaned, breast-fed children cope better with stressful situations such as their parents' divorce than their bottle-fed peers, researchers said today.

"In children who are breast-fed, there is less of an association between parental divorce and separation and childhood anxiety," Scott Montgomery, an epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said in an interview.

Breast-feeding is known to reduce infections, respiratory illness and diarrhea in the child and cuts the risk of after-birth bleeding in the mother.

In an observational study published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, Montgomery and his team studied how 9,000 breast- and bottle-fed 10-year-olds had coped with the stress of their parents' marital problems.

-- From News Services

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Saturday, November 20, 2004 Rochester, NY
Democrat and Chronicle 

'Superdoctor' gets honor

Poison center named for leader, a mom of 9 and newborns expert.

Name: Dr. Ruth Anderson Lawrence.


Birthplace: Hyde Park, Dutchess County.


Education: B.S. from Antioch College, 1945; graduated from University of Rochester Medical School, 1949.


Family: Married Dr. Robert Lawrence, 1950; nine children.
Lauren Stanforth
Staff writer

(November 20, 2004) — Dr. Ruth A. Lawrence was unlike many women in the 1950s — she had a full-time job, and a prestigious one at that.

But she tried to never let it get in the way of raising her nine (that's right, nine) children.

"I was very careful to do my share to never dump my children on somebody else, to make as many or more cookies for PTA meetings, do as much or more car pooling. I never, ever let somebody think I wasn't doing my share," said Lawrence, who is still working at the University of Rochester Medical Center as a professor of pediatrics.

But making enough cookies and being one of the most pre-eminent experts on breastfeeding and poison control in America? Now that's a feat.

"She's a miserable role model for women," joked UR Medical School classmate Dr. William Robertson, who is head of the Washington state Poison Control Center. "How can any other woman live up to that?"

It would appear not many. Lawrence, whose age is a well-kept secret, was the first female medical resident at Yale University in 1949. She helped put an infant on a ventilator in 1961, a first in the United States. She wrote a breastfeeding guide in 1979 that is still one of the top textbooks on the subject.

On Friday night, the UR-based Finger Lakes Regional Poison and Drug Information Center was named after her.

Lawrence is likely the longest-running poison center director in America. She became director of the center — only the second such center to be founded in the United States — in 1958.

This is in addition to the countless boards she has served on, from the Rochester Safety Council to the Girl Scouts of Genesee Valley. Just reading all of her accomplishments can make you tired.

"I think she's motivated by doing for others, that must be the driving force behind her incredible amount of energy," said Lawrence's eldest daughter, Dr. Barbara Asselin, who also works at UR and is one of three Lawrence children to become doctors. "She doesn't sit still."

Lawrence was always an overachiever. She started college at 16, the first person in her family to go. On the train from her Westchester County home to Antioch College in Ohio, Lawrence would look out the window at the desolate Rochester winter as her train passed through. "Who would ever live here?" she thought.

Lawrence majored in physics, but in her junior year she went to intern with a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey. The company's president was Swiss and hadn't mastered English, so Lawrence wrote many scientific papers for him. He urged Lawrence to go into medicine.

Lawrence returned to college, changed her major, and applied to the University of Rochester Medical School. She started med school in 1945, just as World War II ended, and there were a few other women in her class. It was at UR that Lawrence met her future husband, fellow classmate Dr. Robert Lawrence, now a retired anesthesiologist.

But unlike at UR, Lawrence was the first woman to become a medical resident at Yale University. She said she didn't receive too many challenges from the faculty, but they did have to have all of her white uniforms tailor-made. They also had to provide a different place for her to live. Robert Lawrence served in the Korean War while his wife did her residency.

Around 1953 — Lawrence isn't sure exactly when — the couple returned to Rochester to work at UR.

As part of her education at Yale, Lawrence was required to spend a year with newborns. As a result, UR put her in charge of premature nursery and newborn services. Back then, Lawrence said, there wasn't much you could do for premature infants except keep them warm and feed them as much as possible.

The 1950s became the age of new household products and cleaners, and UR doctors had written what was considered the bible of toxicology. So in 1954, the state requested that UR found a poison control center. It was the second such center in the country, after one in Chicago, but it was the first one to take calls from the public.

"It was an outrageous idea to think you would give medical advice to people over the phone," said Lawrence, who was picked to be its director in 1958.

"I had two services no one cared about," Lawrence said.

But that would soon change. As the space age emerged, microtechnology allowed doctors to treat tiny premature infants. And poison control centers exploded — at one time numbering more than 600, said Dr. John Benitez, current managing director of the Finger Lakes poison control center. (That number has shrunk to about 65.)

Lawrence stuck with the center, helping develop new treatments and advice for the new drugs and products that were constantly coming out.

"She's considered one of the pillars of the poison center movement," said Dr. Michael McGuigan, director of the Long Island Poison and Drug Information Center.

Through her work with keeping infants healthy, Lawrence also became a pillar among breastfeeding advocates. She wrote the book Breastfeeding: A Guide for the Medical Profession, now in its fifth edition and printed in two other languages. Lawrence's pediatrician son, Robert, helped out on the later editions. Lawrence also founded the Breastfeeding and Human Lactation Study Center at UR.

"She's got an incredible breadth of experience," Asselin said. "She's done everything from scrub kitchen floors and doing six loads of laundry a day to meeting the pope." Lawrence and other health care professionals met with Pope John Paul II in 1995 to persuade the Catholic Church to endorse breastfeeding. It did soon afterward.

Lawrence's husband retired 15 years ago. But as the sixth edition of her textbook sits on the floor of her office waiting to go out, Lawrence has no intention of retiring any time soon.

"I love what I'm doing. There are so many advancements, and things are kind of coming together on the projects I've been working on for a long time.

"If you want to help make policy and influence people, you have to stay in the academic mainstream."

LSTANFOR@DemocratandChronicle.com

Copyright 2004 Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.