Breastfeeding resources

Maureen Minchin is a medical historian who became a ground-breaking pioneer in the field of infant feeding, first with her book on food intolerances (Food for Thought, editions 1982-1992), then with the publication of Breastfeeding Matters in 1985 (4th edition in 1998) which galvanised many readers such as Professor Frank Oski, who reviewed it in the 1987 Yearbook of Paediatrics, although the annual Yearbooks had never contained reviews!

She was the only Australian involved in the creation of the new international profession of lactation consultant, and through links with WHO Geneva and UNICEF New York was influential in the creation of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, which has led to major reform in maternity facilities. (She was sent to Nigeria to assess hospitals there in 1992 and worked as a BFHI educator and assessor until 2010.)

She has worked in voluntary organisations for decades and educated literally thousands of health professionals, doctors, midwives, nurses, and pharmacists, via courses and conferences she and others have organised.

She has been a consultant or writer on many university-based educational modules for health professionals, including the NHS-funded e-learning for health modules.

A mother of three, her interests and writing are based in huge knowledge of the science of breastfeeding, but are also plain-spoken and practical, arising from her own and other women’s experience. Her work is radically different from most breastfeeding handbooks because it takes seriously the issues of infant formula feeding, exposing many realities about which even many health professionals remain ignorant.

Milk Matters is her latest work, a massive tome with three different books under the one cover, which pulls together science, history, and clinical practice.

It can be read as two eBooks available from Amazon and Apple and other outlets: Infant formula and Modern Epidemics; Crying Babies and Food in the Early Years.

Milk matters: more than you know, Maureen Minchin’s latest book, is a call to all who are interested in the long-term health of humanity to take a better educated and research-driven view of the effects of early diet.

It is an impressive trilogy:
• Book 1 advances the milk hypothesis, that immune disorder can be communicated vertically, compounding intergenerationally, through early infant nutrition and pregnancy and birth experiences;

• Book 2 describes the development of replacements for breastmilk, outlining their past, present and future deficiencies, and excesses, and the known or likely consequences;

• Book 3 links the science and history to everyday infant problems and gives practical advice about preventing or resolving diet-related distress in young children.