Breast-feeding and infant health.

A mother who breast-feeds makes a significant contribution to her infant's health. Currently researchers are delineating many of the unique nutritional and antiinfective factors in human milk. The psychological advantages that accrue to both the breast-feeding mother and her infant are harder to quantify. Contraindications to breast-feeding are few and relate primarily to maternal illness and need for medications, or to those rare infants who have inborn errors of metabolism. Physicians and other health personnel should advise the mother knowledgeably on breast-feeding and seek imaginative solutions to any problems so that breast-feeding can be continued well into the first year of the infant's life and into following years if both mother and child desire it.