Oh dear. As if regular breast milk weren’t enough…

In the June 2010 issue of Today’s Dietitian, there’s an article on why breast milk should be fortified. To be fair, the author suggests that boosted breast milk should be given to “vulnerable” infants, such as pre-term babies, as “unfortified breast milk” is usually adequate for healthy newborns. However, the unfortified milk provides “inadequate protein, sodium, calcium, and phosphorus” to meet the needs of preemies and sick infants.

The article is worth checking out, as it provides a a detailed description of what breast milk is and how it functions, and it even goes in to procedures for storing human milk as well as donor milk and the reasons it may be used. There’s also some info on commercially available milk fortifiers.

The idea of fortifying breast milk still weirds me out—way to make a woman feel inadequate, doc—but I can understand the why a little bit, at least in the case of infants with special needs.

In other breast milk news, Kim Kardashian badmouths a mom for breastfeeding in public. Not cool.