The Ten Steps: Ten Keys to Breastfeeding Success

摘要

The Ten Steps is not a technically complex document but a simple list of policies and procedures based on normal maternal postpartum physiology and neonatal biology and behavior that support lactation and breastfeeding and help assure quality care for all mothers and newborns. This list is considered by many to be fundamental to achieving the breastfeeding goals of the nation.The Ten Steps were not created from a long list of double-blind randomized controlled research studies. Although there had been previous descriptive publications of the importance of breastfeeding and of maternity care that helped mothers and babies get started/ the Ten Steps were primarily the result of personal experiences by women who were trying to help other mothers who wanted to breastfeed. Shortly after the beginning of the La Leche League International in 1956, the founders began to provide seminars for physicians and nurses who had not had the subject of lactation and breastfeeding included in their preservice/undergraduate training. Such a seminar was fundamental to the development of a set of maternity policies and procedures that ultimately became the basis for the Ten Steps.