thanks to the ‘tit nazi’ (ha ha) for her recent reminder of this topic, coz i finally got round to finding these posters and brochures, which shall be errm, kept as souvenirs and wisely used in future… whenever THAT is. 
tsk, SO propagandistic hor. *chuckles*
just to get me a little nostalgic once in a while. (especially when i see the freaking price of milk on the shelves these days. sigh.)
for more information the ‘tit nazi’ would be proud of, go to http://www.abas.org.sg.
nice and pink, just for the ladies. (ps: check out the video clips available! yes yes, totally un-p/o/r/n ones with real spurting bits, hehe. vair useful stuff, especially for new mums, e.g. on compression. man, i like this doctor, we really should have more of his kind around.)
this has been a public service announcement.
**********
ok, just because i *happened* to be surfing, i found a survey done in s’pore some years ago by HPB. excerpts i found interesting:
Muslim mothers were 6.7 times more likely to breastfeed their babies at 2 months compared to Buddhist/Taoist mothers. This might be related to Islam’s favourable stance towards breastfeeding—for example, the Quran (Chapter 2, Verse 233) decrees that ‘mothers shall give suck to their offspring for two whole years’ (Counsilman and Viegas, 1985). Christian mothers were also more likely to breastfeed their babies longer compared to Buddhist/Taoist mothers.
It is noteworthy that while the model for predicting continued breastfeeding at 2 months shows that Muslim mothers were more likely to breastfeed their babies compared to Buddhist/Taoist mothers, Malay mothers were less likely to breastfeed their babies compared to Chinese mothers. This apparent contradiction could be explained by the differing influences of ethnicity and religion on breastfeeding among different subgroups of respondents. Among the Malay mothers, all were Muslims—their ethnic and religious identities are thus closely intertwined. Among the Chinese mothers, their religious affiliations were more diverse—about half were Buddhist/Taoists, about a quarter were Christians, and another quarter had no religion. In addition, the shift towards Christianity in Singapore is most pronounced among the better educated Chinese (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2000), and better educated mothers tend to breastfeed their babies longer.
The survey found that 54.5% of the mothers did not receive advice on breastfeeding from health professionals during their pregnancy. However, this did not have a negative impact on breastfeeding duration in the current study. On the contrary, women who did not receive advice on breastfeeding from health professionals during pregnancy were more likely to breastfeed for a longer duration. Among the women in the survey who had not received advice on breastfeeding, the three mostly commonly cited sources of information were family members, friends and books. This suggests that family support and maternal knowledge are important. Not discounting the important role of health professionals in promoting breastfeeding, it might still be useful to provide women with credible information on breastfeeding as soon as possible as studies have shown that infant feeding decisions are made prior to delivery and such decision would influence the initiation and duration of breastfeeding
In summary, the results of this study show higher breastfeeding prevalence rates compared to past studies in Singapore. Despite this, exclusive breastfeeding is still not a common practice.
- full article here.
so in short:
1) muslim mums do better than buddhist/taoist mums, but malay mums don’t do as well as chinese mums, because the latter include christians who are *generally* better educated and informed. hmm, we really gotta step up, huh? melayu… boleh? :S
2) health professionals, and i’m guessing nurses and doctors here, are not necessarily the best people to turn to, but family members, friends and books (or rather, the world wide web!). so much for asking the ‘experts’, ha ha.
3) let’s hope the statistics rise (and keep rising) in the next few years.
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