A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Nestling up to her acoustic guitar, Oppie Andaresta sang lines about the importance of breast-feeding in front of dozens of pregnant women and medical practitioners at a seminar in West Jakarta last week.
""If you want a healthy baby/ A healthy and smart baby/ You should breast-feed for 60 minutes after giving birth/ If you cannot get the milk out, you have to try and try.""
Oppie wrote the lyrics based on her popular song titled Andai (If). In the song, the 34-year-old stresses the importance of exclusive breast-feeding until at least the six-month mark.
The singer ""practices what she preaches"" on her 2-month-old baby Kai Matari Bejo Kaler.
""Many people still throw away the first breast milk; the colostrum or yellowish liquid that is characterized by high protein and antibody content,"" she said.
In fact colostrum is so important that it is sometimes referred to as ""liquid gold"".
""By giving breast milk in the first hour and continuing to breast-feed, I am protecting my baby against diseases. My husband and I got the flu, for example, but my baby did not,"" Oppie said.
Pediatrician Utami Roesli said breast-feeding babies in the first hour of life provided antibodies and other protective proteins.
""Breast-feeding is a baby's first immunization,"" Utami said, adding that current studies showed that breast-feeding in the first hour after birth significantly reduced neo-natal mortality rates.
""Many people are still afraid the baby will be too cold. Actually the mother's body helps to keep the baby appropriately warm. I have seen this with my grandson Raffa,"" she said.
In the seminar, Utami showed pictures of her daughter-in-law model Tiara Lestari breast-feeding Raffa in the delivery room.
Exclusive breast-feeding, based on the World Health Organization's definition, refers to the practice of feeding only breast milk (including expressed milk).
Some people believe there is an almost aggressive insistence for new mothers to breast-feed. And yet, some hospital's maternity care practices can inadvertently discourage new mothers from giving their babies breast milk in the first hour after delivery.
Utami suggested that women exclusively breast-feed for the first six months, continuing, with the addition of appropriate foods, for two years or more.
""If all women in Indonesia exclusively breast-fed their babies, they could save trillions of rupiah a year, which would help in eradicating poverty,"" Utami said.
She said if all the 4.5 million babies born here every year were fed nonhuman milk -- the cheapest formula on the market being Rp 40,000 a can -- total spending on infant formula would be Rp 7.9 trillion a year.
""Giving breast milk could also be a powerful way of reducing health costs,"" she said at the seminar, which was organized by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-sponsored Health Service Program.
A recent study in 37 countries showed 41 percent of mothers fed their infants exclusively on breast milk in the first six months of their lives, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
UNICEF said some studies showed the lives of an additional 1.3 million children globally would be saved if the rate were increased to 90 percent, and found that neonatal mortality fell by a fifth when babies were breast-fed within an hour of birth.
