This is an excerpt of the article which apears in full on Evidently Cochrane.
This article for midwives was first published in The Practising Midwife, our partner journal for Evidence for Everyday Midwifery. It has been written in two parts; Sarah Chapman (Cochrane UK) first summarizes the review and then Alys Einion (Associate Professor of Midwifery at Swansea University) reflects on the evidence and its implications for practice.
The current international recommendation (World Health Organization (WHO) 2011) is that healthy infants should be exclusively breastfed, where possible, for the first six months of life. In practice, many breastfed infants are given other fluids and/or food before that age, but is there good evidence to show whether there are benefits to this, or whether it could be harmful?