My interest in breastfeeding, I suppose, came from my own personal experience when I had

my first child, almost 14 years ago.

Emla Fitzsimons gave birth on a Saturday afternoon and stayed in the hospital until Monday

morning.

At first, she didn't think much about what day of the week it was.

Her mind was on something else.

I really struggled in the early couple of days with breastfeeding.

I found it very hard to access support in the hospital, but by Monday I just noticed

quite a stark difference in the availability of support, so my midwife was able to spend

some time with me and to help me, which I hadn't had available over the weekend.

This experience stuck with Emla, an economist and researcher at University College London.

Surely, she couldn't be the only woman who delivered over the weekend and received less

breastfeeding support as a result.

No wonder how the amount of support a woman received in the hospital might impact her decision

to breastfeed.

I suppose that's what resulted in the idea behind this paper, which is looking at how that

support kind of goes on to affect breastfeeding and using that to try to establish the causal

impact of breastfeeding on children's outcomes.

Most research that looks at breastfeeding's impact on children's outcomes is not causal.

There's lots of studies out there, but the vast, vast majority are mainly associations.

The usual approach is to compare children of mothers who breastfeed with those who did

not breastfeed.

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