Completing the first draft of our synthesis paper and final assignments leading up to this has been a very smooth process working with Harrison. Both of us agreed that it wasn’t as time-consuming as we initially thought it would be to put together this draft. I can attribute this thought to the well-placed assignments that led up to this point, where I can see now all work together like puzzle pieces to give us the paper. When completing the evidence appraisal table, this allowed us to clearly lay out the major facts and pieces of information that we wanted to include in our synthesis. One thing that really stood out to me was that there was no clear answer in answering our PICOT question the way it was worded. This was based off of research that showed how infants that had a diet mostly of breast milk had lower fat mass only during a portion of the first year as compared to a diet mostly of cow’s milk formula having lower fat mass during the opposite time period in the twelve months. This makes me think that more research should done to have a mixture of diets and utilizing each during different months to have an overall low fat mass rather than the alternating lead in fat free mass. Also, another finding was that in one study that also included data about Soy Formula, that was the leader in fat-free mass as compared to the other two diets, this surprised me as I didn’t know this was an option for nutrition and more data should be completed among other alternatives. These findings will impact my future nursing practice as a hopeful labor and delivery nurse in supporting mother and parent’s decision for the diet of their child. I would advocate for breastfeeding for the beginning to aid in the mother-baby bond and then transition to using cow’s milk or soy formula. Yes, we both came to the same conclusions and I look forward to hearing his opinions on our findings.
