Under HCR, the government insures no one. All insurance is provided by private insurance companies. The government subsidizes the most indigent, but all the insurance is from private companies, and you are free to choose the one that fits your peculiar understanding of how insurance should work.
If you have insurance now, nothing will change for you. You are free to choose to do business with whomever you like. You do not have the right to expose the rest of us to the risk that you might need emergency care with out insurance.
Unless the mother is going to be able to access the baby frequently for feedings, breastmilk is not free. It requires breast pumps, refrigeration, storage, etc. It’s more of a logistics nightmare to handle than getting cans of formula out of the nursey supply closet. That I know from experience.
Strawman argument…no one is saying that if breastfeeding is going to make you throw yourself out a window, that you should keep doing it. It’s usually not a love/hate thing though. I didn’t love it or hate it, I just thought it was a good idea to do it, and so I did. I used the same pump through two babies, for a total of almost 2 years of nursing, and even though I used formula as well, I still saved a ton of money.
Yes, breast pumps cost money. Refrigeration is generally being paid for anyway…most people don’t BUY a refrigerator or extra electricity for their breast milk. Storage can be done in the bottles you use to feed the baby (my pump pumped the milk directly into them), so you have maybe a $20 investment in a few extra bottles. And logistics don’t cost a thing. So, yes, the breastmilk itself is, in fact, free, and the cost associated with pumping it is way less than formula feeding.
Yes, but if your job required mobility you are not going to be able to pump, refrigerate, and send milk back to your daughter without considerable unreasonable expense. Breast feeding just ties women to babies and home. And it gives an employer a damn good reason not to hire a woman when a man doesn’t have these mobility issues.
You don’t need more than one breast pump. A good quality pump will last for at least a year typically. Formula also requires refrigeration once opened and storage beforehand. Once opened a can of formula must be used up within a certain time frame or thrown out.
OK, again, what does this have to do with the thread? The topic isn’t “all the reasons breastfeeding is sometimes hard.” Why are you complaining about how hard it is, anyway? You’ve never done it and never will. I’ve done it. I know exactly what’s involved. I used to pump while I commuted to and from work, I pumped while I was working at my desk, I’ve stored milk, I’ve transported milk, I’ve done everything you’re saying is so difficult and expensive. And…it’s not terribly difficult and it’s not at all expensive. Plus, the difficulty isn’t relevant to the topic. So, do you have any points that ARE relevant to the topic?
What expenses are you talking about? You pump the milk, store it in a bottle in a cooler for a short time or a refrigerator for a longer period and then bring it home in an insulated bag. I work at home so I don’t face that particular problem but I have pumped in dozens of places over the years when on business trips or visiting friends.
You are thinking in terms of logistics for the one baby nuclear family model. For the really poor this isn’t a good option. Communal living is their best shot at survival. Actually, for all women except the extremely wealthy who can afford to hire others to handle the workload, communal living where people share child-rearing responsibilities is a better option than the crap we get stuck with in nuclear families. So yes logistics is an issue. Breastmilk costs in time that could be used to do more profitable things. Breastmilks devalues women to that which is animal. It makes us domestic animals producing milk, not human beings.
There’s absolutely no additional logistics if you are living in a communal situation. You pump the milk, you bring it home, you put it in the fridge. The person who feeds the baby takes the bottle out of the fridge and feeds the baby with it.
In the non-communal situation, where the baby is at daycare, you pump the milk, you bring it to daycare, you put it in the fridge. The person who feeds the baby takes the bottle out of the fridge and feeds the baby with it.
See the difference? Neither did I.
Did you notice that the person who feeds the baby in either case doesn’t have to mix formula? It’s actually easier for them, not harder.
Your priviledged, sheltered life has made it possible for you to say breastfeeding is not terribly difficult or expensive. All you’ve really done is help set women back a few hundred years and reconfirm misogynist opinions that we are for bearng and feeding babies. Breastfeeding is acceptable when necessary, but glorifying or even encouraging it, is just digusting. I and most of the women I know aspire to be more than cows. You’re upset because Republican social conservatives want to oppress women. Well perhaps you should stop helping them by emphasizing women’s roles in society and the workplace, not in milk production.
You’ve never done it. How the hell would you know?
I let you in on a little secret: nursing feels very good.
I nursed my eldest for two years. Once I got the hang of it, it was quite pleasurable. Many times my daughter and I would nurse and calmly lie together in a blissfully dreamy state. Nursing relaxed my eldest and made her utterly happy for most of her babyhood. Babies nurse for comfort as well as nutrition. Nursing made me feel deeply connected both with my own innate humanity and with the fundamental humanity of the small baby I had brought into the world.
One of my deepest sadnesses with this second child is that I have been unable to get her to latch and thus not nurse. But at least pumping has allowed me to lose all the weight I gained when pregnant.
Ever had to keep track of multiple bottles of breastmilk? I have. It’s a pain in the ass when babies have to be fed every couple of hours. Not to mention the occasional morons who forget to drop anything off and have to be tracked down. With forumula everything can be done assembly line style quick and easy. It’s a very big difference. And last, but not least, if the mother is away working having her ship breast milk in is just plain stupid.
How much ignorance of this topic do you intend to demonstrate? Most women, even women in third world countries, do not find breast feeding particularly difficult or expensive. Formula requires access to a safe water supply and secure storage. That’s far more more difficult to come by in many third world nations.
Keep calling breast feeding women cows and tell them not to do something that will save them money and improve their health. That’s true misogyny.
Ha ha, you’re funny. First of all, being privileged and sheltered has nothing to do with whether or not nursing is cheaper than formula. Without a doubt, it is. Some women are unfortunately not in the position to be able to pump at work, and that’s a shame. It actually puts underprivileged women at a further disadvantge, because they are the ones who can least afford formula.
And as to your rant about misogyny and cows or whatever you’re going on about, women like me pump so we can maintain a presence in society and the workforce, duh.
How is keeping track of bottles of pumped milk any different than keeping track of bottles of formula? At the very least the pumped milk has a longer storage date and fewer contamination risks.
My daycare provider does it every day and it doesn’t seem to tax her very much. Course, I’m guessing that she’s smarter than you, but the routine didn’t seem that difficult. We each wrote our kid’s name on the bottle with a black sharpie. (I guess the sharpie adds $1.49 to the cost of breastfeeding.) She would grab the appropriate bottle from the fridge, no assembly line needed.
I always had formula at the daycare, in case I couldn’t provide breast milk on a given day.
This isn’t the third world though I have noticed women in less technologically developed countries will immediately grasp on to formula when they realize it will allow them to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep because it means somebody other than them can feed the baby. I find the breast-feeding Taliban rather dangerous for American women. They want to drive us back into slavery to biology. Like I said before two of the greatest gifts to women everywhere were hormonal birth control and bottled formula.