Breast vs. Formula: Infant nutrition

Great Debates
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The thing is, Dangerosa, that it is your choice that you feel guilty. I can’t make you feel guilty without your permission. I fed one of my children formula from the age of 5 weeks upward and I feel no guilt over this decision. Regret, yes, but not guilt. If you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’ll explain why.

My first child was born with a genetic abnormality and a heart defect. I nursed her for 5 months. She failed to thrive. Her caregiver thought that she was not eating my expressed breastmilk from a bottle well because she was holding out for the breast. So, we switched to total bottlefeeding and she ate well, for her. At the age of 8 months, she entered surgery to correct the heart defect. She did not survive.

My next child is the formula fed one. At 5 weeks she went on what’s often called a “nursing strike.” She wouldn’t nurse. Had colic. I gave a pacifier and she still refused to nurse. Distraught, with the memory of my first child’s poor eating fresh in my mind (and with the worried concern of my husband), we switched to formula. She took the bottle immediately, I dried up my milk and we were on our way. She received formula until the age of a year and then I switched to cow’s milk.

Now, being better informed, I know that I could have weathered the nursing strike. However at the time I was scared stiff that my child wasn’t eating. Formula was there and I didn’t hesitate. With the information that I had, it was the best decision I could make.

So you see, I have regrets but no guilt. I did what I felt was best at the time with the information I had. I can’t go back and second-guess myself and kick myself for not providing her with the best nutrition I could. I wish it had been different, but to reiterate, I’m not guilt-ridden about it.

I gently suggest to you that you also put away your guilt when hear and read nursing advocacy. It’s to the teeming millions who make the choice without being fully armed with the facts or the support that I speak out. For those who consider it too hard to try. It’s hard for some … if it’s hell on earth for you, abandon it. Of course, true to my cause, I would suggest that some discomfort and inconvenience on the part of the mother IS worth it to provide breastmilk! But, as has been pointed out before, it’s only one, albeit important, part of the parenting mix.

One final thought on your post: All this flack about the La Leche League leads me to hope they’re hearing it. They’re hurting their cause by telling women if they loved their children they’d stay home from work. Remember, I work fulltime!

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Interesting stuff Ellen and hedra, and who am I to contradict WHO…now that I read that I DO seem to remember them recommending continued breast feeding past age 2 for underdeveloped countries.

So I support hedra’s contention (and I appologize if I paraphrase) that given that it is not “socially” typical in the US to breastfeed past age 2, those women who choose to do so (present company excluded of course) might be socially “atypical” somehow (the psyche term is schizotypal) and this (not breast feeding per se) is resulting in the psyche dependency I noted earlier.

As far as the animal research, you are correct in noting my examples are peripheral (though now that I am largely conceding much of the original point to you, I am not sure if talking about comparative research is becoming tangental). However I believe I can give you a much more concrete example of what I am talking about. Actually 2 related ones. Noted in most mammals mating behavior are two consistent facets: That males compete aggressively for mating, and that males do not tend to participate in childrearing. Of course, as you note, there are interspecies differences, but this is a general mammalian pattern and actually has some good evolutionary reasons why this is so. Now the closer we get to primates the more violent the aggression becomes (babboon and chimp males will indeed murder each other over sex) and the less participation in childrearing by males takes place (chimp males don’t participate at all). From this line of reasoning (which seems to me pretty similar to the analogies that anthropologist was raising) whenever I see a woman I wish to mate with, I should simply slaughter her husband, mate with her and dump her. Nonetheless our social organization overrides our biology and there are social factors that necessitate new inovations in our behavior. Could be (I am not saying this is the case) there may be some sociological reasons why discontinuing breast feeding early has become an adaptation, even thought this is not biologically “typical”

At any rate, though some of my previous examples were indeed tangental, I did cover a number of points (most of which you did not mention in your reply) and I would be sorta disappointed if you didn’t see ANY logic in the fundamental weaknesses of animal research.

Again given that most mammalian organ systems work fairly similarly, would you give your child medicine that had only been tested on animals and never tested on people?

That is the fundamental logic of animal research…if it is true for monkeys, it is true for me. But the “species specific behaviors” you noted could be extremely important.

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Of course, using general mammalian tendencies is as risky as using animal models, isn’t it? But I’m about to fiddle with the concept anyway…

Humans seem to have some behaviors relevant to pack/tribe behavior. Check out STABLE baboon groups, such as the fairly well-studied pumphouse gang. Males DO participate in upbringing, because otherwise their offspring are at risk. Because human are born very ‘premature’ compared to other animal models, even more so than chimps and baboons, there is a requirement for male participation for a period of time, IF resources are stable (that is, if resources are unstable, the advantage goes to the guy who spreads it around the most, and devil take the hindmost… when resources are stable, social factors count for more of the reproductive process, and females are more prone to denying access to reproduction to guys who won’t help out… they can afford to be picky). Once you get agriculture, well, resourses are a LOT more under your control.

Also, since nursing a toddler does NOT prevent pregnancy, nor does pregnancy make nursing impossible, extended bf in humans may represent a different model entirely than any other. Nursing a toddler may even be evolutionarily advantageous to the siblings: keeps mom from ignoring the older sib (who really isn’t ready to live on his own), and also allows her to reproduce more often than would be normal with most species that have highly dependent offspring. Not to mention those immunological benefits.

Anyway, since the average age of weaning seems to be unusually low in the US (checking those original numbers), it seems to be a peculiarity of American culture - possibly adaptive, but also possibly pathological adaptation. It does seem to be fairly recent, though… even taking that cemetary study with a grain of salt, 14 months in the 1800s is significantly higher weaning age than we have now. Business practice is probably as much a part of the decision as anything else (though which came first?), since most other developed countries offer WAY longer maternity leaves, which means non-US women can get to the stage where 1) it makes sense to even start nursing, since you’ll have 6 months of it before you consider stopping, and 2) you can manage to work without pumping but still at least partially breastfeed, because your supply is WELL established. Toss in a little high-mobility, add the tendency to glorify independence over community, and you get some interestng side-effects.

You gotta be really determined to buck the trend, or a little nuts. (or both) Leading edges usually are filled with peole who are a bit obsessed, often narrow minded or single-minded, and heck, quite a number of nuts. Zealotry is practically required of the radical fringe, right? But once someone has stepped WAY over that line, it opens a space for ‘normal’ people to fill the gap behind them. I’ll be interested to see what happens to the pathology rate once the leading edge passes… once extended bf becomes visible enough that more women are likely to try it because it feels right, when before there wasn’t enough company of ‘normal’ women doing it. I suspect that things are already sliding that way - women are always popping in on the parenting boards I frequent, nearly in tears over ‘having to wean’ because someone told them so, and releived no end when they find that there are ‘reasonable’ moms out there that decided that nobody other than the mom and the child should decide when weaning happens. I also wonder what pathologies will REDUCE as extended bf happens more, since surely weaning when the child definitely is not inclined to must have some kind of impact? Bet it won’t be tied to the weaning process, though, since that won’t be the visible area of change.

Anyway, I think I see in this where the LLL crazies stories are coming from. I do recall that I was warned that LLL in my area didn’t have a lot of resources for working moms, and that SOME of the moms were very militant about staying home… there was anoter nursing mom’s group that was more open to the average professional mom, like me. I didn’t go there, either, since my family and friends provided the network I needed. But I certainly have encountered the “if you loved your child, you’d <do whatever it is that I decided was best, and you know if I decided that, and I’m a REAL mom, no other REAL mom could disagree>”. It isn’t limited to the pro-bf crowd, though. I’ve heard it from all over. So don’t JUST blame LLLers for that.

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Hedra:

I admit I am not familiar offhand with the “pumphouse” gang you refer to…although I am wondering if that is a group of babboons raised in captivity…in which case we once again run into a generalizability problem (animals in captivity tend NOT to act the same as they do in the wild) Everything I have read about babboons seems to indicate the opposite if what you claimed (you might want to check out Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan) and certainly chimp males do not take part in raising their own young (People of the Forest). What you might see, as you mentioned, is siblings caring for siblings.

Although you might be able to convince me that longer breast feeding does not directly cause psychological dependency, you will have trouble convincing me that shorter term bf is a “pathological” adaptation as you suggested. I think this comes dangerously close to condemning those who disagree with you…particularly in the absence of clear data to support that. Much of the data I have come across on bf (and again I do not claim to be nearly as well read as you on the subject) suggests there may be some minor benefits, but no biggee either way. As such the mother’s personal choice is the major determinant.

I wasn’t real sure in your last post if you were still attempting to argue the validity of comparative animal studies (you kinda went evolution there. :slight_smile: ). Yet such studies are generally taken with not a grain but an entire shaker of salt in the scientific community. You might actually recall saccarine was just cleared from the list of carcinogens, despite animals studies which suggested it might be.

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First, the pumphouse gang is a wild troop that doesn’t wander, having adapted to living near a stable source of water (the pumphouse). I think some of the studies of wild type behavior are relatively unscientific - this one observed individuals on a specific cycle, not based on where the eye was drawn, AND this troop being stable in location, it has been studied for longer continuous periods of time, which changes the resulting analysis drastically! the scoop is that the dominant-behaving males actually are the least likely to breed, and are usually new to the troop, where the ones who have been there a few years don’t act dominant at all. They make friends with the babies, and then they get cozy with the females. Instance, two ‘dominant’ males fighting over a receptive female. Female watches patiently, then wanders off breifly, returns again, then walks off, ignoring them. Males strut off, waiting for another chance to impress her - but don’t know that when she wandered off, she slipped behind some bushes and mated with a male who had been around a lot longer, who played with her kids, and who was in a grooming group with her. That same male had already been chased off by the dominant (so to speak) males. Who won? If you missed the subtle meeting behind the bushes, you’d think maybe she wasn’t yet receptive. BIG difference in analysis. No idea if wandering troops act differently, but at least with stable resources/location (the only other variable), social behavior is more important. I can’t remember the name of the article, but I read it a while back, maybe 6-7 years? I’ll see if I can find it.

(And my animal model comment was about the relative lack of utility of me using ANY primate as comparison, since they are all flawed examples. I do a lot of work with the pharma industry, and I certainly don’t think any system can be a full proxy for human, though some systems have overlaps)

And I don’t suggest that early weaning is necessarily pathological, but more that a wide range is probably more normal, and for some individuals early weaning is going to cause as many problems as late weaning will for others. Just different problems. Playing it by ear is important. Listen to how you feel, see how your child reacts, and use those as factors in your decision making. Nothing is a trump in nursing - you can’t say that how baby feels in all cases should overrule the mom, or that physical problems are in no cases insurmountable. EACH case is unique, and the healthy norm is probably the full range (within which, some choices for SPECIFIC cases will be pathological). I guess I’d say that I’d like people to be more comfortable with the whole range, and with good info and support, people can make the choice that works best for their family without finding out later that their choice was based on false information.

I absolutely do not think that every case of early weaning is going to cause a problem - or even most cases! Just that by allowing the larger range, you’ll allow more people to find the place that is REALLY most suitable, and avoid the places that might cause a problem for them. Am I making sense? I’m not sure my point is coming across well. I also think that with good info and support, the widest part of the lower end of the range will move upward somewhat, and that will be of benefit to the moms and babies (given the health benefits to both). But there will still be perfectly valid reasons to stop for each mother/baby pair and family, and when THEY are the ones who pick that, the chances of that being a serious problem for someone are smaller.

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Avalongod says * I would be sorta disappointed if you didn’t see ANY logic in the fundamental weaknesses of animal research. *

I really don’t wanna disappoint ya! :wink: However, I do see weaknesses in animal research, but you really haven’t convinced me of fundamental weaknesses. Remember now, I’m just a non-scientist. So indulge me is some possibly illogical rambling:

Research on animals seems to be completely accepted by the scientific community. Wasn’t there a patent issued for genetically engineered mice born-ready with cancer? From my admittedly barely informed perspective, it seems that research and testing goes on in animals all the time! And the results are accepted within the scientific community; otherwise, wouldn’t the animal-researchers be run out of town on a rail?

(A separate issue of course is the ethicacy of animal testing, but I’m not addressing that as now. Just pointing out that it seems to be done, and with abandon.)

So, then I ask you: if all this research is going on with animals and findings apparently accepted by peer review, etc., how it it that you call it “fundamentally” flawed?

Also, you asked specifically if I would use a medicine tested on animals but not on humans for my children. I’m having a hard time seeing your point. Research on human behavior using animal studies where applicable seems plausible, but I’m not willing to say it’s identical to human behavior only USEFUL in determining something like age of weaning. Pharmacological effects of drugs, to me, are a completely separate issue and in no way related!

hedra – I’m impressed with your knowlege and thoughtful posts~ I’ve learned a lot reading what you’ve written here! :slight_smile: