Forming a relationship with a baby is a very important thing. Mothers need to love and like their babies. Father’s need to as well. A family that resents the baby isn’t going to be the healthiest environment for the baby. If Mom resents being turned into a snack bar, or Dad resents having to share his favorite toys, it may be better for the family, and the baby in the long run, to be formula fed. While they won’t get the immune system boost - they will get a family environment more condusive to long term stablity. Now, we can argue that anyone who isn’t willing to make the sacrifices to breastfeed a baby should probably think the whole baby thing through, but some people don’t - and there isn’t a return counter for children.
By the way, formula has improved a lot since we needed to use it for our adopted son eight years ago. Even a year later when girlfriends of mine adopted, it had been improved and made to be more like breastmilk. While it will never be individually taylored to baby, like mom’s milk, first world formula now is different that what it was - and if you are looking at studies comparing adults, you are looking at babies fed formula of a different era. Also, as Fessie’s link points out, you have to be very careful of the unintended variables. In my experience, women who breastfed aren’t just more educated than their formula choosing counterparts, but they are more likely to be nutrionally aware. When 90% of your food comes from the coop, and your diet is filled with lean meats, vegetables and whole grains from the time you were an infant, and your first exposure to a “Pringle” is in first grade, your chances of diabetes as an adult are going to go way down - and the lack of exposure to pesticides might reduce some of the instances of some of the other crap breastfeeding gets credit for.
Thank you for putting so succinctly what I would have been far more verbose in phrasing.
People talk as if mothers who choose not to breast-feed their children are instead feeding them anthrax. “How could they be so negligent and self-centered!”
There are about sixty-four million things in a child’s life that are far more significant than the minuscule difference between being breast-fed and bottle-fed. One of them is whether the child is being raised by hyper-cautious, judgmental, self-righteous parents who will instill in their offspring their smugly superior, supercilious attitudes and tendency to vastly overstate both risks and benefits from extremely minor behavioral choices. Not even breast milk will overcome the disadvantages a child will face growing up in such an environment.
I never said choosing not to breast feed was the equivalent of anything, and I never implied that anyone who so chooses is Satan, or a minion of Satan, or even a “bad person.” I simply asserted, and I continue to maintain, that the choice of what to do should be based first and foremost upon what is good for the child, not first and foremost upon what other factors the mother may be considering. I listed as one example the fact that many mothers choose not to do it because they dislike the concept in its entirety (the gross factor). I also noted that some mothers choose not to do it for logistical reasons. I never said logistics isn’t a valid reason not to do it. I did say that, in my opinion, in many cases, apparent logistical issues can be avoided or worked around. Where in any of that is there an assertion that can be considered hypocritical? Especially since I cannot breastfeed?
My ex-wife wasn’t able to breastfeed because she was a manager. She was able to breastfeed because HER bosses were caring and understanding individuals who didn’t demand of her while breastfeeding job duties that would have made it impossible for her to accomplish expressing during the day. She, as manager, offered the same courtesy to her employees, both before and after the period when she was expressing. If an employer isn’t sufficiently enlightened, and you cannot accomplish it, then you can’t and you are hardly a “bad person” for being forced to formula feed.
What an assinine, supercilious attitude. One can disagree with someone without making hyperbolic assertions that cast aspersions on the character of those with whom you disagree. Which, to this point, I have managed, as have most of the others here. :rolleyes:
Since nothing I said was addressed to you or referred in any way to your posts, it seems strange that you would address to me a lecture on how to disagree, and to do so by casting aspersions on my attitude. If you disagree with my assertion that there are people who overstate the risks and benefits of the choice between breast-feeding or formula, surely there’s a way to say so without resorting to calling my opinion “assinine”.
I suppose, then, that this is where we mostly disagree. I think that family choices should be made based on what is best for the family. Now, in a crisis situation, the needs of one family member sometimes has to take precedence; but, generally, the family ought to come first. IMO. So, while it may be true that breastfeeding is usually best for babies, if there is a reason that breastfeeding will put an intolerable amount of stress on the family as a whole, then formula feeding is better for that particular family.
And I’m not going to get into a blame game about why a particular family makes that call. If Bob & Alice really need Alice’s income and Alice’s job doesn’t allow for easy or convenient pumping – that’s good enough for me. If Nancy has body issues and finds the idea of nursing to be so gross that it’s affecting her bonding with her baby – that’s good enough for me. If Stan doesn’t want Jeanette to nurse because he wants to be able to do half of the feedings for their baby – that’s good enough for me. Their families – their choices.
Again, I will stipulate that breastfeeding is best for babies – remember, breastfeeding was my own first choice for feeding my children. But it is not so superior a choice to formula feeding that every other choice a family makes has to be held hostage to it.
BTW, Minnesota does have a “reasonable accomodation” breastfeeding law. Its way cool, I took advantage of it with my daughter. And not being an “easy pumper” I’m not sure I would have been able to breastfeed without the law in place - because I did take a lot of time to pump.
That’s really cool, especially since my HUGE SAMPLE of two people from Minnesota were starting to adversely influence my attitudes towards Minnesotans and breastfeeding. Nice to know they’re two isolated examples (and, again, the first was indeed breastfeeding and going against her family and friends’ advice to do so, so good for her!) and not representative of the state as a whole.
And I do agree that it’s an individuals choice and best for the family and blah blah blah. But I do admit to feeling a little grr when it’s not even seriously considered as an option. Consider it, make and informed choice, that’s all I wish for. But formula isn’t rat poison, and I do wish the more militant breastfeeders would get that, as well.
Really, there is a middle ground, people! (Preaching to the choir, I know. We’re all middle grounders here, as far as I can tell. You want to see militant, go to a mommy board. Those people are SCARY!)
But how can you evaluate that it hasn’t been seriously considered? I can still work up an amount of anger at a Very Good Friend of mine who decided it was appropriate to give me the breastfeeding lecture - and my daughter is SEVEN. I don’t owe anyone but myself and my husband an explaination of why I choose to feed my children what I choose to feed them - especially at the breast/bottle level (if I feed them nothing but Twinkies and Coke, you can come send the child protection folks after me - my kids would love it though, they are a little sick of this “organic vegetables and whole grains” thing Mom has started - whole wheat spaghetti has NOT gone over well. Annie’s Whole Grain Organic Mac N Cheese does not compare favorably to “the real stuff.”). What you see as “not serious consideration” may in fact be them trying to brush you off because its none of your business. People don’t owe you their deepest reasons for breastfeeding or choosing not to.
Getting back to the language aspect of the OP: Perhaps if we stopped calling it breastfeeding and started calling it nursing we could cut through all the nutrition crap and get to the heart of the matter. While it is possible to deliver adequate nutrition to newborn humans without ever touching a human breast, it is impossible to nurse (even if you are nursing formula through a tube hung around your neck and attached to your nipple) without intimate physical contact.
I’m a nurser. I started out as a breastfeeder determined to give ‘the best.’ I ended up nursing 2 sons well past any published milestones and far enough into toddlerhood to make some who don’t know me that well a little squeamish.
Something a nurser can tell you that a breastfeeder probably can’t is that it’s not really about the nutrition afterall. I don’t believe it’s supposed to be. We are probably the only mammals who even consider the exchange of nutrients during the nursing act, and it seems to be all we can focus on anymore. I believe this is our real problem when we discuss the issue.
However :o
Nobody (not even me) really wants to talk about the skin bonding aspect of nursing because it implies that mothers who cannot or will not hold their infants skin-to-skin every time the baby demands a nip are not sufficiently bonded with their kids…or, even worse, aren’t as bonded to theirs as I am to mine. :rolleyes:
But this I know: nursing a child on demand into what some consider the biologically appropriate age of toddlerhood, having uncountable close, unavoidable cuddles, caresses and nuzzles we aren’t allowed to be too busy for, every day for the first few years of a child’s life is the way we have evolved over millenia. Before developed technologies it was the only way to ensure survival because our offspring simply cannot be left alone for any length of time until they are ambulatory.
So now things are different and we can deliver the nutrients without the close contact. I’m not sure we’re focused on the right thing in this debate. As a feminist, I’m outraged that the limit of the debate is how many minutes we give a postpartum woman to pump instead of ways we can use our fancy new technologies to make all workplaces more friendly to the nursing mother.
I am a feminist and I believe it is our biological responsibility to nurse our young. Of course, we live in a society of choice. We even have the choice as to whether or not we want to reproduce.
I think we can all agree that having hyper-cautious, judgmental, self-righteous, smugly superior, supercilious parents who overstate risks and benefits from extremely minor behaviour choices is a negative for their children.
Can we agree also that having parents who make decisions about how to feed you based on what is “gross” is probably not that much of a positive either?
I’m sure that’s at least as relevant a comment about mothers who choose not to breastfeed as your comment is to do with those who do. I suspect neither comment has much to do with most mothers who make either choice.
First, Cecil says as many as 5% of women have insufficient milk, and I wonder if this is true. If it is, I doubt that the number would actually be so high if women were given sufficient support for breastfeeding. I live in a town with lots of support–free access to the lactation consultant at our hospital, and wonderful La Leche leaders who will answer your questions over the phone not knowing you from Eve, to name two sources. But many women don’t have free access to a lactation specialist, and/or have LLL groups that are just as likely to provide judgement as help. We need to provide FREE lactation consultancy to every woman who needs one, everywhere in this country, for as long as she needs it. We also need legislation requiring uncooperative employers to provide adequate time and an appropriate place for pumping. Then we will begin to see breastfeeding rates, breastfeeding durations, and breastfeeding success stories increase.
Second, I’ve been told that pregnancy alone can cause the boobie-ruination several posters spoke of. I’d like to think I sacrificed my amazing perkies to give my daughter the healthiest start in life–but I may have just sacrificed them by having her! Doh! :smack:
My mother worked part-time while my brother was a baby. This was a little more than 25 years ago and while manual breast pumps were available and much cheaper than today’s versions, my parents couldn’t afford one. They were pretty young and struggling. So my dad drove me, the toddler, and my brother, the baby, to mom’s work and she nursed him on her lunch break, until her supervisor found out and told her if she continued she’d be fired. She was doing it in the privacy of her own car, on her own standard 30-minute break, not taking any extra time. I don’t remember how exactly it got resolved, but I know she fought it like hell.
Recently a cow-orker told me she thought that nursing a baby in public was a disgusting thing to do. She said “I don’t go potty in the middle of the restaurant, so I don’t think the kid should be nursing in public.”
When our first daughter was born, nursing just didn’t work. We lived in Princeton, and nobody but nobody was against breast feeding, I assure you. Not only did she consult La Leche League, but they actually came to our apartment. And when their advice didn’t work, they went sniff you’re not trying hard enough and huffed out.
Our opinion of LLL is none too high.
Our kids got plenty of body contact anyway, and they both did just fine on formula. At least 25 years ago there were nursing Nazis who considered any problems with breast feeding as a deificiency on the part of the mother. Might still be true, all I know.
My daughter had problems with nursing at first, and we ended up bringing in a “breast-feeding consultant.” She made some suggestions which helped and further referred us to an occupational therapist, of all things. The OT, in turn, had us do some fairly odd training exercises, which did the trick.
My first thoughts when the consultant recommended to us the occupational therapist were:
Sucking a breast is an occupation?
What do you have to major in to get that as a job?
OT is about daily living skills, which, for a newborn, is pretty much ONLY about nursing!
fishbowlwoman, I hear what you’re saying, and I hope/wish that every woman that needs breastfeeding help would get it, but it’s also very hurtful to hear, over and over, that if I had just done something more, I could have made enough milk. I did see certified lactation consultants. I pumped every 4 hours, every 2 hours, every hour and a half, round the clock, while the baby was in the hospital. We got the baby nursing for one month, during which she LOST two ounces, gained two inches (so her body was using up her fat to grow, in other words) and when I pumped after that to check on my supply, I was down to 2 ounces a day. I did milk thistle and blessed thistle and motherwort and nettles and fenugreek till I smelled like maple syrup. I even ordered Domperidone, an unapproved (for milk production) drug from an Australian pharmacy online and took more than 6 times the recommended dose (that did increase it, more than double what I made on my own). I ate so much healthy food that I gained more weight after my pregnancy than during it. I drank 15 8 ounce glasses of water a day, religiously. Please, tell me one more thing I could have done to make more milk. At the height of my ‘success’, I was pumping 12 ounces a day for a baby who was drinking 24. And I did it all for 14 months.
Some women just simply can’t do it alone. In the past, there were nursemaids or foster mothers or goats and lots of babies still died for lack of infant nutrition. I praise the modern formula industry for preventing that, even as I wish I didn’t need them.
I have read a novel from the 1740s in which the rich-but-dimwitted “hero” (for lack of a better word) makes a ruling toward his bride that she is not to nurse any children that they might have, because it might make her boobs sag, and he might go running off after other women, and that it would be all her fault.
were starting to adversely influence my attitudes towards Minnesotans and breastfeeding. Nice to know they’re two isolated examples (and, again, the first was indeed breastfeeding and going against her family and friends’ advice to do so, so good for her!) and not representative of the state as a whole.
Of course, we live in a society of choice. We even have the choice as to whether or not we want to reproduce.