Moms - why is breastfeeding such a hot issue?

In My Humble Opinion
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You say “**If **the benefits that an American child gets are slim,” right there is where I can’t agree with you. Not based on my personal anecdotes, but based on the scientific research. Based on statistics and numbers, the benefits that an American child gets are numerous and vast and not what I would use the word “slim” to describe. Take ear infections, which happen 40% fewer times in breastfed children - I don’t feel 40% is “slim”. cite

Every anecdote I have given is supported and borne out by the scientific information. They are not exceptions to the rule, they are the rule. They were posted for illustrative positions. I think there’s a world of difference between using an illustrative example as opposed to trying to refute scientifically gained data through anecdotes. I am personalizing the data and making reading comprehension easier. Yes, it’s possible that the much higher rate of ear infections in formula fed babies is miraculously not affecting my health insurance. Perhaps my insurance group has, by some fluke of statistics, been graced with no ear inected babies, or only breastfed ear infections. But somehow, I doubt it. I could be paying for 40% less ear infections. I do know the asthmatic kid at school wasn’t breastfed, as his mother and I have talked about it while she bottle fed his baby brother. Do I know for sure that he specifically wouldn’t have asthma if she had nursed him? No, of course not. But the numbers show his odds would have benn “1.4-2.4 times better” with exclusive breastfeeding. cite

Just look at the numbers:

Women who have never breastfed have 1.2-2.8 times the risk of pre-menopausal breast cancer.

Breastfeeding can lower the risk of any type of breast cancer by **4.3% **for every 12 months of breastfeeding.

Women who have never breastfed have 1.25 times the rate of ovarian cancer,

Infants who were not breastfed have 7 times as much necrotizing enterocolitis (which has a 30% mortality rate); twice as many cases of otitis media, higher rates of hospitalization, higher rates of lower respiratory tract illness, gastrointestinal illness, meningitis; Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and abandonment by their mothers.

Massachusetts spends about $27 million/year to treat excessive cases of infant diarrhea, respiratory syncitial virus, and otitis media in formula fed infants.

It is estimated that an average of $331-475 in extra health care costs are incurred per child in the first year of life to treat excessive cases of lower respiratory tract infection, gastrointestinal disease, and otitis media in formula fed infants, compared to infants breastfed for as little as three months.

(all from that last link; bolding mine)

“slim”? Not in my dictionary.

And that’s my point: people don’t read the numbers, and still think they’re informed. If you read the numbers and choose to give your baby 7 times a greater chance at getting NEC, that’s your choice. But don’t try to tell me it’s “just as good”.

Yes, of course it is, absolutely! I have no problem with that at all. You’ve done all you can, in good faith, to keep your children healthy and give them the best ears possible. They still need medical care. No problem, and I have no problem helping to pay for that at all.

Paying for a formula fed baby’s ear infections when the mother refused to breastfeed 'cause “it’s icky” (not for medical reasons) annoys me because it’s making me encurr an extra cost when she didn’t want to prevent the problem for free. Not because she couldn’t, but because she wouldn’t.

No, not “just as likely”. “Possibly”, I’ll give you, but not “just as likely.” We have statistics that show us that it’s more likely he was formula fed.

Breastfeeding is a lot healthier right here in the good ol’ USA, too. Yes, we don’t have many babies dropping dead because of contaminated water, but we do have the second worst infant mortality rate of any industrialized nation. We have a massive failure to thrive problem. We have NEC, we have double the ear infections we should expect to. We have increasing childhood asthma. Women have higher cancer rates. We have a massive childhood and adult obesity problem. We have a lot of problems, and we now know formula is at least partially responsible for many of them.
Once again and in bold: **None of this applies to women who attempt breastfeeding and medically fail. **I have nothing but compassion for you, and I share your fate. It’s all in response to those who refuse to breastfeed because “it’s icky” or “it’s inconvenient”*. It’s your choice, but it’s *not *“just as good” as breastfeeding.
*Which, by the way, baffles me. How on earth is it more convient to find clean water, scrub out bottles and nipples, fill with formula and water, warm water, soak bottle for 5 minutes to warm it up, give to baby, scrub out the bottle again, lather rinse and repeat? Somehow, this is easier than lift shirt, insert boob? I don’t get it.

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I have looked at some of those to get a sense of this but in no way consider myself fully informed/educated so keep that in mind as I ask my questions. I have no dog in this fight and my questions are genuine curiosity and my opinions are just that…opinions. As always I am willing to be enlightened.

Reading some of the linked literature it is a wonder kids aren’t dropping dead, growing up retarded and women ending up in the loonie bin if they do not breastfeed. While I have no doubt that breast feeding is preferrable as it provides more benefits than formula I cannot shake the sense that the issue is blown wildly out of proportion. By reading those one would think we should eb able to point to a whole class of citizens who were clearly not breastfed due to their myriad health, physical and mental issues but that is simply not the case. I can see this being a more important issue in the third world but in the US not so much.

I did not delve into the actual studies and their methodology (and even if I did I am not really qualified to assess them) but I wonder how many of the benefits of breast feeding can be pinned on the baby getting breast milk and not some other issue. For instance, perhaps a mother who does not breast feed does so because she has to work two jobs to keep her child fed and clothed. She is not around to coo to the baby, give it attention, dote on it and be a major presence in its life. If the child is raised in such an environment might that not have a bearing on its mental/emotional development? Might a mother who works so hard possibly be more likely to let such things as cleaning the house slip so the baby is faced with more dust, germs and what not?

There are so many things that go into the development of a child…some under a parent’s control and some not…that I wonder how well studies on the benefits of breast feeding controlled for them all. In short, can ALL of the beenfits attributed to breast feeding be truly laid solely at the feet of breast feeding and breast feeding only?

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You’re not seeing the forest for the trees. It’s not a cure-all panecea, guaranteed-to-make-your-child-healthy proposition! Study after study says your child’s chances at good health are better.

I said this above, and I’ll reiterate. Breast milk is only the normal food which babies should receive. It’s not superior, it’s just normal. Formula is not rat poison, but it IS less desirable. Breast milk changes over time, it offers benefits scientists only began to investigate and document in the last couple of decades. I could go on and on, but WhyNot posted the links. Read them and understand.

This issue is hard because people feel judged. I advocate for breastfeeding because I care about babies and children. And because, despite some of the posts we have here about people having breastfeeding shoved down their throat, bottle feeding IS the cultural norm.

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Yeah, me neither.

You bring up good points. I will ask in return, what would the motivation for the AAP, UNICEF, WHO, not to mention every state government and medical organization be to engage in a massive conspiracy to exaggerate the effects of breastfeeding? Couldn’t they make more money being shills for the formula industry? No one (besides maybe lactation consultants) makes money or prestige from breastfeeding. I doubt Medela and Avent have a real strong breastfeeding lobby.

In short, I trust the people who do know how to read and evaluate such studies that they’re legit. I trust the formula companies have their guys trying desparately to poke holes in the studies, but they just don’t seem to be there. These are not poorly conceived, isolated trials showing conflicting and unrepeatable results. There is overwhelming, peer-reviewed evidence.

The lunatics don’t know they’re in the asylum. We’ve grown up in a society where formula feeding has been the norm for four generations now. We are only starting to recognize that a lot of what we always thought were simply widespread childhood illness or baseline cancer rates may not be. WHO just this year redrew their infant growth charts, because they had been written for formula fed babies, and made breastfed babies look “stunted”. They weren’t stunted, we’re just now relearning what “normal” is.

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I would be very interested to know some other statistics that these might be correlated with. For instance, formula feeding is correlated with a low socio-economic status, which of course causes other issues such as a lack of prenatal care, low nutrition on the part of the mother (and for the child once they are on solid foods), sometimes sanitation problems, etc., that may also be factors in these problems. Also, sometimes parents who are not educated do not treat children on a timely basis for things like diarrhea, and this is why the child ends up hospitalized for it. Personally, I would encourage anyone I know to breastfeed. I think women who are uncomfortable with it would find that it’s doesn’t make them as squeamish in reality as they think it will. I think everyone should at least try it. However, if it is just something they can’t bring themselves to do, but they really try to do everything else right, I think the effects will be minimal. As you point out, anecdotal evidence is just that…you can’t apply one story to every case. This works in reverse, too…just because not breastfeeding will increase the risk of something by 5%, it doesn’t mean you will be in that 5%, especially if you are cautious in other respects.

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I think we cross-posted there, but I’ll ask again - who would benefit from artificially inflating the benefits of breastfeeding?

The correlation/causation problem you mention could be a valid one. It’s also a very easy one for an educated peer to notice when reviewing a study. One would expect that if it was a widespread concern, it would be talked about and the evidence would not stand.

I can find internet websites supporting the craziest, batshit insane theories. I can’t find a single one that says breastfeeding is overrated (or even that formula feeding is equal, medically speaking) or that breastfeeding studies are widely flawed.

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I have one of each.

A son we adopted who I didn’t breastfeed.

A daughter who I birthed who I did breastfeed.

Here is my take. People really don’t understand that this is an emotional thing. I did feel real guilt that I couldn’t do the best for my son, right out of the chute. My girlfriends in particular all at that point fetishized breastfeeding - going on and on about every latest study. Almost all of my girlfriends breastfed well into toddlerhood. Even when you say “well I understand why you didn’t” it doesn’t make the fact that you COULDN’T any easier - particularly when someone refers to formula as evil (really, saved my kids life), or says women who choose not to breastfeed are engaging in child abuse (so I didn’t choose to beat my kid, but I still did? What?) When you are bottlefeeding a child, the ENTIRE culture is set up for breastfeeding - really. Women in the mother’s rooms at the mall breastfeeding their children. Women going on and on about how convienient it is to breastfeed. People giving you the evil eye when you spend the GNP of Camaroon on a case of formula. People assuming every cold is because you bottlefed (my son, zero ear infections - my daughter and my nephew - both breastfed kids - ear infection city). The comments about your doctor or peditrician pushing formula seem so ridiculous, since the forms all have a space for the name and phone number of your lactation consultant.

My daughter came slightly thereafter, and with her I breastfed. Breastfeeding for me wasn’t easy. It was painful, I went back to work and pumped, which was never really productive (productive enough). We managed for six months before she decided that having her face buried in my chest was not her thing. Now, when you breastfeed, the world seems set against you. Disapproving looks from strangers if you try to feed in public, only you can feed your kid. The mother’s rooms that were everywhere when I was bottlefeeding were difficult to find six months later when I was looking for a spot to nurse. Its a sacrifice and DAMMIT you want credit for making it. And yet, when it works, it is such a euphoric and wonderful experience that you become evangelical about it - not only because you are doing it because you think its best, but because its brough such joy to your life, you need to share. Truly evangelical - i.e. don’t believe in God, go to hell - don’t breastfeed, have a sickly, stupid child - but the other end as well - believe in God get true inner peace and joy, breastfeed - get true inner peace and joy. When my breastfeeding fetish girlfriends go on and on, it isn’t necessarily the health benefits, its the BONDING, the JOY, the EASE, the near orgasmic sensations, they really talk about.

So whatever comment you make regarding breastfeeding will be interpreted by a mother doing differently as an attack - regardless of how you meant it to be taken.

(BTW, I managed to convince my girlfriends that their comments, although not meant to offend, were offensive, and while we talk about the joys and difficultites of feeding a child, we no longer refer to any method as superior. And several of them now understand why we don’t judge the method, since I adopted, three more children were adopted into our circle - two by two of the worst of the breastnazis - who now see that their statements about “not even wanting children if they couldn’t be breastfed and given every advantage” were out of line.)

Both ways to feed your child have advantages and disadvantages. And breastfeeding is generally best for baby, but not always. If mom doesn’t produce, doesn’t have enough fat in her milk (a problem with an acquaintence who was starving both her children due to the quality of her milk), is on medication, or if she has emotional, health, or relationship issues that are compounded by breastfeeding, the bottle may be best for both mom and baby - even if she can breastfeed and the baby does latch.

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Great post, Dangerosa.

If you will excuse the expression, real food for thought. :wink:

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It’s interesting, I think, that even with all the education promoting breastfeeding as best for the baby, this is what we see in an aspirational setting.

Whether she’s feeding him breast milk or formula isn’t really the issue I’m interested in. I was just surprised to find that apparently camera-ready “modesty” still dictates that a mother with a newborn has to keep her shirt on and bottle-feed.

My parents once told me that in the heyday of bottle-feeding, which coincided with an age where evidence-based meant my great-auntie told me and she had eight children (see James Lileks’ Mommy Knows Worst if you like laughing in a dismayed fashion), the practice of bottle-feeding was considered “more scientific.” and breast-feeding was for the bohunks. For support for this notion, watch The Aristocats (1970), in which newborn baby comes home and a few scenes linger on the glittering, sparkling, pristine bottle-feeding accoutrements just before the Siamese cats sing their now politically-incorrect song. It’s a telling little glimpse into that time, and your breast-feeding child might enjoy the music and the animation.

Some thirty-five years later, apparently the glitterati still think that the actual practice of breast-feeding – the bit where baby latches on and sucks and mother thinks of England – is for bohunks.

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I don’t think they are widely flawed, actually. I think you are absolutely right, and as I said, I worked very hard to be sure my baby was breastfed for a year. All I am saying is that there are A LOT of factors that go into raising a healthy child, and if you can’t or won’t breastfeed, there is every possibility that your child will grow up to be perfectly healthy, especially if you are a good parent in other ways. I personally do not quite understand the squeamishness about breastfeeding, but I acknowledge that some people have a strong, strong discomfort about it that I can’t explain. Perhaps it is our society, and I agree that breastfeeding should be encouraged and it should be the norm. I just happen to think that it is more likely to become mainstreamed through normal behavior than browbeating women (not that I am implying you do that, but some people do!) Just because I felt comfortable with it, it doesn’t mean I can erase the uncomfortable feeling someone else might have. As more women breastfeed, and more doctors encourage breastfeeding, and more nurses in hospitals support breastfeeding, it will become more and more mainstreamed, and that is a great thing.

All I am trying to say is that nothing is black & white. I was raised by nuns for the first 2 months, and by parents who couldn’t breastfeed me after that. I am perfectly healthy, and at 40 show no signs of asthma or allergies, have never had an ear infection in my life, have only had the flu once, and am of normal weight. I know this is only anecdotal, but it goes to my theory that you can’t apply these statistics to every situation! :slight_smile:

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We were told that, too.

It’s a baldfaced lie. After days of the baby being unable to get anything to eat and getting panicky, we gave her a bottle. It made it easier to breastfeed, because she was calmer from then on when she tried, likely because she wasn’t starving.

Ever since then we’ve given her a mix of breast (when Mrs. RickJay is around) and bottle (when I’m taking care of Maddy.) No problem whatsoever. Anyone who says it can’t be done is a liar.

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We never had trouble with that, either…I also had to give my baby a bottle (it was actually expressed breastmilk), and she started nursing right after that with no problem. A few months later, when I went back to work, it took a while for her to get used to the bottle again, but after that she had 1/2 her meals from a bottle and 1/2 from the breast for the next 9 months. Never had a problem.

Also, great post, Dangerosa! I’m so sorry to hear that some people are even down on adoption because of breastfeeding mania. I am not quite sure where the logic is in that, since the child up for adoption is likely not to be breastfed no matter where it ends up, but sometimes extreme emotionalism on a subject blinds people to logic.

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Lady and the Tramp, btw. Which was set in the Victorian or Edwardian era.

I usually kept my shirt on while bottlefeeding, and often while breastfeeding - even alone as much as possible. I’m not a “let it all hang out” sort of girl. And certainly wouldn’t be for the cover of People magazine. I know a lot of people are really into the skin on skin thing for bonding - but it never did it for me.

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Me and the La Lache League will never be friends. I actually talked to them before I adopted about adoptive breastfeeding, and was made to feel like a eunich for not having bred my own child. It wasn’t even pity, it was definiate breeder superiority. I know the LLL is chapter based, and my chapter may have been particularly evil - but there are few women I’ve ever despised more after leaving a room - or tried to make me feel more like a piece of shit than those women did. Well, maybe them and the cheerleaders in high school for wearing the wrong brand of jeans.

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I have the feeling I was lied to a lot by the health care professionals I was dealing with.

I suspect they were all good intentioned, but I really did not appreciate the experience.

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I don’t see anyone trying to refute the data. I haven’t gone over these results with a fine tooth comb, and I don’t believe that anyone is changing the data, or that formula is just as good. But as **Sarafeena ** said there are so many things that have affect a person’s health. A certain kind of person is more likely to breast feed, and their children are more likely to live a different lifestyle than a child whose mother didn’t even consider it. I won’t re-write **Sarafeena’s ** posts but I agree with the points she brought up. The point of the anecdotes that have been shared here aren’t to say “Ha! I wasn’t breastfed so the data is wrong and you’re all wasting your time!” It’s to say, while we all agree that breastfeeding is best, it’s going overboard to sagely nod your head and assume that you know just why Joey is all ways sick. When in actuality any number of factors go into determinine how healthy, and slim and smart a child will grow up to be. I’m not saying that anyone in this thread would do that, but lots of people just can’t wait to blame parents for everything under the sun, while simultaneously patting themselves on the back. We just can’t start broadly applying statistics to each individual case without taking a lot of other things into account.

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Wow, I really should’ve previewed first…

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Way back when I was really hyped about this (and my adopted son is almost eight, so this was a while ago), I did read a study or two. Back then, I had to go to a medical library to look them up - they weren’t out on the net. The one I remember reading had to do with ear infections. And the researchers hadn’t created a control group of babies fed breastmilk out of bottles. They knew breastfed babies had fewer ear infections, but they couldn’t say for sure if it was the breastmilk or the delivery mechanism (something they freely admitted to in the study). It could be that the fact that breastmilk is sterile when it comes direct from the source, and that bottles of formula are often less sterile, prepared with tap water, bottles not properly washed - was the contributing factor. Its possible that if you could squirt sterile formula from your breast you’d get the same result. Unfortunately, you had to go find the study for the true conclusion - breastfed babies do have fewer ear infections, but it is possible that poor sterlization of bottles and formula is the root cause - because every mainstream article at the time only mentioned the first part of the sentence, not the second.

The other one that was hot at the time was the intellegence study, and the researchers there also admitted that they couldn’t screen out every variable - though they did screen out the obvious like socioeconomic class. Confounding is a real issue in public health studies.

Now, in the end, I breastfed my daughter despite it being difficult. I’ve never heard a convincing argument that formula is BETTER for your child’s development unless there are extenuating circumstances. But I didn’t find any research that convinced me that my son had any significant disadvantages from being bottlefed. Things like he has double the chance to be killed by a rare untreatable luekemia - which is so rare that only six kids a year die of it to start with. Not losing sleep over it - not significant when measured against an individual.

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I don’t think they are deliberately lieing. But the rigid SOP way they deal with most medical issues doesn’t work well with breastfeeding. Every nursing family is different and what works for one won’t for another.

I had the same experience in my very short interaction with lactation consultants. I had trouble and was frustrated with my first until I threw all their advise out the window and just plugged 'em in when they cried. Clocks, schmocks. If offering the breast didn’t make them happy, I went to plan B (hot, cold, tired, need changing, etc). If I wasn’t there they could get a bottle. My own belief was that formula wasn’t plutoneum, but rat poison works too.
After successfully breast feeding my first, I went to the “So you want to breastfeed” class being given at the hospital when I was pregnant with the second. I signed up for it more out of curiosity than anything. The person who gave the class made breastfeeding seem like an extremely difficult task that most Moms would try and quit. {She said stuff like - “At least try it for 6 weeks”}Honestly, the way she described it, it sounded not worth messing with. She talked about precise timing between nursing times and keeping them on one breast for a precise amount of time and then the other…

I finally spoke up when a mom-to-be asked her what would happen if you had pumped a meal - because you were planning to go out -and the baby started crying. How could you feed the baby? (Because the instructor just said that by pumping the breast would be “empty” for a few hours.) The instructor was truely puzzled and said she wasn’t sure.

I told them that in my experience - you plug 'em in and there will be milk. The breast is never totally empty, and more milk is being made all the time.

Much to the horror of the instructor, I then related my “feed them every 4 hours” epiphany. Breastfeed a baby every 4 hours was what I was told and I had taken it to heart. Well, about a week after I was home from the hospital my baby was hungry - she was screaming. But it was only 3 hours 50 minutes since her last feeding. It just struck me how dumb it was to be miserable and to be holding a miserable baby just because she was 10 minutes “early”. I fed her there and then and realized that schedules and breast feeding to not mix. From then on my philosophy was “plug 'em in” when they cried and stop wearing a watch.

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Oh, yeah! That’ll teach me. The Lileks book spans well over the first half of the twentieth century – though a lot of the “advice” in it spilled over to the second, when my parents were raising their children. My favourite cringeworthy bit told parents to put their babies naked out in the sun every afternoon – the brighter the better!

As for keeping your shirt on, hmm. I always did, too, having a fair bit of personal modesty. I had a friend with four children who didn’t, though, and found societal pressure to cover up while nursing simply bizarre, like asking someone to wear a mask to disguise chewing. It made me wonder if there will ever come a time when no one will flinch at the sight of this practice, no matter how much reason backs it up.