Rest the breast (Breast milk does not boost IQ)

In My Humble Opinion
121

Thanks- I am enjoying our discussion, and I just didn’t want this to disintegrate.

I can’t get into the discussion of just where the cut-off is as to what makes a mother’s diet so poor that formula would be better, since I think that is a job for a biochemist or something of the sort. I’d hate to see the research parameters - you would have to randomly assign women into the eat nothing but McD’s diet!

Dangerosa it sounds like you are not the sort of person that needs the breastfeeding education, and probably never were. I am concerned that in order to treat people like you, for whom this is a “busy street” issue, fairly and appropriately, we are skipping over people who really do need to be educated.

But obviously, random “irritating lactavist attacks” are not the answer. I am still pondering what would be.

122

Educated people can make lots of different choices.

When we call someone a bad mother for making a different choice than ours, it’s likely to get their hackles up. My theory on parenting advice is to share it if you’re asked, and if you’re not, stifle it and tend to your own kids. Unless I missed a memo, absolutely no one has been appointed Wise Guardian of All the World’s Chidren.

123

Let me make myself unpopular with both sides. Again.

First of all, do we need tit-for-tat sniping here? Let’s compare kids in 15 years? I may give a bottle, but your kid is in daycare so you’re equally bad? Yuck. Let’s not make a bad situation worse. I do agree with the point being made: judgments on parenting are too many and too harsh in our culture, and it makes it that much harder on parents. I don’t see how more makes it better or even.

And if I may veer off into a side rant…this perversely accompnies another trend I see, which is don’t make your kids my problem, my tax burden, my distraction in public. I’ll be involved enough to secretly (or not so secretly) judge you for every parenting decision you make, but if it comes to me being inconvenienced for your child’s well-being, or looking out for its welfare, then forget it. I care about your kid only so long as I can get a charge out of sneering at what shit parents you are. Beyond that, I can’t be bothered. UGH–I bet we’ve all seen that.

Back to my original thought-- I really hate to see parents trade tit-for-tat judgments. I don’t like the use of the term “loopholes” either, nor do I like the pushy actions some of the most ardent lactation activists. But what is gained by trying to find things about their parenting to judge?

I don’t know why people who “get religion” about breastfeeding are so ardent about it. I mean, do they really care that your kid’s IQ could be 3 points higher? Or that your child has some smaller percentage chance of getting some relatively rare ailment? Can they really care that much? I doubt it. So why? If I had to hazard a guess, here’s a short list:

(1) Parenting is full of challenging unknowns, and not everyone is confident (the judgemental culture doesn’t help). Some people get a lot of reassurance from advocating their own parenting choices to others. This is true whether they are pushing cloth diapering, Babywise, or breastfeeding. It’s reaffirming to repeat all the research confirming you’re doing what’s best, so a lot of people make preaching about it their outlet.

(2) Lactation activists have a fervent wish to change the mindsets that make nursing women feel ashamed about feeding their baby on demand outside of the home. Getting more women to do it would help a lot, and would end the misguided confrontations about what is “decent.” Those are maddening.

(3) Others may be motivated by the really troubling amount of money we spend, as public policy, on formula. Again, more women nursning might increase the chances that more women on assistance will try BF.

(4) Also, many people are shocked at the effect that formula marketing has had in the thrid world (where it is a totally different set of circumstances) and, while helpless to do much about that, would love to see market share of formula drop here in this country.

Are these good reasons to promote breastfeeding in general? Well, I think the latter three are. Ate they good enough to justify approaching strangers about it? Or having draconian policies against supplementation? Up for debate, maybe, but I say no. Plus I’d like to know whether approaching a stranger about her choice to bottle feed really makes any difference in breastfeeding rates. Or how effective it is to shut off advice to families who want or need to use formula, too. If those strategies don’t increase breastfeeding (and I’d bet money they DON’T), then it raises even bigger, uglier questions about why some lactation activists indulge in them.

The other question is: why do formula-feeding parents get so bent and threatened by breastfeeding activism? I get that it’s annoying, sure. But if someone came up to you and said your Graco carseat wasn’t as good as the Britax they used, what would you do? Laugh, probably. Wonder why this loon gives a rat’s ass about the incremental benefits of a Britax.

So why can’t we laugh when someone says “breast is best?” I think part of it goes back to the confidence thing I mentioned before. Plus, feeding is such an elemental thing–it really hits close to the heart. That’s likely why there are so many mealtime battles with picky eaters later on down the road. But it’s too bad, because it would be great if we were better able to say “Thanks, but I consider feeding to be my choice” or “That’s something I’m discussing with my doctor, not a stranger” and walk away. And not stew about these encounters for years afterward, retelling the tale every time someone trots out a study showing the incremental benefits of breastfeeding on becoming lefthanded prom queens.

In other words: Maybe we should all care a little less.

124

Cranky on the contrary, I think it is likely that both sides will agree you brought up some interesting points. I would agree with you on the reasons you mentioned, and I will stipulate that the first reason plays more of a part in my actions than it should.
One reason you didn’t mention is that I, like many (but not all, or perhaps even most) found breastfeeding to be a very good experience, and I want to share that joy. I don’t think attacking pregnant women is the way to do that, of course, but if I have an opportunity to bring up the benefits, you are going to hear me sing it, sister.

125

I do not understand the reason this story would piss you off. This is one woman’s birth experience. It is unique to her, because it happened to her. If I understand you correctly, you are “dissing” a woman who may suffer from “baby blues” to a much more severe depression post partum. Why are you doing that?
And I have to say it: naota --is it a great big glass daycare? <need sardonic laughing smiley here>

I would no more put my kids in daycare than I would let them play in the street.
I say this to engender some empathy in you-it doesn’t feel good to have your choices absolutely condemned, does it?
Mothering is so fraught with anxiety-I think that is why people get so defensive about it. And there is Freud-blame him for a lot of it–I do and it makes me feel better. :stuck_out_tongue:

There is no one thing you can do to ensure your kid is safe for always. There is no one thing you can do to ruin your child. Once this is learned, that all things in moderation is a damned good way to raise kids, life gets a lot easier and less angst ridden. Really.

126

I know I’m not Unauthorized Cinnamon, but I think I know what they were getting at, and I don’t think it was a judgement on the woman at all, but rather a commentary on how women often receive dubious advice and inadequate support from the medical profession.

My take:

“The doctor said the baby would be big, so he induced me at 38 weeks.” A potentially large baby is not always an excellent reason to induce two weeks prior to due date. Often, ultrasounds and doctors are less than precise in determining the baby’s size.

"Thank goodness for the epidural, because the pit was so awful! But after hours and hours in bed, I wasn’t progressing, and the baby’s heartrate was falling, so we had to have an emergency C-section. " The decision to induce early lead to the pitocin, which lead to the epidural which lead to lying in bed which can contribute to labour not progressing. And, inducing early often leads to emergency c-section.

“She had respiratory problems, and it was hard to keep her awake or get her to latch on” And, because the baby was born via c-section, she had respiratory distress. Also not uncommon. And, being born two weeks early has an affect on baby’s level of alertness, which in turn causes problems with latch.

“One of the nurses offered to feed her a bottle so I could rest, and the hospital LC had six patients before me, so we just went ahead and did the bottle” Unfortunately, many hospitals still give formula even when the mother intends to breastfeed. Sometimes they say it’s so the mother can rest, sometimes they insist the baby isn’t getting enough. In any case, it’s sabotage, intentional or not. And, lack of available lactation consultants is just sad.

"It was a good thing, too, because later we found that the baby’s latch was bad, and my milk wasn’t coming in. At home, I tried feeding her every three hours, but she just never seemed satisfied - I’m sure I didn’t have enough milk for her. " It’s quite likely the latch was less than ideal because the hospital had been bottle feeding the baby, and because getting a good latch can take time, practice and support from a lactation consultant. And, if the baby’s latch isn’t good, and she’s been bottle fed previously, mom isn’t stimulated to make milk. Also, feeding on a rigid schedule rather than on demand is not going to help matters.

"The doctor said she was only in the 10th percentile for weight, so we should keep supplementing. " There is nothing wrong with being in the 10th percentile. There’s nothing wrong with being in the 1st percentile. Everybody falls somewhere. They key is whether the baby eventually settles into a relatively smooth growth curve.

“Plus, I had PPD and they wanted me to go on Zoloft, so I wound up having to wean her after a couple weeks anyway” If the physician had checked their sources, they would have realized that Zoloft is safe to take while breastfeeding.

I could be wrong, but I thought UA point was that some hospitals and staff are often not setting women up for success. This hypothetical situation was not inevitable.

127

You missed my point by a mile.

The judgements I listed are the ones I imagined naotalbah has herself experienced, either overtly or from her own sense of guilt and doubt. As I started writing, it occurred to me that they closely resemble the criticisms she (and others) typically level against women who formula feed.

Knowing that she herself has felt the sting of judgements and criticisms, I challenged her to recognize that other mothers are experiencing the same pain from her words.
However, I do strongly agree with your essential argument Cranky. I was reading Byron Katie’s Loving What Is last night, and she talks about self-judgement. It’s my experience that most people judge others to the same extent that they are merciless with themselves. The answer is peace, not negotiations.

128

Cyros, I’m glad you wrote that out. You just demonstrated the difference between information and judgements.

129

And often what you are hearing from Mom is through the Mom filter. They don’t know the whole story, or aren’t saying it. “The doctor said she was in the 10th percentile so we should suppliment” may also have “she was born at the 60th percentile and has been steadily dropping weight percentiles while holding steady on length” - that is a big cause for concern.

Or my girlfriend who had the placental seperation. What she never heard the doctor say (whether it was said or not is a matter of some debate) is that “you are a high risk pregnancy…here are your risk factors…we feel strongly that for your own health and the health of the baby, we should do a c-section at 38 weeks.” What she interpreted was “I want to make my tee time, so I’m giong to schedule a c-section.”

Do we get dubious advice from the medical profession? - sure. Medicine is as much an art as a science. Would I rather get my medical advice from someone who went to med school? - yeah, I’ve gotten much more dubious advice from people who haven’t been. At least my doctor carries malpractice insurance to cover his dubious advice.

130

In a word, yes.

As much as I concede to **Dangerosa ** that I am not a doctor, and I thank Og for people who go through rigorous training, and have huge amounts of knowledge I don’t have, who can help us with medical problems.

However, that does not preclude my hypothesis, which is that OB/GYNs are very eager to use technology, and to try to exert control over birth. (I have total empathy for that, btw - I am a control freak myself.) Unfortunately, it seems to me they often lack the latest scientific information on the usefulness of interventions, and don’t realize that many interventions, counterintuitively, increase risk in normal, healthy pregnancies. When you spend many tough years of school learning to deal with every possible horror story complication, and there are lots of impressive new tools that give you more information and control, it must be really hard to step back and let a healthy labor progress. When our culture terrifies women about the pain of labor, and informed consent forms become boilerplate paperwork, it is easy to gloss over the effects of anesthesia or the possible complications of cesarian. And when most people view cesarian sections as the heroic rescue of a distressed baby from the dangers of labor, rather than a risky, major surgery necessitated by the doctor’s previous decisions, it’s hard to put lawsuits out of your mind and advocate vaginal birth.

And yes, again, I completely realize that pretty much all interventions have their place, and thank goodness for them, we would have some children dying without them. What people forget is that some moms and babies die due to unnecessary interventions as well.

For me it all boils down to education, education, education, for doctors and patients both.

Oh, and I agree with much of what **Cranky ** said, but I’ll add this one:

In our culture, there are a slew of impediments to breastfeeding. Old wives’ tales. Uneducated doctors. Hospital routines. Relatives tearing you down. A positively phobic social atmosphere about baring a breast in public. Strangers telling you you’re disgusting, or intimating you’re doing something sexual in public. A medical system largely built on fear of lawsuits. Multi-million dollar formula marketing campaigns, with cooperation from hospitals. A society that breeds isolation of the new mother. The near total absence of experienced relatives who can help teach breastfeeding.

With all that, some of us feel like we are trying to lift a huge weight, just to breastfeed our own babies, never mind help other mothers do so. To nurse, you have to build up a lot of momentum. And as the culture has started to shift a bit, that momentum hasn’t gone away, and can sometimes propel people beyond the “struggling against the status quo” area straight into “strident, interfering bitch” territory.

131

Cyros -I understand the point, but my point was similiar to Dangerosa’s. What is heard is often not what was said, and not just by health care providers. There is no unspoken rule that the doctor is trying to pull the wool over your eyes and make obstetrics convenient for themselves. Radiology or dermatology is convenient-OBs go in knowing that their life is no longer their own.

Maybe that baby really was FT at 38 weeks-my second went to FT and was 10lbs, 4oz and 22 inches long. I never had a secxn or an epidural. Do I win something? No-just some extra stitches and a healthy boy, thank god. “Safety” of meds given while nursing is not the most well established body of work in medical science-I doubt if I were on Zoloft or any other SSI that I would continue to nurse.

Becoming a mother nowadays seems to force most people to examine their thought processes and assumptions about all manner of stuff. Here’s an example: My husband watched an incredibly violent movie once while feeding one of the babies-I was incrediby upset by this-baby was oblivious to the movie, but it didn’t “fit” my expectations for the action of Feeding the Baby. We talked about it later (after much sniping and hurt feelings) and came to a resolution. This is but one minor example of how much work is to be done once you become a parent. (it’s also why I laugh quietly to myself when people say that their baby isn’t going to change their lifestyle one bit…). As to our resolution, essentially the problem was solved for us-age (ours) and time (lack of) put an end to most movie watching. :slight_smile:
naotal -here’s a (likely) unwelcome thought. Perhaps you are so stridently pro-breastfeeding because your child is in daycare? I don’t know; I’m only speculating, but since Daycare has its own huge baggage in the Mom community, it makes sense to compensate one huge guilt maker with another huge Brownie point maker, no? That’s human nature-I’m not snarking at you about it.

My ultimate point is that neither breastfeeding or staying home with baby qualifies anyone for sainthood or the good mothering award of the century. We are all creating our motherhoods every day, as we mother and parent. Anything else is just marketing.

I, personally, loathe the competition that is unstated but rampant in moms today (and probably for all time). It’s funny how most of it stops around 1st grade, when most find out that they don’t have the next Einstein on their hands…but then something odd happens. Within each strata of achieving children, competition starts up again among the parents. So, if your kid is in the gifted program, tests scores and awards are disingenously not talked about, but intensely sought and bickered over. It’s a bit insane, really. Sometimes it’s the kids who are hungry for the top spot, but mostly, it’s the parents.

To wander a bit OT, I think my job as a parent is threefold*. First, I need to raise civil, productive, law-abiding citizens. Second, I need to foster personal growth within each child-healthy in body, mind and in spirit.** Third, I need to pass on my values in the form of traditions, responses and reactions and behaviors, (to the extent that I can), so that these values continue. Number 3 is so important, that it made me really look closely at some of my assumptions and presumptions in life. It has made me question church and organized religion, pop culture, class structure in America-just for starters. Parenting is no easy task. This is why I have little patience with what I call black and white parents: Bfeeding is next to godliness, spanking is child abuse, white bread is poor mothering etc. There is no one right way to do this-there never will be.

*It’s probably so folded, it’s oragami, but for this thread’s purpose, 3 will suffice.

**I know this sounds like a 1950’s hygiene film, sorry! :wink:

132

Sorry, didn’t see unauthorized cinnamon’s post.

I put the blame for OBs not learning turning techniques etc and heading straight for Csecxns right at the feet of us. We have decided that everyone is entitled to a healthy, perfect baby.

Yes, medical mistakes do happen-more often than they should. However, OBs are sued at the drop of a hat, due to the unrealistic expectations on the part of the pts and family.
There are many options during labor-but the window has narrowed due to litigous attitudes. The OB has no choice but to cover his/her butt. The great What If is too high a risk, too dangerous a chance.

133

No, I do get your point.

But there is, IMHO, a mean-spirited “How do you like THEM apples” going on here.

There is more than one way to teach empathy. If we were truly sympathetic to the cause of helping mom escape judgmentalism, how about something more along the lines of, “Haven’t there been times when your choices were criticized? For example, for not staying home with your kids? How did that make you feel?” What we’ve got, instead, is a thread where some are saying things like they’d sooner let their kids play in the street than put them in daycare, GOTCHA you daycare using lactivist! That feels a lot more like tit-for-tat than “Let’s think about what it feels like from the other side.”

134

I do care about it when people use it to feel entitled to tell me I shouldn’t bother to be a parent. I do care about it when it impact a woman’s emotional recovery and attachment to her baby because she can’t breastfeed or has so many issues she feels “not normal.” Its the secondary impacts that I think are harmful. I think relatively small benefits and relatively small decreases in risk are being used to hurt a segment of women (sometimes intentionally) without reaching the people that it should.

If people came up to me and said buying a Graco carseat meant I wasn’t entitled to my children, I’d laugh and think they were nuts. If multiple people did it (and multiple people did when I was bottlefeeding my son), I wouldn’t laugh.

I have a cousin who is fairly young (early 20s) and her and her girlfriends all had their babies around the same time. My mother has hosted her showers and birthday parties because the family is poor and they just don’t have space for parties. There is a huge socioeconomic difference - these girls - most not educated beyond high school - all bottle feed. Where around my girlfriends - college educated women who had their kids when they were ten (or twenty!) years older, the only ones that didn’t try to breastfeed adopted, the only ones that didn’t continue had medical issues. We are doing a poor job targeting the message - and sometimes, when we miss the target, we are doing harm.

Can I propose that breastfeeding education is a good thing, but the shotgun method we currently use sucks?

135

We are totally on the same page on this.

136

Exactly - you hit the nail on the head here. I can’t tell you how many friends I have who’ve given up BFing for some issue or another who are hit with HUGE guilt because of BFing ‘advocates’ who say “Well, if you had just tried HARDER…”.

Hell, I’m dealing with a baby who might have reflux, so we’re switching his formula, and the main thing going through my mind over the past two days is “Well, if I’d been able to breastfeed him exclusively, maybe he wouldn’t be in pain.”.

It’s not the standard BFing education that’s an issue, it’s that the information is being used to hurt those who WOULD BF if they could. Do you think the mom who deliberately chose to FF really gives a crap about what anyone says to her? No, it’s the moms who want to and have tried without success, or want to and are unable to do so for various health reasons who are hurt.

E.

137

And this is different from the bashing we’re attempting to get away from how? :dubious:

The implication that anyone who “deliberately” chooses to bottlefeed doesn’t care about their baby is insulting and wrong. The world is full of children who are actually mistreated, and parents who are actually uncaring and/or incompetent. Perhaps instead of beating each other with our breasts and bottles in an attempt to assuage our guilt over all the mistakes we’re each sure we’re making with our well cared for children, we moms should support each other’s efforts and focus our ire on people who don’t feed their kids at all.

138

You know, I started to say that. I typed it out three different ways. None of it sounded right.

I’m of the opinion that showing is better than telling.

139

That wasn’t meant to be bashing at all - the FFing moms I’ve met are pretty secure in their decisions - I wish I could be as secure as them. I have several friends with babies around the same age as my son who wanted to FF from the beginning of their pregnancies (and they ARE educated), and have never let any kind of guilt over not BFing get to them.

If it came across as bashing FFing moms, it wasn’t my intention at all. It was actually meant to be more admiration for sticking to their guns.

E.

140

Sorry for misinterpreting, Elza. I guess it just confirms that we all get oversensitive on the subject!