San Francisco, 5:47 AM
Sun Dec 6
12 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
Editor-in-Chief:
Annalee Newitz |
News Editor:
Charlie Jane Anders |
Associate Editor:
Meredith Woerner |
Assistant Editor:
Lauren Davis |
Weekend Editor:
Graeme McMillan |
Contributors:
Joshua Glenn
Stephen Goldmeier |
Ed Grabianowski |
Austin Grossman
Paul Hogan |
Lauren Davis |
Chris Hsiang |
Lynn Peril |
Ann VanderMeer
Alasdair Wilkins |
Graphic Designer:
Stephanie Fox |
Interns:
Tim Barribeau |
Julia Carusillo |
Alex Eichler |
Cyriaque Lamar |
Caitlin Petrakovitz |
Mary Ratliff |
Josh Snyder |
There's a lot of anger here about those apocryphal mothers whose lifestyle means they choose not to breastfeed, ever, presumably while going out to work every day. A minority of people are getting very nasty in their comments, which ill suits the forum and discussion. Most mums I know who don't exclusively breastfeed have specific medical/milk producton reasons for doing so, and it would be a tribute to this site's usual objectivity and compassion not to forget that whilst hitting out at the presumed selfishness of a minority.
@hamshank: and anyway, how old is that kid in the picture? If you're old enough to ask, you shouldn't get it, my granny always said. Not to me, I stress ...
Don't worry ladies, once the government takes a proprietary interest in your health and the health of your baby via a takeover of the healthcare industry, folks like Obama and Sebellius will be telling you where to put your boobs. Remember, it's all about "bending the cost curve", and if government studies find that breast feeding saves money long term, then you'll be paying a tax or fine if you don't do it. How you ask? Put a surtax on formula products, and then create an expensive and complex refundable tax credit to ameliorate the effect on poor women.
@Canoehead: *eyeroll* You do realise that all other industrialized countries provide universal health care to their citizens, and it hasn't yet caused the end of the world, right? I don't want to get in a debate over this because, frankly I don't really care that much. I just feel the need to point out that my country has universal healthcare and it has yet to start trying to affect the way I run my life.
@RandomFrequentFlierDent: Not only do I realize it, I spent the first 28 years of my life in such a country, where the healthcare "system" came very close to killing my mother during what should have been a routine procedure. I also have enough background in law, government policy and macro-economics to understand how a federal government which becomes responsible for the health costs of an additional 100 million people will use every tool at its disposal to try to keep costs under control, and the federal government has a pretty extensive toolbox.
@Canoehead: ...compared to private industry, which also uses every tool at its disposal to try and keep costs down, with the added incentive that they're largely free from any accountability? (compared to public officials, which can at least be voted out of office).
I really don't get the "they'll cut costs and services" argument, since the EXACT SAME THING happens under a "private" healthcare system.
Oh -- I forgot, if you've got enough money, you still get whatever you want. I forgot about that.
@pz: I'm not saying that the regulation of the US health insurance industry could not be improved - if fact it should be - but at least there is still some competition among the private providers, and while they try to contain costs, sometimes unfairly, they do not have the power to pass criminal laws and punitive taxes or other tools that government possesses. Do you really think the government will behave well once it is both referee and player in the same game?
@Canoehead: #1 It doesn't matter how many insurance companies there are in the US if the prices are so high that no one can afford it (unless it's tied into your employment, of course, wonderful system there).
#2 Insurance companies don't need the power to throw you in jail when they can simply deny funding for treatments and pretty much sentence you to death.
@pz: Well, government insurance can do the same thing (look at the lack of cancer drugs in the UK), but they can tax you and/or jail you on the way out.
Um...... almost makes you think that babies are supposed to drink their mother's milk. And of course, there's that whole icky "child bonding with mother" thing that used to be so important.
That's why women have boobs. Was some woman's breast milk made of poison or something? How could this even be an issue?
I'm going to get a glass of water... is that cool? Wanna make sure I'm not taking my life in my own hands.
We need a new thing to worry about now that Global Warming has been proven a fraud.
That's super great info. But perhaps I should conduct a study that shows how many five finger sandwiches get doled out when someone pokes their nose into another woman's baby feeding practices.
I have a friend who had to go to bottle with her daughter because the baby was actually LOSING weight not gaining it because her milk was just not providing enough nutrients. So, yeah, there are really legit reasons not to breast feed that sometimes a mother can't help. She had a bitchy mom in the pediatricians office make some nasty comment to her about using the bottle and she tore her a new one.
So, though this study (which is really not that earth shattering) is great let's just leave our opinions on breast feeding to ourselves, shall we?
@Sunshineyness: Your "friend" wasn't feeding her child enough breast milk, it's as simple as that. Human breast milk is full of fat necessary for proper development, and most women find that if they breast feed (or at least pump) it helps them keep the weight off themselves.
If her child wasn't gaining enough weight, it's because she wasn't getting enough.
Tell her to step up the feeding and pump 24/7 next time. She owes it to her child.
Women who choose not to feed their children naturally when they have perfectly functioning breasts make me sick.
@EnochLight: A) Not my kid, so it's really not my place to tell her what to do. Neither am I a doctor and she gets enough advice from people who are neither of those things.
B) This is what she told me, I don't know anything else beyond the situation than that or any of the details. I was just using it as an example of the myriad of reasons a women might use formula that are perfectly reasonable.
C) Regardless, my point was that it's nobody's business weather a woman breast feeds or formula feeds but the mother and child and that the judgmental tones needs to end.
@EnochLight: It's possible the kid's appetite was more than what the woman could provide. I know I'll probably catch hell for this--I had to leave a parenting board because I had this problem, because everyone said I was "doing it wrong" when I would have six-hour feeding sessions with the kid with only half an hour between, all day and all night--but my kid was like that. I used the pump for a year but he drank more than a *gallon* of milk a day. Sometimes a lot more. He woke up every night until he was two, and it wasn't for attention--it was because he was hungry.
My kid lost weight after birth as well, and I have pictures of him looking like he is literally starving to death. It was a really hard road.
He's now four years old and about four feet tall. Some kids are like that.
Everyone knows breast feeding is best and have done since an alternative even arose - even if it wasn't instantly obvious, which it is, there have been studies before.
The point is lots of modern mothers don't believe they have the time or ability. Leaving aside any arguments about whether they should therefore have 'chosen' to have a child at all if they cannot even dedicate this basic time to it that our eldest ancestors managed. The issue comes down to; if you cannot or will not breastfeed (I have known young mothers who find the concept disgusting... let an honest anthropologist dwell on that) then you aren't supporting your child as well as a mother who can and will. Accept that and carry on. Most find it an uncomfortable truth precisely because they know it.
@Indigen: Yeah, you're right. It is totally non-supportive of a woman with little or no milk to supplement or switch to formula.
Just, let the kid not thrive. No big deal if it suffers permanent brain damage from not getting enough food in the crucial first year. Accept it and carry on.
@Inkymonkey: And if post-partum issues (a whole different argument brewing there) make it even more difficult for her to handle nursing her baby, tough. She should just continue to nurse in misery, crying, wondering what the heck she's going to do and how she's going to keep it up, rather than using formula. Rather a nursed baby and a miserable mother, than a formula fed baby and a happy mother.
I think that this new evidence of the benefits of breastmilk is sort of irrelevant. I'm not saying it isn't true, but there are so many studies showing the myriad benefits I don't think one more is going to have women suddenly saying "Ah, now I'm going to breastfeed. The first 5 zillion studies meant nothing, but this one did the trick."
The decision as to what is best is far more complicated than just looking at the nutrient benefits of breastmilk vs. formula. This is a very personal decision, influenced by each individual Mom's situation, and many times, breastmilk just isn't the best answer.
Of course that's based on the assumption that mother's milk is pure and not laced with mercury, rocket fuel and other various chemicals that accumulate in fatty tissue. From what I understand, none of those components don't help overall health and brain development.
There has been plenty of positive evidence linked to breastfeeding. The thing is, pretending like women all have the same opportunities & options is silly-- some women can afford to breastfeed. Other women have to go to work.
@mordicai: I grant there are differences in lifestyles. But my mother ran a full-time job as a small business owner and still managed to breastfeed my brothers and I, so it's not just stay-home moms.
@Nivenus: Right-- but as @Dirk Anger points out, there are other reasons besides anecdotal evidence. A mother stuck at, lets say, McDonalds for 40 hours a week has less options than a full-time self employed business owner. & as @Adah mentions, there are other factors besides time.
Me, I'm a big breastfeeding supporter-- for way longer than most people manage to do it for. There is an anecdote-- the only women who breastfeed their children to 5 are k!ung bushwomen & female anthropologists. There is a lot of evidence pointing to 5 being a good age to shoot for-- but that just brings in social taboo as a new pressure on mothers...
@mordicai: There's this wonderful device you see, called a breast pump which allows a women to bottle and store her breast milk in the fridge. That the child can be bottle fed but still receives the benefits of breast milk.
@Bill-Lee: Where and when shall they pump, and in what fridge shall they store it? The problem isn't for women with their own offices and private fridges working for corporations that provide lovely quiet pumping rooms and the freedom to take a half hour every few hours out of their day to go pump. It's for the other 80+% of working women who do not have facilities in which to pump, have 15 minute breaks an hour and cannot save them up so as to get a long enough pumping break, and are not allowed to store breast milk in any of the fridges for health code reasons. The latter is a particular problem in food service and health care.
@dkissam: I guess a lot of contemporary women wouldn't have survived the California gold fields or frontier life in the prairie states. A lot of contemporary men wouldn't make it either.
@dkissam: Heh, you hit the nail on the head there. I worked tech support while trying to nurse my first. Executives could pump in their offices. I didn't even have a room to do it in. There was a room in our office campus, but it was a fifteen-minute walk away, and you can't walk fifteen minutes, set up, pump, store the milk in a cooler, and walk back for fifteen minutes all stuffed into the single fifteen-minute break you're allowed off the phone and GOD FORBID you actually need to use the restroom for yourself during that time.
I ended up wandering the halls looking for an empty conference room and hoping like hell it had a door that locked.
@Bill-Lee:
Are you suggesting that contemporary women bring their nursing infants with them to the office, thus enabling them to breast feed on demand like frontierswomen who were with their children all day, whether in the home or in the field? Because that almost never happens.
@dkissam: Actually I'm saying contemporary people living in the Western World tend to whine incessantly about their problems instead of finding solutions. Our lives are generally easier than the lives of our ancestors but our society tends to grouse more about increasingly minor problems.
Maybe a mother doesn't have to breastfeed "exclusively" for the baby to get the benefit. Maybe as little as one or two feedings does it.
Besides, the argument between breast and bottle has been going on for decades with the pendulum swinging back and forth. What that suggests to me is that one methd may be better, but not by alot.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/29/09
11/30/09
Relax, it'll do wonders for your health.
11/30/09
11/30/09
I really don't get the "they'll cut costs and services" argument, since the EXACT SAME THING happens under a "private" healthcare system.
Oh -- I forgot, if you've got enough money, you still get whatever you want. I forgot about that.
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
11/30/09
#2 Insurance companies don't need the power to throw you in jail when they can simply deny funding for treatments and pretty much sentence you to death.
11/30/09
11/29/09
That's why women have boobs. Was some woman's breast milk made of poison or something? How could this even be an issue?
I'm going to get a glass of water... is that cool? Wanna make sure I'm not taking my life in my own hands.
We need a new thing to worry about now that Global Warming has been proven a fraud.
11/29/09
I have a friend who had to go to bottle with her daughter because the baby was actually LOSING weight not gaining it because her milk was just not providing enough nutrients. So, yeah, there are really legit reasons not to breast feed that sometimes a mother can't help. She had a bitchy mom in the pediatricians office make some nasty comment to her about using the bottle and she tore her a new one.
So, though this study (which is really not that earth shattering) is great let's just leave our opinions on breast feeding to ourselves, shall we?
11/29/09
If her child wasn't gaining enough weight, it's because she wasn't getting enough.
Tell her to step up the feeding and pump 24/7 next time. She owes it to her child.
Women who choose not to feed their children naturally when they have perfectly functioning breasts make me sick.
11/29/09
B) This is what she told me, I don't know anything else beyond the situation than that or any of the details. I was just using it as an example of the myriad of reasons a women might use formula that are perfectly reasonable.
C) Regardless, my point was that it's nobody's business weather a woman breast feeds or formula feeds but the mother and child and that the judgmental tones needs to end.
11/30/09
11/30/09
My kid lost weight after birth as well, and I have pictures of him looking like he is literally starving to death. It was a really hard road.
He's now four years old and about four feet tall. Some kids are like that.
11/30/09
11/29/09
The point is lots of modern mothers don't believe they have the time or ability. Leaving aside any arguments about whether they should therefore have 'chosen' to have a child at all if they cannot even dedicate this basic time to it that our eldest ancestors managed. The issue comes down to; if you cannot or will not breastfeed (I have known young mothers who find the concept disgusting... let an honest anthropologist dwell on that) then you aren't supporting your child as well as a mother who can and will. Accept that and carry on. Most find it an uncomfortable truth precisely because they know it.
11/29/09
Just, let the kid not thrive. No big deal if it suffers permanent brain damage from not getting enough food in the crucial first year. Accept it and carry on.
Good advice.
11/29/09
11/29/09
The decision as to what is best is far more complicated than just looking at the nutrient benefits of breastmilk vs. formula. This is a very personal decision, influenced by each individual Mom's situation, and many times, breastmilk just isn't the best answer.
11/29/09
11/29/09
I'm still working on the laser-firing model.
11/29/09
11/29/09
but also lack of breast feeding and the way parents coddle their kids now a days has bred a few generations of wusses.
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/29/09
Me, I'm a big breastfeeding supporter-- for way longer than most people manage to do it for. There is an anecdote-- the only women who breastfeed their children to 5 are k!ung bushwomen & female anthropologists. There is a lot of evidence pointing to 5 being a good age to shoot for-- but that just brings in social taboo as a new pressure on mothers...
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/29/09
11/30/09
I ended up wandering the halls looking for an empty conference room and hoping like hell it had a door that locked.
Most didn't. I was walked in on quite a bit.
12/01/09
Are you suggesting that contemporary women bring their nursing infants with them to the office, thus enabling them to breast feed on demand like frontierswomen who were with their children all day, whether in the home or in the field? Because that almost never happens.
12/01/09
11/29/09
Besides, the argument between breast and bottle has been going on for decades with the pendulum swinging back and forth. What that suggests to me is that one methd may be better, but not by alot.
09/18/09
09/09/09
09/09/09
09/09/09
09/09/09
09/09/09
#@!
09/09/09