Announcement: Breastfeeding is NOT best.

[skeetaboat]

This article made me wonder...as a woman who has borne children, am I more likely to get cancer, osteoporosis, etc, than a woman of similar genetic & environmental risk who has *not* borne children? How do the risks of the various morbidities that breastfeeding affects compare between a woman who has never borne children and never breastfed to that of a woman who has borne children and breastfed??

does anyone know the answer to that?

[Honeybee]

Interesting article, and I do agree with what they're saying. As someone who was determined to breastfeed and then found I did not produce enough milk to BF exclusively for longer than 12 weeks, I would have been pretty peeved to say the least if someone engaged me in a long discussion about the evils of formula and that I was damaging my baby. I gave BF absolutely everything I had, the first 12 weeks of my son's life were so incredibly stressful as I struggled with constant BF and constant pumping. If he wasn't on my breast, I was on the pump. I engaged a wonderful LC and we worked so hard together and tried everything. I didn't take the decision to use formula lightly at all. I cried my heart out the first time he had a bottle because I felt that I had failed him as a mother. I continued to nurse my son to 17 months, and I'm so proud of myself that I kept going with the BF even though I was forced to supplement with formula. I really do agree with totally normalising BF, and educating people not to see formula as an equivalent choice, but as someone who had to face the fact that she didn't have enough milk, articles like this hurt a bit too. for me, the smoking analogy doesn't quite work - the smoker can just choose to quit, it might take a lot of self discipline. I couldn't just choose to exclusively BF, my body wouldn't do it.

[Leeap]

This article is amazing, all mothers to be should read it!
I totally agree with the above post's. We need to normalise bfg, because that is half the battle.
I have bf all my children, and with the first it was a hard first 12 weeks, he was unsettled, wanted to be held lots in the first 3 months, and woke through the night for feeds til well after 12 months. But if someone had of just said to me 'it is not you or your milk, this is usual new born behaviour' I would not have been so worried about whether I was making enough milk for him.
The WHO also need to hurry up and get the new 'growth charts' into the blue baby books. They are sooo outdated, based on formula fed American babies from the early 80's and not realistic for today.

[jessicakate]

I've only just come across this article, but I loved it too. It's all stuff that I really already knew but it was a different way of portraying the information, and it was really interesting to read something that wasn't just a pro's and con's list for bf and formula, as if they were completely interchangeable.
Leeap - I totally agree with the blue book thing too, the number of times I went to a health appointment with my bf baby and got the 'oh she's only put on 200gm' or the 'well done mummy, she put on 500gm' was ridiculous, and not at all helpful in instilling confidence about bf. yes, I knew she would put on more weight more quickly if I threw formula down her throat at a prescribed amount each time, but I was lucky enough to realise that the amount of weight she was putting on didn't correlate to her actual health and well being.

The part in the article talking about how women should feel cheated by the lack of support and help in the medical industry is soooo true too, and it really isn't talked about enough. I was chatting to one of my friends the other day who got next to no support with bfing her first, and was made to feel terrible and so guilty that she wasn't bursting with milk by the time she left hospital, and her baby was having a hard time latching, that she gave up and went to formula. when her second was born she didn't even try bf, but said she had milk streaming out of her breasts but had already made the decision. she not only had awful pain in her breasts and infections from not feeding but her 6 month old baby has had terrible terrible allergies to cows milk formula since birth, has been sick so much, and in hospital, also had terrible rashes and all sorts of things, that now she feels guilty that she didn't bf her, and would have tried had she known what was to come. She does feel though that she was really let down by the system, and that had she been supported with her first baby, she wouldn't have had so many problems with the second. It just highlighted to me the reason so many women don't manage to feed more than a couple of weeks, even though they would have liked to.

[TeniBear]

I just read an excellent comment on a blog that says this is a different way. I don't know the original source, and I'm not sure if what I read was paraphrased or not, but here it is:

Consider formula feeding as convenience food. Not fast food, not Maccy Ds, but long life food, reconstituted food, tinned food. It can be fortified with vitamins to make it healthier for people to eat, it may have a few questionable ingredients (ie preservatives) but overall, you can live a healthy enough life on it, you’d get all your food groups in, and your vitamins.

Breastfeeding by comparison is fresh food, organically grown, direct from the farm. It would take more time setting up the farm, and some support from family members and outsiders to get things going. Once you were up and running, it would become easy, second nature. But if you worked outside of the home, or had limited help available, it would become more difficult than eating packaged food from the supermarket. Some people might have to do a little bit of both. Some people may be unable to do farm work due to physical problems, or lack of support/help in the day to day running. Some people may not want to farm, and choose to go straight to buying their packaged food at the supermarket.

You could even say that choosing to buy fresh organic food at the supermarket is the equivalent of pumping, or obtaining donor milk. Not the same as producing it yourself, and it would not be as fresh, but it would still be good.

Not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.

I think most people accept that fresh organic produce is healthier for you than convenience food. But there isn’t a big debate over it. The only reason there is with bf vs formula is because it involves parenting which is always a hot topic.