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First, some personal context:\u00a0 I breastfed my three boys.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t very good at it.\u00a0 For the first, I needed help from a lactation consultant because of a \u201cbad latch.\u201d\u00a0 The second took to nursing much more readily, but then experienced and caused a great deal of unhappiness when it was time for him to go to daycare (or just be taken care of by dad) and he wouldn\u2019t take a bottle.\u00a0 And all three of them needed significant supplementing starting at about the three month marker, and I tried no end of herbal supplements upon reading, \u201cevery woman can breastfeed and will always have enough supply if she just tries hard enough.\u201d\u00a0 I was also clumsy about it; those photos of women latching the baby on and then going about their day?\u00a0 I could never do anything remotely like that. \u00a0 But I soldiered on, using the hospital-grade pump that was provided at work at the time, and made it \u2019til about the 6 or 7 month point before the combination seemed a bit pointless and we switched entirely to bottles.<\/p>\n
After all, the list of benefits touted by breastfeeding advocates seemed endless.\u00a0 Besides which, it was a way of demonstrating that I was a Good Mom even though I didn\u2019t feel all that maternal and wasn\u2019t the sort to coo at the baby all day long.\u00a0 And it did come in handy, for the first couple months of babyhood for #3, since we didn\u2019t need to worry about baby bottles and the like for that time period when we were still in Germany (he was 2 months old when we returned to the U.S.).<\/p>\n
Would I have made the same decisions had the reports we now have<\/a>, that studies showing breastfed babies are smarter, are not appropriately random, because women who make the effort to breastfeed are also likely to have smarter kids for any number of other reasons, so we\u2019re looking at more of a correlation than a causation, that the only truly statistically valid studies show virtually no effect, been available then?\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to say \u2014 and it\u2019s likewise hard to judge from a distance how different new motherhood would have been if I had been bottlefeeding, and if I\u2019d genuinely been able to do without feeling just a bit like a failure.<\/p>\n Which means I\u2019m neither an anti-breastfeeder nor an anti-bottlefeeder, but the outcome of 20 years of hindsight is more of a belief that there\u2019s no one right answer for every woman.\u00a0 (Further reading:\u00a0 \u201cAre there downsides to \u2018breast is best\u2019?\u201d<\/a> from BBC.com; \u201cThe Case Against Breast-Feeding\u201d<\/a> at The Atlantic \u2014 which is more of a case against near-compulsory breastfeeding.) Breastfeeding is great for many women.\u00a0 Formula is expensive.\u00a0 Many of the reasons women have elected not to breastfeed \u2014 that it\u2019s \u201cicky\u201d or that breasts are reserved for sex \u2014 are dumb.\u00a0 But continuing to breastfeed as a working mother, by pumping, is not easy and involves its own time and effort, even though through the magic of the Affordable Care Act, breast pumps are now \u201cfree\u201d, or, that is, \u201cincluded in the price\u201d of health insurance \u2014 not to mention the difficulties many women experience and find trivialized by Experts.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s the context that I bring to the New York Times<\/em>\u2018 report, as summarized in the National Review<\/a> for your nonpaywalled convenience:<\/p>\n World health officials were reportedly flabbergasted when the U.S. delegation to the World Health Assembly opposed what was expected to be a noncontroversial measure to promote breastfeeding.<\/p>\n U.S. diplomats told the Geneva conference of hundreds of international officials that the language of the resolution must be softened, which encouraged governments to\u00a0\u201cprotect, promote and support breast-feeding.\u201d<\/p>\n The New York Times <\/em>reported<\/a> the U.S. officials were catering to the interests of infant formula manufacturing companies, a $70 billion industry, who were also at Geneva.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, the Times article itself says that the US denies this was its motivation, and that they were more concerned about ensuring that women had the right to make their own choices on the matter.\u00a0 I did a bit more digging into exactly what the WHO is up to, which has to do with a resolution<\/a> adopted by the World Health Assembly in May<\/a>.\u00a0 This is part of an overall focus on increasing rates of breastfeeding to improve babies\u2019 health, including a recommendation to breastfeed until age 2, and the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes<\/a>, which stipulates that adopting countries should prohibit formula manufactures from engaging in any sort of marketing of their products \u2014 no giving away of samples, no advertising, not even any images on the container which \u201cmay idealize the use of breast-milk substitutes.\u201d\u00a0 And, in fact, if you visit a website, say, for Aptamil<\/a>, a formula company in the UK, you need to click \u201ccontinue\u201d after a warning box:<\/p>\n By clicking the continue button, you will be able to view information about Aptamil infant milks and other products. If you choose to proceed, you are accepting that Aptaclub is supplying this information at your individual request for information purposes. Please consult a healthcare professional to make an informed choice on feeding your baby milks & weaning onto solid foods.<\/p>\n Breastfeeding is best for babies and provides many benefits. It is important that, in preparation for and during breastfeeding, you eat a healthy, balanced diet. Combined breast and bottle feeding in the first weeks of life may reduce the supply of your own breast milk, and reversing the decision not to breastfeed is difficult. The social and financial implications of using an infant milk should be considered. Improper use of an infant milk or inappropriate foods or feeding methods may present a health hazard. If you use an infant milk, you should follow manufacturer\u2019s instructions for use carefully \u2013 failure to follow the instructions may make your baby ill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (One wonders what the \u201csocial implications\u201d of using formula are, but this seems to come straight from the Code, and really seems to mean that it\u2019s bad for society to fail to promote breastfeeding sufficiently.)<\/p>\n So this isn\u2019t just about \u201cmisinformation\u201d but treating formula as more on-par with tobacco in its need to be regulated.<\/p>\n And here\u2019s another bit of information:\u00a0 the World Health Organization\u2019s brochure on bottle-feeding<\/a> outlines a 12-step process for preparing formula, including sterilizing the bottle, disinfecting the counter, boiling water and mixing the formula before it\u2019s cooled, then cooling with ice water.\u00a0 The skeptic in me says that this is intended to deter parents from choosing to bottle-feed.<\/p>\n And, knowing that the UN includes plenty of countries which care much less about individual autonomy than the United States, it seems very likely that various such countries might choose to implement these guidelines and make progress towards these goals in much more authoritarian ways, by requiring some determination of \u201cmedical necessity\u201d before a woman is allowed to purchase formula, for example.<\/p>\n Having said that, I get that the concerns in modern developed countries are different than those in developing countries, and I know that historically there have been issues with formula companies marketing to poor women who then discover that they cannot afford to continue buying sufficient amounts of formula to feed their babies, or do not have access to clean water to mix the formula with (though a skeptical twitter user, Suzanne Barston, complains that<\/a> the WHO is \u201cputting breastfeeding ahead of bodily autonomy, putting [the] onus of infant health on women rather than poverty, disease, [and] poor sanitation\u201d).<\/p>\n But what I\u2019m seeing online is not that formula manufacturers are marketing to poor Third World women and deceiving them to believe that it\u2019s better to give them formula than breastfeed; instead, DW reports<\/a> that, according to the UN, women in the developing world are more likely, rather than less likely, to breastfeed, and that their recommendations were three-fold:<\/p>\n UNICEF found the reasons for not breastfeeding, or not nursing for long, vary, but it stresses that granting paid parental leave, the right to breastfeed in the workplace and restrictions on promoting infant formula as \u201ccritical.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And campaigners in favor of increased breastfeeding rates, especially increased rates of exclusive breastfeeding at 6 months (which, again, in my case would have meant starving babies or a milk bank, hardly necessary for a healthy baby), point to a Lancet study<\/a> claiming this would save 800,000 babies\u2019 lives worldwide, which itself has gotten pushback (e.g., here<\/a> and here<\/a> \u2013 a site which also has a review of the research<\/a> and commentary on the current news<\/a> as well) as well.<\/p>\n But I\u2019ll stop here because I can\u2019t claim to be expert enough on the particulars of infant mortality in the Third World and the extent to which breastfeeding my remedy it, or, on the other hand, whether a standard of toddler nursing is simply not realistic among factory workers.<\/p>\n Image: \u00a0By Carin Araujo, http:\/\/www.prtc.net\/~carin (Stock.xchng #197853) [Copyrighted free use], via Wikimedia Commons<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First, some personal context:\u00a0 I breastfed my three boys.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t very good at it.\u00a0 For the first, I needed help from a lactation consultant because of a \u201cbad latch.\u201d\u00a0 The second took to nursing much more readily, but then experienced and caused a great deal of unhappiness when it was time for him to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":1385,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1021,1018,483],"class_list":["post-10135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bottle-feeding","tag-breast-feeding","tag-who"],"yoast_head":"\n