Two threads have combined sufficiently (in my head) for me to mention 
something about risk.

The simple fact is, that most people don't understand risk, or how it 
works.

Many years ago, I had a dear friend who did an Open University study 
module on risk, the nature of risk, and how people interact with it, and 
I remember thinking "What a stupid topic how pointless is that!"  Oh the 
sureties of youth!  Thankfully, my friend took the time to talk it 
through with me, and I was left feeling there was something important in 
'it' but I didn't get it..

I didn't truly take it on board for many years.  Most people have an 
emotional defence response when presented with any risk factor that 
affects them.  We deny the risk to us, and down play it - and only 'cave 
in' when evidence is undeniable.  I've watched the society around me 
accept that tobacco is a risk activity.  From my youth, where is was 
accepted as perfectly normal, with tales of it being "recommended for 
health (TB)" in the recent past - to the now Nationwide ban on smoking 
in enclosed public places.  A massive change in the perception of the 
risk involved, has happened.  People now understand there is real, 
tangible, risks that they can see.  In my own case, three long terms 
notaries in a fan community I belong two, all smoked heavily.  One had a 
heart attack, and survived due to his wife spotting it quickly, the 
other two have died of cancer - lung and throat.  Their deaths made real 
the 'risk' to hundreds of people.  But there will always be those who 
cite "My great uncle smoked 80 a day and lived to be..."

I've sat in rooms, and had risk factors explained to me.  I've usually 
understood the nature of the risk more thoroughly than the person 
explaining.  All bar one person, has been completely useless at 
conveying it to me with any sense of how it actually related to me.  At 
the Foetal Medical Centre, in Harley St, after my nuchal fold scan, the 
scan technician (always a doctor at this centre) said "Your risk of 
Down's in 1 in 847.  That means if 847 people who are you - 847 people 
in the room of your age, your height and your weight where in the room, 
one of them would be likely to be carrying a Down's baby."  I knew the 
weight and height had nothing to do with it, but I recognised she had 
found a way to explain risk to most people.

But most people, myself included, would concentrate on being one of the 
846, and deny any possibility that the 847th would be me.  "it won't be 
me."  People want certainties: tell me if I will die if I smoke, tell me 
if I will die early if I weigh to much - prove it.  As I said, people 
just don't understand the nature of risk: things are either 'safe' or 
they are 'not safe'.  "Okay" for large amounts of the population but 
lethal for a small proportion - they just don't get.  Further, they will 
never accept that they might be in the small part - they're always 
aiming for the 'okay'.

This is indicative of another factor to risk that I feel is important.  
Humans have only survived, flourished even, when we've defied 
overwhelming odds of risk.  If we didn't carry on acting in face of 
seemingly insurmountable risks, we'd still be in the caves praying for 
the Thunder God to stop punishing us and desperate to work out how to 
get the daylight back.  The ability to risk defines us as human, in many 
ways.  We keep going: full stop.  So it's hard when one of our strongest 
features, is also a huge flaw.

The psycho dynamics of risk!  Oh how I wish I'd paid more attention to 
that unit of study!

Formula use, and breast functions, and woman's bodies, strikes to the 
very core of several major cultural problems we still have no resolution 
to.  As a society, we have yet to resolve how to be comfortable with the 
female body, with it's life giving nature and with the children it 
produces.  We hate being physical, we hate the way a woman's body locks 
us into our physical functions and how it changes so constantly.  We 
idolise the heroes who surpass their physical bodies to 'overcome' their 
biology by breaking open concrete slabs by hand, and we worship the 
concept that mind over matter is the 'correct' way to view bodies  
Bodies are physical weakness and the mind the true source of 'being 
human'.  Vast problems of emotional identity, hegemony and individual 
desire opens up whenever any woman falls pregnant, or has breast 
surgery, or faces infertility from her body's development.  Into this 
maelstrom of insecurity, the words "you run the risk of..." are 
incredible dangerous.  On one hand, you can wipe out all hope, on the 
other, feed into the endless feeling that no one has a clue what the 
scientific 'truth' is, and everything said can be equally ignored as 
having nothing to do with that woman, and that newborn.  It's difficult 
enough to change attitude, never mind behaviours.  "You said my Great 
Aunt Aggie would die if she carried on .... and 25 years later she's 
still here!"

It sometimes feels it will never get better - and the nature of risk and 
how it affects us all will never change anything.  But then I always 
return to tobacco.  And the huge changes wrought in such a relatively 
short time.  20 years ago it would have been inconceivable that smoking 
was banned in UK pubs.  If you'd said that would happen - especially 
stating it would start in Scotland years before so in England - you'd 
have been laughed off the street.  But it has!  People now accept that 
smoking puts them at risk, and, in general, most will understand that 
their great uncle may have gotten away with it, but they might not.  
Risk factors and smoking have finally made an emotional impact.  People 
have accepted it, even as some individuals still deny it - but enough 
people have made the emotional connection for societal behaviour to change.

This will happen with formula - when enough people make the emotional 
connection to the nature of the risk.  :-)

In this vein, I'd like to defend, a little, those Mums sitting back with 
hungry newborns and crying abut needing to give formula.  Their 
perception that formula is poison needs to be upheld.  We need them to 
feel supported in their pain at giving a sub standard product to their 
newborn.  We can't inform mother's about problems in cow's milk and 
newborn stomachs, about the death of flora in the gut etc - and then 
expect them not to recoil when it's medically appropriate to give this 
crap to their newborn.  We can't educate on one hand, and refuse to 
understand their emotional pain and resistance on the other.  These 
mothers have made an emotional connection to the nature of the risk, and 
when they are most vulnerable, are being asked to ignore that emotional 
understanding.  When you try and persuade them the formula is needed, 
you are fighting against the ghosts of the all the other mothers who 
were hoodwinked.

We need to present clearly that the risk of not giving the formula, 
outweighs the risk of giving the formula.  Not reject utterly that there 
is no risk just because the baby needs supplementation.  Apart from 
anything else, we still need to keep alive the link between the formula 
presence and the lack of human milk for that baby.   "I'm sorry, the 
risk of not having this formula is now greater than the risk of giving 
it - but we can help you overcome the problems.  Odds are you'll be 
lucky, and there will be no really bad response.  Most babies do fine.  
I'm so sorry we don't have human milk to give, so the formula is now the 
only option."   Wouldn't it be refreshing to that routinely coming out 
of every mouth dealing with the Mum! 

In addition, those Mums have heard of hundreds of other Mums before 
them, who supplemented needlessly as a Dr told them to 'top up' just in 
case.  So every mother who does know that formula is a risk, also really 
really needs to know the formula supplementation is medically prescribed 
_for the right reasons_.

Some of us often present the idea that we need formula - for without it, 
babies would die.   This is not a helpful way of looking at things - for 
no matter how many babies have been 'saved', far more have died that 
same day.  Formula kills more babies than it ever 'saves'. 

If formula didn't exist, there would be enough human milk for all babies 
who need it.  Professionals from in here, from different countries, have 
already posted about how when babies in their area do need 
supplementation, it's a simple matter of phoning around the lactating 
Mums and getting milk dropped off within a couple of hours.  This _can_ 
happen, and it _does_ happen in some cultures.  We end up with a 
monolithic edifice The Need For Formula, and we smack out heads up 
against it time and again.  Seeing a need for formula, is looking 
through the veil of a formula dependent culture.  Just as it was once 
almost impossible to conceive of a non-smoking culture, it's sometimes 
almost impossible to conceive of a non-formula feeding culture.  We look 
at the odds and think "No way is that every going to happen."

But it's gonna happen!  No matter how many die-hards sit on the edges  
refusing to change.  :-)

And if I don't get changed and get out of this house, I'm going to be 
very late for a very important date!  And I don't have a white rabbit or 
a pocket watch.

:-)

Morgan Gallagher
On the way to the Palace of Westminster to hear asylum mothers tear 
strips off MPs, and, hopefully, nurse her 30 month old toddler in full 
view of said MPs!  That will be one for the album.  ;-)

 

             ***********************************************

Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html
Mail all commands to [log in to unmask]
To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or [log in to unmask])
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet or ([log in to unmask])
To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]