Dear all:

What particularly infuriates me about the press coverage is that they have never 
investigated what I know to be a fact in most of the hospitals here in Manhattan.  

There continue to be cases where neither the mother, nor the pediatrician have given 
permission for the infant to be fed formula and yet, counter to New York State perinatal 
regulations, the infant is supplemented with formula.  Sometimes this occurs without the 
feeding being charted.  I would say that 90% of my client's infants have been 
supplemented with formula before I see them and a fair proportion of those have been 
because someone other than the pediatrician heavily encouraged the mother to 
supplement without providing assitance with breastfeeding or expressing milk or a 
medical reason for the need to supplement.

To date, I have NEVER had a case where a mother has been denied formula --- yet the 
routine denial of the opportunity to breastfeed or give breast milk occurs every day in 
hospitals in Manhattan.  How many hospital IBCLCs post on Lactnet about this same 
frustation?  Many.  

Moreover, I have inner sources that have told me about the shove it out of the closet 
phenomenon.  There is not enough room for this "so-called" free product so hospital 
personnel desperately hand it out like those poor people hired to hand out flyers on the 
street corners, begging anyone who passes to take the handout even if they dump it in 
the nearest trash can.  I've heard complaints that that amount of formula that is dumped 
on hospitals is in excess of what would be needed if EVERY SINGLE BABY in the hospital 
were fed formula exclusively the entire time they were in the hospital.  The other 
complaint is staff time spent on inventorying this so-called free product.

Where is the hard-core investigative journalism when it comes to infants?  I guess they 
think this is just a soft "woman's issue" just like they think women are too "frail" to be 
told the truth about the risks of their choices in infant feeding.

Best regards,   

Susan E. Burger, 

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