Sean,
I may go to Costco tonight, if they are open. What would you like me to
pick up? I need to get a few things for the book business and I do want
to try to hit the Carlingwood dollar store for loot bag loot! If there
is anything you need, let me know!
Donna Todd
FullCircle bilingual birth services
[log in to unmask]
(613)220-7977
-----Original Message-----
From: Lactation Information and Discussion
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Christine Pillado
Sent: January 31, 2005 12:07 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: LACTNET Digest - 30 Jan 2005 to 31 Jan 2005 - Special issue
(#2005-147)
In a message dated 1/31/2005 9:26:09 A.M. Mountain Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
Secondly please please tell me how I can get involved with trying to
make
the code inforced in the United States. Why this all powerful country
can't
inforce this policy makes no sense. If we truely care about the health
of
our youngest citizens this has GOT to change. More than WIC changing ,
more
than anything else, women have to stop being bombarded with marketing
and
bad labeling at every turn. I need to know how to become involved with
those
trying to get legislation or codes or whatever passed and changed.
Unfortunately this is a much bigger mountain to climb than it may seem.
Our
society (in general) does not value children. Our society does not
value
motherhood. I have lived overseas and in all the traveling I did, I
never
feared for my children's safety the way I do just going to do errands
here in the
United States. My daughter was born in the Republic if Korea while I
was on
Active Duty. My nanny, an older Korean woman, wanted to know when the
United States celebrated Children's Day (a VERY big holiday in Korea)
and I had to
tell her that we don't even have one. What does that say about what we
value?
My friend, from Germany, asked me where mothers could take their
children
(infants) if they didn't want to keep them. Where indeed? We jail
mothers who
abandon their babies but won't allow mothers who WANT their babies to
keep
them in the same hospital room. I have walked out of more doctors
offices,
dentists office and had more arguments with hospital staff because I
would not
leave my children alone for a procedure and would not exclude my other
child
from their siblings treatment (an ultrasound...nothing traumatic). Why
is
this a fight?
I cannot stand to do in-patient consults anymore because it is too
depressing to watch hospital staff mis-informing mothers on HOW to
mother at this
crucial time by separating them from their babies, forcing formula and,
in
general not encouraging mothers to be informed and educated. This is,
of course, a
generalization as there are many health care workers who do their best
to
keep mothers and babies together and promote skin to skin and
breastfeeding but
they are in the minority. Why? Why do we thumb our noses in the face
of
evidence based medicine but continue to teach new mothers and new health
care
workers that the "old way", though not evidenced based, is the "real
way".
My sister is teaching 7th grade in Harlem and is trying desperately to
help
kids who have only known one way of life and see no point in getting an
education because there is nowhere for them to take that education.
Would these
children have been helped if their mothers' had been encouraged to
breastfeed
and supported in that effort? We know that breastfed children and
their
mothers enjoy a closer bond and those mothers make more of an effort to
stimulate
their children in appropriate ways and that those children are more
likely
to display an increased (or normal really) I.Q. later in life. This is
asking
a lot from these mothers and from our society. What should we ask for
in
order that babies are protected and their society shelters them? ( I
keep
thinking of the things I have read about cultures where the mother and
baby are
taken care of for several weeks or months after birth so they can focus
on
each other...heavenly!!)
It is a sad state of affairs. I would suggest writing to every member
of
the legislature in Texas and other states which are considering bills to
limit
the promotion of formula. In this litigious society a law is needed
just to
enforce what should be common sense and is definitely maternal
instinct.
All of us working to improve this situation in the United States need
all
the help and encouragement we can get! I am so grateful to be able to
read
LACTNET and see that there are strides being made and that we are not
alone in
our efforts!
Christie Pillado
El Paso, Texas
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