Glad Jack raised these issues.

Nucleotides and LCPs and whatever else the ABM people are putting into
formula (I'm told they are working on antibodies now....) are experiments.
They are experiments with babies' health, and scientifically-speaking, not
very good experiments,  either. They are also marketing experiments, too -
of course.

Adding an ingredient to ABM doesn't make it 'work' like the 'same'
ingredient in breast milk which is a totally different fluid. How can it
work in the same way ????? Also, the nucleotides are bovine (I think I'm
right there), and the LCPs are from chicks (heck,  not even a mammal...) .
So how can we make any assumptions about the benefit of this, er, stuff
(choosing my words here) , to little humans?

And those shields....yes,  since reading  more about them and reading the
discussions on Lactnet, I have a slightly more relaxed attitude to them
than before - in the right hands they could be useful. In the wrong hands
they are positively dangerous. Our local hospital has at last banned them
(in theory), but they still manage to find them on occasions lurking in a
drawer.

Mothers in the UK are only in hospital for 2 days on average after delivery
- this is too soon, IMHO, to bring out a nipple shield except in the most
extreme circumstances, because there just hasn't been time, in those 2
days, for the baby and mother to be together, to learn together, to have
plenty of skin to skin contact, to allow bf to arise beautifully and
naturally as two human beings adapt to one another.  Where shields are used
in the UK, there is a tendency for people who don't know enough about bf
to bring them out like a magic wand, *instead of*  facilitating bf through
support, encouragement, skin-to-skin etc.  Then the problems emerge a few
weeks later or sooner, when the mother is away from the care and
observation of the person who gave her the shield in the first place.

Ooops, this got long....


Heather Welford Neil

NCT bfc UK