Here is how a REAL newspaper presented the findings of the study about
feeding and temperament.  Magda Sachs alerted me to it on Wednesday so
I wasn't blindsided when the Norwegian press picked it up, where the
national broadcasting company presented it with a picture of a baby
breastfeeding and huge headline: THESE BABIES CRY MORE. The text was
less objectionable than the headline but that doesn't help, the damage
is done already.  Ugh. I 've studiously avoided the tabloids, not
feeling up to it.  But the Guardian has the best article I've seen so
far:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/10/breastfeeding-babies-temperamental-study
I did find the comment by the Royal College of Midwives person
baffling to the point of being devoid of meaning:
""It cannot be presumed that physical signalling by the baby
automatically means it is hungry; other evidence suggests that babies
engage in sucking behaviour called non-nutritive sucking.
The evidence needs to be seen in a greater context before we start to
draw conclusions on this research and we should continue to do all we
can to promote and increase the rates of breastfeeding."
Perhaps she expanded on what on earth she was trying to get across
with this remark and it got cut out of the final version of the story.
 I can't imagine how a parent would be better equipped to respond to
the baby's signals after reading it.

My own thoughts were that since the data on which the conclusions are
based were reported by the mothers in a questionnaire, and no one
seems to have actually monitored the babies to see how much they cried
or how much effort it took to settle them, perhaps the differences
reflect a more nuanced view of the children by the breastfeeding
mothers, i.e., they were more sensitive to their babies' signals and
so reported more of them occurring.  There's an awful lot of bias in
the eye of the beholder.  But I haven't read the actual article on
which the media reports are based, perhaps there were some
quasi-objective ways of measuring the infant behavior after all.

GREAT comments to the reporter, in the ABC on line article, Susan, and
how gratifying that they published them!

Another

And it's ages until World BF Week.  Can hardly wait to see what story
explodes on the eve of that this year.


Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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