Hello all,
     As some of you may remember, the Feb. 18th article by Lenore Skenazy
entitled "Formula for Success" caused quite a few breastfeeding supporters to
respond, by phone and E-mail. The author 's follow-up article contains the
following:
   "From the vehemence of the responses that came flooding in, you'd think
I'd written, 'For best results, shake baby upside down.' In angry letters and
phone calls, readers from as far as Tennessee insisted I had no right to say
the bottle is superior to the breast. I agree with them: I don't. Happily, my
artcile didn't say that. It merely said that some mothers have a very hard
time breastfeeding. And when they do, it's nobody's business but their own if
they decide to bottle-feed instead.
  The article continues:
  What vexes me is how many people feel it is their business. I'm not talking
about moms swapping tales of what worked for them. I'm talking about
strangers demanding to know as one angry caller did the day ,my piece ran "Did
 YOU breast-feed your child?"
     She goes on to say that she was accosted and followed by a bf
support-group member who insinuated that her baby wouldn't be crying if she
wasn't supplementing with one bottle of ABM/day. She says that people who
offer moms  'all sorts of unasked-for advice.. .mean well, but they come
across as zealots''. She quotes a local MD who says that 'breastfeeding a
baby is the best way of feeding a baby' -for a variety of health reasons.
'But in cases where the mother is either unable to breast-feed or if the
mother chooses not to breast-feed, children can grow up very healthy being
bottle-fed. This is a choice that should be made in the hands of the mother
and the doctor. This is not a political issue.'
      The article goes on to say...
     "Women who struggle with breast-feeding deserve some understanding. They
do not deserve busybodies telling them them that they are unnatural,
inadequate or (most cuttingly)  bad moms.
      Why make them feel guilty when they're probably distraught as it is?
       Formula is not liquid arsenic. In fact most Americans my age grew up
on it, and here we are.
      Some of us minding our own business."

This article was entitled "Hey, mind your own breast milk" and ran Friday,
MARCH 14, 1997.
     It was distressing to find out that this writer was able to turn her
totally unbalanced 2/14 piece, using responses which attacked HER instead of
her unbalanced presentation , into her own personal crusade to protect
"distraught" moms who ended up Bottlefeeding ABM from breastfeeding support
"zealots". We  have to remember that much of what she wrote was about true,
albeit, needless suffering. Breastfeeding can hurt, sometimes horribly. My
letter in response to her piece pointed this out, and faulted the piece not
for was written but for what wasn't - the complete lack of balance, any
decent referral to help a mom avoid or overcome these problems, and the
failure to point out that pain is not how BF is meant to work, and can
usually be avoided. If referrals to avoid these "horror stories" had been
provided the article could have served a useful purpose. Why do we give
 people who perpetuate half-truths and skewed views the ammuniton to shoot
ourselves in the foot -or in this case, the breast by attacking the writer
instead of the written?
     Any one reading this follow-up will hear "zealot" 'busybodies" "Guilty"
and "distraught" ABM-feeders, and that wonderful pronouncement again
"Formula...(we) grew up on it, and here we are" instead of hearing that yes
we are here, with our heart disease, coliitis, diabetes, breast cancer, MS,
etc. People get to focus on the pain (caused or perpetuated by inadequate BF
info or support by all who pay it lip-service) instead of focusing on how
they can avoid/overcome  it and nurse comfortably.
     We have to be better messengers if we want to get the message across,
don't we? Yes, it's infuriating to see all the writing that passes for BF
fact/science. We know that some of it is BLATANTLY untrue, and some of it is
true but unbalanced, skewed by personal or cultural biases. We have to
repsond with an almost inhuman level of empathy and understanding, and it's
difficult when we know something is SO WRONG... Thank G-d we have each other!
       Judy Fram, responding as her own self, in Brooklyn, NY