Tricia Shamblin asks whether BFHI requirements would affect whether
hospital staff can give breastfeeding info from Medela or Ameda, and goes
on to say ' it's really hard to explain why we can't use info from
breastfeeding friendly companies.'  One of the BFHI requirements is that
the institution itself abide by the WHO Code, which among other things
means no advertising that idealizes bottle feeding nor that promotes
artificial feeding. Marketing of feeding bottles and teats is specifically
banned. Marketing of pumps is not mentioned, because the Code predates the
rise of the aggressive marketing of equipment to aid breastmilk feeding.
The BFHI requirement to provide mothers with information about where they
can find help to continue breastfeeding raises the question of what sources
are appropriate and what sources most certainly are not.

When I find a breastfeeding-friendly company that prepares information of
ANY kind, not just on breastfeeding, aimed at new mothers, I may have to
face this dilemma myself.  Caveat: I have not scrutinized the Ameda website
to the degree that I have done so for Medela, because Ameda are not
actively marketing themselves to HCPs, to maternity institutions, or to new
mothers here in Norway, while Medela is extremely active in all those
areas.  I find the so-called information on breastfeeding on Medela's
website to be incomplete, misleading, disempowering, and clearly not aimed
at supporting mothers to breastfeed, but to buy products from Medela. And
why on earth would any company whose bottom line is directly related to how
many women at any given time are having difficulties with breastfeeding,
provide information that would reduce their own profits? They are in
business to make money, after all, with obligations to their shareholders
that take precedence over all else. Their products can be fabulous for the
purpose, but women should never be shortchanged by having to rely on the
manufacturers for information on infant feeding of any kind, nor should
we expect businesses to work against their own self-interests in order to
fill a gap caused by neglect on the part of public health authorities.

It cannot be coincidental that the Medela website, last I looked, did not
have one single image of a baby breastfeeding, nor that the images of
supposedly breastfeeding babies on all manner of items sold to new parents
by the plethora of companies targeting this group generally show babies who
can't possibly be feeding without causing their mothers pain and
compromising their own milk intake.

I have yet to find any useful information on the Medela website that is not
available in better form from some charitable organization or public health
authority without conflicts of interest, so I refer mothers to such
sources, and advise them to ask themselves 'who profits from this?'
when they find information on how to breastfeed from companies professing
to sell 'breastfeeding supplies' or 'equipment', or companies in the
business of selling foods that replace breastfeeding in the diets of
infants and young children. It's just Free Market Economics 101.

Rachel Myr
hard-boiled staff midwife in a non-Baby-Friendly institution in a
purportedly breastfeeeding culture, lifetime charter member of a
WABA-affiliated mother-to-mother breastfeeding support organization, and
battle-scarred survivor of the nineteen-sixties and -seventies
Kristiansand, Norway

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