Kathy wrote:

<Yet moms think that pumping and bottle feeding is so easy! Until they
actually do it. Another myth propagated by formula companies???>

I think that "myth", which it sometimes is, and other times isn't, is
probably propogated more by slick advertising of pump companies rather
than advertising by formula companies. I don't see the formula companies
wanting to touch that one with a ten foot pole, unless they are "talking out
of both sides ot their mouth" by also trying to profit from selling their
own brand of who-knows-how-well-engineered breast pumps. If a mom is going
to go so far as to feed something out of a bottle, I think the formula
companies are much more invested in persuading her that their product is so
super-duper that it's right up there nearly next to equal to breast milk,
and maybe even "more convenient" in many ways.

It is amazing how different women, perhaps of different ages and educations,
but particularly personal family cultures, will come to the same class, or
perhaps read the same literature, etc. and extract their own particular spin
to place on their personal plan. So many young women, both WIC and non-WIC
moms, are so surrounded with the bottle feeding and formula feeding cullture
that they seem to think their nipples somehow have hollow interiors like
rubber nipples do, to hold milk and stick straight into the baby's mouth,
expect getting breast milk will be somewhat like turning on a faucet, as if
a pump is going to suck milk out just like a straw lets them suck up their
soft drink, and so at the first signs of difficulty, exacerbated by excess
swelling, sleep deprivation and skewed advice from ill-informed and
inexperienced relatives, just assume they can get "the best" of both worlds
by getting whatever department store or toy company/formula company pump
fits their budget, or highest quality one that someone is willing to give
them for a baby gift, take the milk out, put it in the bottle and they or
some other family member can "put" it into their baby they way they are
familiar with, perhaps while they can be somewhere else doing something else
at the same time! It's amazing the personal myths that so many women can
extrapolate from what they hear from various sources, and then when it
doesn't work out in real life, blame it on "breastfeeding"!

I like the suggestions that our education of parents needs to be broad
enough to present some wider parenting and relational ideas that go beyond
"calories", "nutrition", "satisfied and full and ready to sleep for a few
hours", and carefully explain that the process of bottle feeding, whatever
is in the bottle, is very different from the process of breastfeeding, for
mother as well as baby, and this is over and above the differences in
artificially manufactured milks compared to a mother's very own individually
formulated human milk. I think parenting exists first in the imagination,
and by young people copying what they have mostly been exposed to from their
surroundings. So our challenge is to "imagine where they are coming from"
and have a positive effect in what their imaginations get exposed to when we
have the chance to interact with them!

Jean
*****************
K. Jean Cotterman RNC, IBCLC
Dayton, OH USA

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html