Andrea, the fact is that many nurses and other professionals base their
ideas and patient information on their own personal situations and
biases.  It is appalling when a manager in this situation would ignore the
evidence, and extrapolate that there would be no ill effects from formula.
How very sad and ignorant.

That is because breastfeeding  and its related issues transcend all areas
including our own prejudices, social beliefs, and personal ethics.  If we
promote something that we ourselves did not or could not do, it makes us
wrong and deficient. We hate to admit our own deficiencies. So, many just
look the other way and learn nothing new and do nothing about
breastfeeding. It is different than the car seat issue, and different from
the smoking-around-babies issue...somehow. Hits people where they live.

Nurses, also, are not taught (at least not at the very good school I went
to) that much about evidence, studies, interpreting information, etc. More
emphasis was placed on making proper bed/hospital corners than on reading
research and questioning.  We certainly were not taught to question
anything or anyone with higher credentials than we had, and we were half
nurses and half cleaning ladies, as far as I can recall, at least where I
worked. This is not to say that this is the situation everywhere. It was my
experience only...so save the flames.  Many times, it is a shark eating
their young situation.

When making others guilty, or making others aware of their deficiencies is
used to protect others from current information.....it's a case of
"Houston, we have a problem."

The ethics committee of your hospital would and should be interested in
this. It takes guts and stamina to report this...but it's worth doing.
Maybe now I'll pull out all my GUILT notes and repeat them.

Kathleen

At 02:28 PM 1/15/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>Another point I had made in the poster was formula disturbs the gut flora
>and ph.  I said this DOES happen, it's not a "might" happen thing.  The
>manager that was "talking" to me said "My baby got formula right from the
>start and she suffered no ill effects."  I wanted to say "My mother smokes
>and hasn't died from cancer, so according to your logic I can go around
>saying it's okay to smoke?"
>
>I was "allowed" to reword it so it wasn't so offensive and inflammatory.  I
>had to take out "based on facts", because supposedly everything could be
>challenged.
>
>I thought to myself, are we so afraid of the truth?  If so, what are we
>afraid will happen.
>
>What's really discouraging, my hospital is considered one of the best in our
>area in terms of support for breastfeeding.
>
>It was a sad, sad day.
>
>-Andrea

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

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(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html