> Once again, the topic of "but what shall we _call_ them? They're not > like us!" comes up on this list. While the distinction is important if > (and only if) you are the lactation consultant for this woman, is it > really important to you to distance these mums by forcing a different > label? Women who are compelled to express milk for babies who cannot > nurse usually feel quite abnormal enough already, without being > linguistically ostracised from the community of breastfeeding mothers > as well. > Without in any way meaning to insult or distance mothers who are pumping/expressing milk for their babies, I do think the distinction can be important for more than just the lactation consultant helping a particular woman. For example, I think there are several areas related to this that would benefit from further research. Just as one example - we know that breastfed babies are less likely to become obese children. One researcher I spoke to thought this might have something to do with the changing composition of breastmilk throughout the feeding, which allows the baby to (to a certain extent) "customize" the amount of fat intake he or she receives, adjusting it to meet the current rate of growth. It would be interesting to know if obesity rates are different for babies who are bottlefed human milk, which would help us understand this process better. We also have research that shows that breastfeeding mothers who sleep with their babies lie with them in a "safer" position than bottlefeeding mothers. It would be interesting to know if mothers bottlefeeding their babies human milk also tend to sleep in that safer position, or if they sleep more like mothers bottlefeeding formula. Knowing the answer to this might help us be more specific in giving advice to mothers about sleeping with their babies. Can we not acknowledge that there may well be some differences - perhaps important ones, perhaps only minor ones - between breastfeeding at the breast, and feeding the baby with expressed milk using a bottle or some other feeding device? If we treat the two as identical, in our language and in our research, we may not learn about any differences and or be able to devise strategies that might help us minimize them. It is certainly true that some babies are not able to "breastfeed at the breast" and I regret that the mothers of these babies feel distant from other breastfeeding mothers. But there are also other women and babies who could breastfeed where the mothers choose not to, and they make that choice because they believe the two options are equivalent, when they may not be. Certainly this is a better choice than giving formula. But we need more research to see what differences may exist. Teresa Pitman Guelph, Ontario *********************************************** 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