Dear all:
I really have to say that I am stupefied by someone who claims that marketing of bottles
does not make a difference. I just recently gave a talk at Cornell in December and
unfortunately did not get to the bottle part --- but I did take pictures of about one third of
the bottles in Buy Buy Baby before they freaked out and so did I because, apparently, you
are not allowed to take pictures in stores. Not even Barnes and Nobles will allow you to
take pictures in their stores without filling out tons of paperwork to the head corporate
office and waiting weeks for approval.
Even before I looked at the marketing of bottles in Buy Buy Baby and other such stores, I
knew that marketing was making a huge difference in choices. The following are the
order in which the marketing seems to influence parents in my clientele
1) The most expensive bottles were being picked by parents because of the big fat
usually red star or yellow star label of BPA free. That is what really works most currently
in the Manhattan environment.
2) Of course, "clinically proven to prevent colic" was written on most bottles as well. I
looked up their claims on some of the websites that actually provided THEIR research. It
did not consist of any clinical definition of colic, merely a selected set of their own
criteria of fussiness where they compared their bottle to someone other company's bottle.
It was not by any stretch of the imagination peer-reviewed research.
3) Then there was a whole array of bottles that advertised some new gadget to reduce
gas --- which sometimes overlapped with 2) above. These included drop-in liners, valves
or filter system that supposedly reduced air, inserts that supposedly slowed the flow --
including second nipples, and flow rates.
4) Next was "shaped just like the breast". There are nipples that are squared off at the
end -- with a sharp edge, so called "orthodontic nipples" that are pinched in ways that no
woman in her right might would want her nipples to look like, what I call the cliffhanger
nipples where the base of the bottle sharply drops to a little skinny nipple and even
nipples that are surrounded by an indented donut and then the fat base. All are
advertised as just like the breast. Now, I always tell parents to ignore that and just look
at the shape and think how it might feel if a nipple where shaped the same way as
whatever it is they plan to stick in the baby's mouth. I have a particular peeve about
"orthodontic nipples which have been labeled "squash and floods" by the speech and
occupational therapists. They are very fast flow and actually distort the suck swallow
patterns and interfere with palate development. I call them "antiorthodontic".
Unfortunately, parents select "orthodontic" pacifiers because of the little ring so they can
clip it to the baby's clothes and because the "orthodontic" pacifiers are harder for a baby
to spit out or drop.
5) The final labeling that drives me nuts is the labeling of flow rates by baby's age. This
is designed to fool parents into buying more nipples and thinking that it is healthy for
their baby to "develop" into guzzling down their food faster. Now, think of all the eating
disorders we see in the United States. In watching baby's eat, I think the forced rapid
feed has a lot to do with setting up abnormal feeding patterns. But mothers will buy the
next age range of nipple for their baby because they want to think their baby is
progressing.
Over the course of the last four or five years, I've noticed that this advertising has
pushed parents to select bottles that are NOT ONLY WORSE FOR BREASTFEEDING, BUT
WORSE FOR BABIES GENERALLY. Yes, even if I were to teach all the formula feeding
mothers in Manhattan, I would still be just as pissed off at the misleading advertising.
These mothers and babies really get short shrift from a whole variety of sources to teach
them ways of feeding and choices of feeding devices that put babies at higher risk of
choking, aspirating, overfeeding, and aggravation of regurgitation to the point that it
becomes diagnosed as reflux.
Personally, I still prefer the cheapest bottle out there for most babies that may need an
alternative feeding device over the expensive brands.
Now, Lisa Sandori and Karen Gromada did an excellent study of flow rates. Its not
perfect, but very good. It didn't cover all the bottles, but it covered a lot of them. When I
looked at their analysis and separated out a graph of their "hospital" bottles and the
bottles parents buy --- a very interesting pattern emerged. The "hospital" bottles are not
purchased by hospitals according to the safest bottles for newborn infants, they are
"PROMOTIONAL MARKETING SAMPLES". Guess which bottles were on the very rapid flow
end of the spectrum? The PROMOTIONAL MARKETING SAMPLES given out by hospitals.
The ones in the stores did overlap with these promotional samples but the range was
much wider and you could find bottles with a flow that was closer to breastfeeding.
What does this tell you about the benign effect of promotional samples and marketing?
Do you really think that the companies that planted these nipples in hospitals were naive
to the impact that the rapid flow would have on breastfeeding?
Now, guess where the Medela nipples are on the spectrum of flow rates? And until
recently their nipples were the antiorthodontic squash and floods. Now some have a
slightly better shape but they are very rapid.
Furthermore, I am about to rip my hair out today because of the 11th, yes 11th woman
who has had a problem with her supply when SHE REALLY REALLY DID NEED TO PUMP
because of the marketing of the FREE-STYLE Pump as better. Time after time I am
finding that their supplies are in the toilet and immediately improve when they switch
over to an industrial grade pump. Time after time I've seen mothers with the Free-Style
pumps that have not been suctioning to specifications and the women have to send them
back to Medela. The woman today had sent the pump back so many times that she had
barely been able to pump in the first critical two weeks when her baby wasn't able to
attach to the breast. HOW CAN YOU CLAIM THAT THIS HELPS MOTHERS? It is totally
irresponsible advertising. These women had to work much harder to rebuild their supply
because of bad advertising, not because they were not fully willing and able to do the
right thing to get their babies on the breast.
The worse case was when Baby's R Us told the parents that they should send the Free
Style pump to Realbirth --- a completely independent distributor that does childbirth
education and postnatal classes for women to "FIX THE PUMP". That would be like
someone buying an expensive dress at Saks Fifth Avenue that fell apart only to be told to
take it back to Macy's to have Macy's tailor fix the dress. I have yet to meet a single
mother who can actually use those straps to pump hands free.
And what about all the PROMOTIONAL SAMPLES OF PUMP equipment in the hospital?
Those pump parts do NOT work as well as the parts that women purchase. I have also
seen women sent home with those so-called "free" pump parts that women are actually
paying for when they buy Medela products and cover Medela's marketing costs. They do
NOT work as well. Time after time I have seen how those slightly narrower openings in
the promotional breast shields cause more pain and the slightly narrower tubes cause
more pain. Then because Medela has given them those parts they have to buy another
whole set of parts when they come home including the tube because by then they have
purchased a Medela pump or rented one. Had their not been a "MONOPOLY" of
"PROMOTIONAL SAMPLES" from one SINGLE company they would have had the
opportunity of choice of selecting the most functional means of expressing milk that
worked for them, rather than being sent down a path of having to replace inferior
equipment designed to promote a product.
Monopolies are not good for development of better equipment. They are especially bad
when it comes to health care.
I am completely fed up today with bad advertising and having to mop up after the
consequences of bad advertising.
Sincerely,
Susan E. Burger
PS. One store that sells Medela products in Manhattan actually told the rep to her face
what she thought about the bottle nipples in a way that I can't repeat on Lactnet. While I
would not have chosen that word, I have to agree with the sentiment.
Oh -- the new advertising that is really killing me on bottles is that they are somehow
"green". Some of these bottles are really rock bottom in the feeding department and I
fail to understand how any bottle can be labeled "green".
***********************************************
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