“Those women were mostly the die hards and the lucky. Now we are scrambling for strategies to use with those who are not about ready to be "die hards" and those who are not so lucky and have conditions that have been neglected for several generations that we should have been working on to solve. The problem is the in the immediacy of no "ideal" fix for a population that adopted highly artificial feeding modes and is in transition back to more normal feeding. Until theproblem of making it exclusive breastfeeding to six months is solved, we have the ongoing problem of…”
 
Susan has a big vision of health and breastfeeding which I, and I’m sure most of the people on this list share. But in the meantime what to do?  Human milk feeding.  With deep respect to the women who have worked tirelessly to build milk banks, to whom I am truly grateful…I believe we as lactation professionals and as women and mothers need to rethink the paradigm. Milk banks dispense milk with a prescription or hospital purchase order.  Why?  Human milk is a food not a medicine. Insurance companies use that fact against us when they deny claims. Why should we as leaders of communities of women continue to be beholden to the formula industry or even medicine as an institution (I am not referring to individual practitioners) when if you take a look they are no particular friends of ours (childbearing, lactating women and our babies). Of course I fully appreciate the liability issue, no one wants to be responsible for harming a baby…but should that prevent us from raising the issue and exploring the possibilities? Why are we so quick to marginalize milk sharing?  It is possible that we have the technology to make it safe, affordable and feasible.  We all stand here slightly horrified as for profit companies step into the void (Medela, Prolacta).  Is that what we want to see happen on our watch? A for profit company come in and take control of human milk feeding, jockey for position, lobby for regulations that serve their interests? Because that is next. Money is a very powerful motivator.  We in the US are watching as our institutions are crumbling.  Now is the time to rethink some of our assumptions. We as female human beings are in possession of an abundant, renewable and tremendously valuable resource...
Listen, I totally get that this is radical and annoying and there’s little demand for this, but there will be and we should at least be talking about it. Flame me all you want, ladies, I’m going to China : )
Kristen Panzer, MS IBCLC
 
 
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