I certainly agree - - would like to see a formal follow-up to this re: formal letters to the editor of the journal, and more studies.  But when we see how responsive breastfeeding mothers typically are to their babies and children, I'm happy to see the correlation between this maternal responsiveness and higher IQ in their babies, as compared to bottle-fed babies with lower IQs.    I wonder if they considered including any mothers in the study who exclusively bottle-fed their babies with solely their own human milk, or if any mothers were doing partial or mixed feeding with expressed milk and artificial infant milk, or if the researchers confirmed that it was only formula being given to their bottle-feeding sample.    

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140226155645.htm

http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(13)01243-2/abstract

It is sobering to observe many families who very heavily rely on repeated pacifier placement in the baby's mouth, until the pacifier can no longer keep the baby from crying, as if repeatedly placing the pacifier in the baby's mouth is to say, "No, I do not want to interact with you" over and over again, throughout the day and night long, often not even looking the baby in the eyes as the pacifier is being placed yet again in the baby's mouth.  If the mother isn't placing the pacifier in the baby's mouth for the moment, then the rest of the family appears compelled to do so.  

My dear 83-year-old mother was breastfed for six months in 1927, and her two brothers were breastfed as well (both my maternal and paternal grandmothers nursed their children for six months in the same region of West Virginia - - it was also customary to then bind the breasts).  By the time my mother had her firstborn (me), she didn't think about breastfeeding, didn't know any colleagues who had breastfed or who were breastfeeding (my mother is a retired public school teacher in elementary education), and her two sisters-in-law didn't breastfeed (although the animals on the family farm in West Virginia nursed their young, with rarest exception).   After a prolonged labor and birth with "twilight sleep," my mother stayed at home with me for my first year, experiencing severe postpartum depression so severe that she was afraid she would hurt me.  My paternal grandmother came two blocks down the street to our house every day for my first year to care for me.   I can recall watching my mother prepare homemade formula for my youngest sister in 1961, simmering a mixture on the kitchen stove of Carnation Evaporated Milk, Karo syrup, and water, per the family doctor's recipe.  I never saw a pacifier in the town of Reedsville, West Virginia while I was growing up, and my mother corroborates this, saying, "No - - no pacifiers back then.  No one was using them."  (West Virginia is historically a very poor state as far as American poverty is concerned, so what family would have spent money on a pacifier back then anyway?) When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I recall being surprised when asked about whether I would be giving my baby a pacifier.  Hadn't thought about it, and didn't use one with either of my daughters.  When the subject comes up with new parents I'm working with today, due to the baby overcoming latch difficulties following the use of an artificial nipple, I gently suggest to parents to consider pacifiers "just for emergencies," such as being stuck in a large city's rush hour traffic and not yet reaching an exit in order to pull off the road to nurse the baby - - perhaps a pacifier might calm a baby for part of that time.  "Since we're not in a large city here, there isn't that kind of emergency," saying this with gentle humor.  (Having spent 12 recent years in Washington, D.C.'s traffic and the tremendous traffic congestion in metro Maryland and Northern Virginia, this is what I mean by being stuck in traffic.)    

I was the first in my family to breastfeed her baby since my grandmothers, and my mother was supportive.  My sisters also breastfed their children, and our grandchildren have all been breastfed.  I had been enchanted during childhood and adolescence when observing farm animals nursing, and was further enchanted by the family dog nursing her pups and my cat nursing her kittens, spending many an hour just watching them learn to latch and improve their feeding skills with the repetition of practice (a lactation consultant in the making).     

Debra Swank, RN BSN IBCLC
Ocala, FL USA

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