On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 5:08 AM, Nikki Lee <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Infants never choose formula. Baby's choice is always the breast.


Actually, this is not true. Many of us have spent considerable amount of
time helping women whose babies have chosen the bottle over the breast, and
some who, in fact, have had more problems even drinking expressed breast
milk than formula.  We try to help them because we know that being at the
breast is where they belong whether they are happy there at the moment or
not and that human milk is what they should be drinking.  As long as the
mom wants to keep trying, we stay there with her.

There are many bad choices out there for men, women and children as far as
public health is concerned - foods on the shelves of any supermarket that I
would consider as or even more dangerous than formula as far as
contributing to the development of diabetes and obesity as well as other
chronic health conditions. The marketing of these "foods" also continues
unabated. Do we ban or regulate all of them?  That would probably be a boon
to public health, but is also probably not possible in a free society.

My personal experience is that my children were exclusively breastfed,
nursed for five years each, ate a pretty nutritious diet and were lean and
mean throughout their childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. They are
both now, however, quite overweight. They were both attachment
parented/family bed - very independent and well-adjusted until adulthood,
both now have rather significant problems with anxiety.

Does this mean that I think I made a mistake by choosing to breastfeed and
AP? Absolutely not. Do I find it strange that children that were
formula-fed, made to sleep alone in a bed, spanked and fed cocoa puffs and
hot dogs become high functioning, skinny adults? No, I don't. I understand
that these issues are multifaceted and intertwined with many other
factors.  I do think that the American government should be abiding by the
Code and that would help, at least, at the beginning - formula would not be
unavailable, but it would be regulated. The chances of that happening in
the strongly capitalist USA?  I would say zero. But we do what we can.

The fact is, I think that we all believe in free choice and the right of
parents to make choices for their children. As professionals in the
lactation field, we have an obligation to keep an eye on the research so
that we can explain it to our clients when they ask questions and also so
that we can see where things are going and are not caught by surprise by
some new development in the area of infant nutrition. We meet parents
wherever they are in their journey and provide them with the information to
help them to make informed choices. We cannot promise any particular
outcome, we can just explain what the research points to as a probable
outcome. And I come back to the emotional part of this which is so
important. The fact is that some women will fall in love with breastfeeding
and will fight for it no matter what, even sometimes beyond what is
sensible. Others will never fall in love with it, but understand its
importance and will do whatever is necessary to give their children the
best start in life. And then others really need to be convinced there is
any value at all. We can do things to help all of these groups and to
increase the rates of initiation and continuation of breastfeeding. But the
strategies may be different in each case.

Sharon Knorr, IBCLC, Colorado

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