Dear Friends:
How do you get to be an adult woman, reporter for a national newspaper, and
not know that formula feeding increases the health risks to babies??
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Teresa is amazed at the level of ignorance about the economic and health
impact of breastfeeding. I am glad that the reporter met Teresa!!
I don't know about Canada; in the US this information is being kept from the
public. Do a google search for "HHS Toned down breast-feeding ads" and
click on the link to an excellent article about how the AAP and the formula
industry's cabal with the current Adminstration gutted an excellent advertising
campaign designed to inform the public of the health risks associated with
formula use.
Chris Mulford has just had a lovely article published in the International
Breastfeeding Journal; in it, she doubts if the new WHO growth charts will
ever be used by US pediatricians. At the last LLL International Conference in
Chicago in 2007, the speaker from the WHO said that the new growth charts,
based on the growth of the exclusively breastfed normal baby, were at that time
embargoed in the US. (By the way, the IBJ has just published a number of
articles from a conference on breastfeeding and feminism spearheaded by Dr.
Miriam Labbok. This journal is free on-line.)
Can't have people learning that formula contributes to obesity, chronic
disease and death now, can we? Folks might not buy the stuff. And in the US, the
financial health of the stockholders is more important than the health of the
community. Some believe that the WHO Code is in restraint of trade.
As a nation, the US is still battling the notion that breastfeeding outside
the home is okay. Breasts are to sell beer, and cars, and viewed as fashion
accessories. Can't have babies using them, now, can we?
As a nurse since 1971, I was taught (and believed and worked with the
intention) that breastfeeding and formula feeding should be presented as equivalent
choices. Can't have mothers "feeling guilty" now, can we?
Thank goodness for Gabrielle Palmer's book, The Politics of Breastfeeding,
that slapped me awake.
There are plenty of healthcare workers, including IBCLCs, that see the
formula discharge bags as essential gifts to new mothers "just in case", and who
believe that newborns have to have a little formula "because the mother's milk
isn't in yet" or "the blood sugar is low". Healthcare workers are generally
ignorant of donor human milk; a common reaction to learning about donor milk
is a shudder "eeuww", and I have to do what Lois Arnold PhD does, and talk
people through the processing and tell them that donor human milk is the
safest substance one person can receive from another.
This reporter is no different to most folks. We haven't reached the 100th
monkey yet. However, during this week of celebration of WBW, it is time to enjoy
how far we have come!
warmly,
Nikki Lee RN, BSN, Mother of 2, MS, IBCLC, CCE, CIMI
craniosacral therapy practitioner
_www.myspace.com/adonicalee
In a message dated 8/6/2008 11:36:15 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
_ (http://www.myspace.com/adonicaleeIn a message dated 8/6/2008 11:36:15 P.M.
Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes:How do you get to
be an adult woman, reporter for a national newspaper, and not know that
formula feeding increases the health risks to babies??)
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