Diane Herforth writes:

>I have what I call a curse but have now found it a blessing.  Every time I make
>a statement , "I will NEVER", "I don't know HOW PEOPLE CAN", "MY CHILD WILL
>NEVER", I have a child who would show me that life is full of individuals and
>must be treated as such.
>>SIDS and others:  I have a good friend who was a LLLL and did everything right
>with her children.  Her bigger healthier twin died of SIDS at 4 months.
She was >talking about solids but had not started them.  I was glad she
hadn't because she would have blamed the solids.
>Diabetes:  Another one of this same friends children developed diabetes at age
>12.  She had been breastfed for 2.5 years.

I was concerned by the claim that people who promote breastfeeding imply
that children will never have any problems if they are breastfed.  I don't
know anyone who claims this.  Of course people are individuals, and will
have different experiences, but there are still epidemiological patterns of
disease that differ between breastfed and bottle-fed children, and one can
increase the RISK of many many diseases/conditions by bottle-feeding.  I
append a post I sent to parent-l this summer about epidemiological vs.
anecdotal thinking.


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Yet more from Dr. Dettwyler:

 Re the comments about "Well my kid was bottle-fed and he's perfectly
healthy"  --  you need to start thinking epidemiologically rather than
anecdotally.  Yes, of course, many many bottle-feeding kids will be fine,
and many many breastfeeding kids will be sick.  It's the overall frequency
of these diseases, or relative risk, that matters.  A good analogy is to
look at how teenagers talk about drinking and driving:  "Well, I drove drunk
last Saturday night and I didn't get killed."  Or "My friend was killed by
someone who ran a stop sign and that driver wasn't drunk."  Yes, yes, of
course, people drive drunk all the time and don't get in accidents, and many
people are killed by drivers who weren't drunk.  Nevertheless, it is still
the case that if you drive drunk you are MORE LIKELY to have an accident
than if you drive sober, and that a high proportion of fatal car accidents
involve drunk drivers (more than the frequency of drunk drivers on the road
would suggest if being drunk had no effect on driving ability).  And of
course many people survive car crashes even if they don't wear their seat
belts and a few people die because they couldn't get their seat belts undone
after an accident, nevertheless the odds are that you are much safer wearing
your seat belt.  I've worn my seat belt for more than 25 years, every time I
get in the car, and I've never been in an accident at all, but that doesn't
mean I'm going to stop wearing my seat belt.  If an adult doesn't want to
wear his/her seat belt and dies in a car crash, I won't feel too bad about
it, but if a child dies in a car crash because it was not restrained in a
safety seat, that makes me angry on the child's behalf, and most people
would say the parents SHOULD feel guilty.  It is the same with infant
feeding choices -- we are making choices that affect our children's lifelong
health.  Ditto for smoking.  If you want to smoke, be my guest (outside,
please), but it makes me angry to see parents puffing away in their infant's
face.  If you want to get passing-out drunk, or high on cocaine, it bothers
me not as long as you don't get in your car and drive.  But if you do it
while pregnant, I think that's reprehensible.

There are no 100% guarantees in life (except death and taxes) -- but there
certainly are regular patterns we can discern in the epidemiological
evidence.  Breastfeeding is not a 100% guarantee your child won't die of
SIDS, won't get diabetes, won't have allergies -- but your children will
have a much lower risk of these and other illnesses.  If it happens to you,
it happens 100%, and we need to take care that we *don't* promise parents
that their children will never get sick if breastfed.  My 4.5 year old is
still nursing and has strep throat, as I write.  The facts remain that
breastfeeding gives you a lower risk, and bottle-feeding a higher risk, for
many many diseases/conditions.