Hello All,

I was wondering if anyone else out there has read the November issue of American
Baby, the Visit With A Pediatrician article.  It was the worst article I have
ever read in that magazine.  The topic was vitamins for babies and this
pediatrican trashed breast milk no end.  He states that BM has no vitamin D and
therefore breastfed babies needs a supplement starting at birth.  Didn't we
discover years ago that it was a water soluable vitamin in BM and so at first
drs. wrongly believed vitamin D was lacking!!!  Then he begins talking about
iron, and that all breastfed babies will be iron deficient by 4 or 5 months of
age!   His reasoning for the importance of iron was a case he had a few years
ago of a 14 month old who was severly anemic who had cow's milk at 2 months (no
ABM) and no iron supplements, how does this relate to breastfeeding?  He also
stated that strick vegetarians would have BM deficient in B-vitamins.  The only
case of that I ever heard of was from the book Eat Well, Lose Weight While
Breastfeeding, the author is a RD who say it once in a woman who had been
deficient in B-12 for years before pregnancy.  But of course, he goes on to say,
a baby getting ABM would not need any vitamin supplements (unless you happen to
use low-iron ABM).   The whole feel of this article was if you breastfeed, your
baby will miss out on important nutrition.  I was so angry that I wrote an angry
letter to the editor, stating how I usually like their magazine (I get free
issues since I teach childbirth classes).    I stated that his information was
very outdated and that this article wasn't up to it's usual standards.  I was
wondering if anyone else read this article and if anyone else felt like writing
a letter to the editor, since I am just a lowly letter reader.

As for frozen milk, my son had frozen breast milk every Monday for over 6 months
and never had any problem, so I don't think that freezing the milk would make it
intolerable for her baby.  May be it is over feeding?  Since she states that the
frozen milk is used when she runs "low", that maybe the sitter is taking a fussy
period to mean hunger and over feeding the baby, thus making her "throw up"?

Just my .02 worth.

Felicia Henry, AAHCC & LLLL