Hi, all. When I first started reading Jon's post, I thought it a
brilliant idea, then as I read further, I started getting
uncomfortable. In Israel, women are given a significant cash
"reward" from the government for delivering their babies in a
hospital. Of course, it is expected that they take the $$ and use
it to buy stuff for the baby. Bedouin mothers of course also
receive the "reward". It has given me so much pain in recent
years to see how more and more Bedouin have turned to bottle-
feeding, with disasterous results, purely as a result of
delivering in an Israeli hospital where bottle-feeding is so
prevalent. Getting women to deliver in a hospital I am sure saved
many lives once upon a time, and the original idea was a good one
with a noble purpose. However, I have a bad feeling that many
Bedouin infant lives saved in the perinatum or postpartum may be
lost within the first months of life, when these babies are not
being breastfed and are dying of malnutrition, gastroenteritis
and so on. It's really, really hard for me to respect a mother's
"right of choice of infant feeding method" when you see a young
Bedouin woman giving a bottle to her infant while waiting for the
hospital staff to examine it. Judy Knopf in Beer Sheva, Israel,
in a lousy mood unable to shake this lousy virus