This is long and possibly borderline off topic, be forewarned.

Earlier this year I sent some letters to a manufacturer of baby intercoms
and other apparati most of us would find a waste of space and money.  They
advertise in a free magazine which hospitals here hand out to new mothers.
The full page advert showed a baby sleeping prone, and the various products
were in small balloons over the photo of the baby.  The advert was placed
beside a piece on how to deal with baby's sleep habits if they clash with
yours, which advised a separate room for the baby as soon as possible.

I took it up with the editor and with the advertiser.  The advertiser's
website went even farther and had what I found to be offensive animated
cartoons showing the products in use, including a cartoon for a bottle
warmer that was truly awful.

Last week I revisited the website and the advert in question has been
changed so the baby is sleeping supine now.  I clicked my way in to the
animated bits, and the intercom cartoon now shows the baby's crib in the
same room as the parents' bed, but baby can't manage to rouse the parents by
waving, calling and bouncing up and down.  Finally the baby uses the
intercom and the parents wake up.  No bottles are shown in this cartoon.

Before, it showed a baby 'playing' in a room alone, calling on the intercom,
and then a disembodied arm reaching out with a bottle for the baby.

I doubt these changes would have happened if not for my very persistent and
constructive complaints.  I emphasized the negative effect on breastfeeding,
a major factor in infant and child health, of using the devices advertised.
The editor protested that he couldn't dictate what the advertisers could put
in their ads.  I pointed out that since there is a HUGE government campaign
to reduce SIDS deaths by placing babies on their backs from birth, it isn't
unreasonable for the magazine to give the advertiser a heads-up on this.
They even have a small item in the magazine about the back-to-sleep
campaign.

The editor is also someone I know socially, and a genuinely nice person, and
we agree to disagree on things like this.  All in all it's been interesting,
and I am glad to see the baby now in a safer sleeping position.  Now, I just
wonder why you need the intercom if the baby is in your room?  I guess they
are hoping that mothers in the throes of BF fog will not ask that question!

Rachel Myr
looking for something optimistic on a very grim evening, while bombs are
falling on Afghanistan
Norway

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html