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johnny77
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31 Jul 2012, 10:54 pm

Have you hear the latest from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and state officials are pushing government dictatorship again. The state initiative coincides with Bloomberg's call for hospitals to lock away their baby formula and have nurses encourage new mothers to breastfeed. Or make them feel like criminals if they cant breast feed, what do hospital lock up? Only thing they consider dangerous. The real reason for this NY all ready has the highest Medicaid cost in the nation, Obama care will add more to it. However not being forth right with why"cowards" We will traumatize young women who cant wont or shouldn't breast feed. If you want to see this cause back lash just say if your on NY assistance we will no longer provide formula. Same effect different wording and twenty times the out cry about injustice.



AngelRho
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01 Aug 2012, 7:02 am

johnny77 wrote:
Have you hear the latest from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and state officials are pushing government dictatorship again. The state initiative coincides with Bloomberg's call for hospitals to lock away their baby formula and have nurses encourage new mothers to breastfeed. Or make them feel like criminals if they cant breast feed, what do hospital lock up? Only thing they consider dangerous. The real reason for this NY all ready has the highest Medicaid cost in the nation, Obama care will add more to it. However not being forth right with why"cowards" We will traumatize young women who cant wont or shouldn't breast feed. If you want to see this cause back lash just say if your on NY assistance we will no longer provide formula. Same effect different wording and twenty times the out cry about injustice.

OK, but it's extremely rare for women to be unable to breastfeed, though. There is a lot of ignorance out there when it comes to breastfeeding, and it's all based on antiquated medical practices.

This is especially true in Mississippi where I live. Neonatal nurses will automatically assume you're going to bottle-feed EVEN IF you specifically tell them repeatedly NO. A baby's digestive tract doesn't just come out of the womb knowing what to do with food. Formula is much more complex and stressful on the digestive system than breast milk. If you start bottle feeding right after birth, it's going to be extremely difficult to start breastfeeding, not to mention that so much of the formula goes straight through the baby and is therefore wasted in excessively poopy diapers. It's painful for the baby. There is increased risk of diaper rash, urinary tract infections, and chronic ear infections when the baby spits formula up. Formula is also EXPENSIVE.

Breastfeeding has been taboo for a couple generations, so it is something that now has to be learned. New-mommy-boobs don't just miraculously pop up and start squirting milk. Newborns can survive on their own body fat for a day or two while the milk comes in, so there's no reason for a new mommy to panic if the boobs don't seem to work for a couple of days. Colostrum will sustain a newborn because the newborn (and GI) is so tiny. After about 2-3 days, the milk REALLY comes in and breastfeeding will start to become routine. But it won't happen if regular attempts at breastfeeding aren't being made. You really have to be determined to do it or it won't happen. And if nurses come by and give the baby a bottle because they just want you to rest or because the baby is screaming, this is going to severely negatively impact the outcome of breastfeeding.

Perhaps Bloomberg is going to extremes, but from what I've seen it might be necessary to go to extremes to effect a change of thought in regards to breastfeeding. More nurses need to be educated on lactation--in fact, I think all neonatal nurses should be required to obtain some kind of certification as lactation consultants before they're even allowed on the floor. Women who want to breastfeed need their wishes to be respected--it's practically impossible to breastfeed a baby that's just been formula-fed, and painful if this happens about the same time the milk comes in. Now, sure, a woman could just pump. But pumping doesn't encourage letdown as much as a baby's cry or a baby's sucking and holding a baby close.

Maybe it's wrong for hospitals to keep formula locked away from the mothers--because there are legit reasons why some mothers cannot breastfeed, uncommon though it may be. But they CERTAINLY do need to lock the formula away from their nurses.

It's the benefit to both mother and baby that is in view here, btw. I haven't even got started on economics besides a passing comment on how EXPENSIVE formula is. More often than not it is completely unnecessary. Since formula doesn't digest as well as breast milk, you have a FEW dirty diapers A DAY. Disposable diapers are also EXPENSIVE. When our youngest hit the 3-month mark, my wife and I panicked because the poopy diapers suddenly stopped---for DAYS. We didn't know what to do, because our older two were formula-fed and it seemed some days we were swimming in sh!t. It turns out babies only poop once or twice a week. Breast milk digests FAST and much more efficiently than formula, therefore fewer components are left in the system and thus take longer to eliminate. It's perfectly normal, too. So I change, I dunno, MAYBE 4 diapers a day just to keep him dry. He'll make me a little present during his weekly blowout around Monday or Tuesday.

Breastfed babies are just healthier babies. If you knock out the cost of health care for breastfed babies, the cost of EXPENSIVE formula, and reduce the number of diapers you use (or use a cloth diaper service if you live in an urban area), you can drastically reduce the amount of money you spend. If we're talking about public assistance here, if more women on welfare CAN breastfeed, it saves money--possibly millions of dollars in a place like NYC alone, I'm guessing--then more welfare money can be allocated for genuine needs rather than unnecessary waste (no pun intended).



YippySkippy
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01 Aug 2012, 9:21 am

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OK, but it's extremely rare for women to be unable to breastfeed, though.


Not so. I was completely dry after my second was born. The lactation specialist at the hospital said "It's okay if they don't get anything to eat for a couple of days." This while my six-pound newborn was screaming for food. So yes, I gave her formula. Some of those lactation experts are Breast Nazis. Even the nurse in the room was looking at her like she was a monster.



naturalplastic
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01 Aug 2012, 12:33 pm

Im all for regional French cuisine.

There should be more "Brest feeding" in America!

And Paris feeding, Marsaille feeding, Lyon feeding, etc!



visagrunt
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01 Aug 2012, 1:29 pm

Neonatal paediatrics is not my area of medicine, but it seems to me that neither extreme in this debate has it right.

Some women cannot lactate. Others shouldn't, because of the risk of transmitting infection to the nursing child. In these cases there is absolutely no question that formula is a necessary component to preserving the life of the child, and that it should be made available easily.

On the other hand, many of the cultural pressures that have made breast feeding (particularly in public places) unpalatable have likely contributed to a number of ongoing public health issues. I'm not persuaded that infant formula is as evil as some breast feeding proponents would have us believe, but I wholeheartedly agree that given the choice between formula and breast milk, there is absolutely no question that breast milk from a healthy mother is the better choice.

All of which is to say that I suspect that there are better places that the NYC health department could be focussing its energies.


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AngelRho
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01 Aug 2012, 4:01 pm

YippySkippy wrote:
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OK, but it's extremely rare for women to be unable to breastfeed, though.


Not so. I was completely dry after my second was born. The lactation specialist at the hospital said "It's okay if they don't get anything to eat for a couple of days." This while my six-pound newborn was screaming for food. So yes, I gave her formula. Some of those lactation experts are Breast Nazis. Even the nurse in the room was looking at her like she was a monster.

I'm not saying that it is for everyone. Visagrunt pointed out a few very good reasons not to breastfeed, and a few women just don't lactate enough and rarely not at all. From what I've seen with what my wife went through with our first two children, I'm not convinced that many typical nurses on the neonate floor really know what they're doing--with all due respect to the nursing field.

We really didn't get much, if any, help at all with our oldest. We tried and tried, assumed things were ok, and ended up putting him in the hospital for lethargy, pale color, and found out that he probably had a kidney infection along with dehydration. We got his fluids up and he was right as rain, but we never tried breastfeeding after that. Our second was 8 weeks premature, so we had problems with early termination of the pregnancy through C-section, she had to be shipped off to a NICU nearly 3 hours away, and mom and daughter spent very little time together for nearly three weeks. She fed her what colostrum she made for about 3 days, and that was the end of that.

Our 3 1/2 month old, on the other hand, has been a completely different story. My wife went all militant about the breast-feeding thing. Had a whole religious experience about it. No, seriously...she was on her knees every day praying about it since she found out she was pregnant. I've never seen her like that before. Every free minute she had, she had the baby on her breast, made these horrible faces because it hurt so bad, and just kept going anyway. About the third day, her milk came in and her breast swelled 2 cup sizes. Looked like she had implants. It was pretty hawt, actually... She is mad determined to keep this up for a year, and it's turning me into a stay-at-home dad since she's the only one with a steady day-job. She pumps after every evening feeding and once during lunch break, so I have plenty during the day.

What is surprising is how quickly it digests. Bottles of expressed milk go faster than breast feeding. My little one gets full with just 4 oz. in under 15 minutes (vs. 20-40 at the breast), but he's hungry and unsettled again within an hour. It's not a lot of fun being a dad trying to keep a 3 month old happy on just 8 oz. a day, especially during a growth spurt. But he is healthy and gaining weight, so we aren't going to sweat it much right now. We are trying to increase milk production so we'll be prepared for feeding him twice as much during the day as he does right now.

Sometimes you need a little help. Fenugreek and blessed thistle are natural galactagogues. My wife was having trouble keeping up with just 8 extra ounces every day, so we adjusted our game plan by adding "Mother's Milk" (available at GNC) tea to her diet. It's made a huge difference. Not the difference the scam artists will tell you, but a difference we're comfortable with.

The "breast nazis" are right, though. Newborns can survive a short while on very little nutrition, which gives the milk enough time to come in. It takes patience and determination, but most women are able to breastfeed. Even a screaming newborn who isn't getting much will usually calm down when a mother offers the breast. If nothing happens after three days, then there's a problem and you'll need the formula. But the milk will dry up if you don't try and stay consistent. The scary part about it is how ill-informed many women seem to be about it.



YippySkippy
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01 Aug 2012, 5:58 pm

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ended up putting him in the hospital for lethargy, pale color, and found out that he probably had a kidney infection along with dehydration.


Quote:
The "breast nazis" are right, though. Newborns can survive a short while on very little nutrition,


Just thought you might want to look at those two statements together.



puddingmouse
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01 Aug 2012, 7:04 pm

YippySkippy wrote:
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ended up putting him in the hospital for lethargy, pale color, and found out that he probably had a kidney infection along with dehydration.


Quote:
The "breast nazis" are right, though. Newborns can survive a short while on very little nutrition,


Just thought you might want to look at those two statements together.


The fact that people have such strong opinions on these things is another thing that puts me off ever getting pregnant. Everyone knows better than the mother.


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johnny77
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01 Aug 2012, 7:48 pm

Number one its not governments job to do so. Number two it is illegal in NY to give formula in the hospital unless "medically" necessary. I cant say that its being followed but the law is there all ready! Most hospitals push the mother tords breast feeding all ready around hear. It really has nothing to do with anything but money. If it was to do with health it would be easy to accept. By this I mean that if formula was causing harm to the babys. Not that it cost more to the state.



Last edited by johnny77 on 01 Aug 2012, 9:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

AngelRho
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01 Aug 2012, 8:22 pm

YippySkippy wrote:
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ended up putting him in the hospital for lethargy, pale color, and found out that he probably had a kidney infection along with dehydration.


Quote:
The "breast nazis" are right, though. Newborns can survive a short while on very little nutrition,


Just thought you might want to look at those two statements together.

We're talking about the difference between an infant who is 3 days old versus 9 weeks old, which was how old our oldest was when this happened. We supplemented with formula, but we didn't realize we weren't getting enough. The point is I'm aware that it doesn't always work out for everyone. But at the same time if we'd known more about it, we'd probably have done a lot of things differently. Probably most of the problems with breast-feeding are similar to the ones we experienced--we started formula early on, used pacifiers, let the nurses keep him in the nursery rather than keeping contact with him in the room...pretty much everything you're not supposed to do. But for the most part, we were just new parents and had no clue what we were doing, and the prenatal nurses didn't act like they knew any more than we did. We just didn't have the right information.

It happens, and we learned a lot since then.



AngelRho
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01 Aug 2012, 8:38 pm

puddingmouse wrote:
YippySkippy wrote:
Quote:
ended up putting him in the hospital for lethargy, pale color, and found out that he probably had a kidney infection along with dehydration.


Quote:
The "breast nazis" are right, though. Newborns can survive a short while on very little nutrition,


Just thought you might want to look at those two statements together.


The fact that people have such strong opinions on these things is another thing that puts me off ever getting pregnant. Everyone knows better than the mother.

Well, while it's up for discussion, that's one thing. In actual, real-world practice, you'd find that strong opinions on breast-feeding are the least of your worries. Me being the dad, I didn't get the full brunt of the attacks other people made on my family like my wife did. One young lady in particular, barely a newlywed herself, had a particularly nasty attitude towards my wife, and the gamut of her experience with children was she had some kind of child development degree or some such from seminary and ran the children and preschool ministry at our church. I'm not saying being a parent is a substitute for an academic degree in a specific area, but nobody knows a child the same way a parent does. You simply cannot apply a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with all children and all parenting situations. I've studied a great deal of child psychology myself. While stage theory has given me a good insight into everything that's going on with my children right now, the generalizations that go along with the stages are just that: generalizations. Any good survey of psychology and child development will let you know that the numbers they list are mostly averages, and there's plenty of room for variance.

I recognize that my wife had difficulties and that YippySkippy had difficulties. But one other person and my wife do not a majority of women make. Given that my wife had no obvious physical problems at the time our oldest was born, it is a mystery to us why things didn't work the way they were supposed to, other than that we did not know as much about it as we do now. Otherwise, all we can claim is "divine providence" for our current ongoing success. Most women are capable of successful breastfeeding up to a year or more.



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02 Aug 2012, 9:38 am

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I recognize that my wife had difficulties and that YippySkippy had difficulties. But one other person and my wife do not a majority of women make. Given that my wife had no obvious physical problems at the time our oldest was born, it is a mystery to us why things didn't work the way they were supposed to, other than that we did not know as much about it as we do now. Otherwise, all we can claim is "divine providence" for our current ongoing success. Most women are capable of successful breastfeeding up to a year or more.


At the end of the day, this isn't a thread about whether women should breastfeed. It's about whether a hospital should make a woman, exhausted and in pain after delivering a baby, beg and plead her case to be given the type of nourishment she requires or desires for her child. Food isn't medicine. No man would ever be second-guessed, lectured, and frankly demeaned by a hospital in this manner.



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02 Aug 2012, 11:07 am

YippySkippy wrote:
At the end of the day, this isn't a thread about whether women should breastfeed. It's about whether a hospital should make a woman, exhausted and in pain after delivering a baby, beg and plead her case to be given the type of nourishment she requires or desires for her child. Food isn't medicine. No man would ever be second-guessed, lectured, and frankly demeaned by a hospital in this manner.


Don't be so quick to turn this into a sexist issue. I think the issue firmly belongs in the realm of the, "we're the professionals, we know what's best for you!" mindset. And men are just as much subject to that mindset as women are. Try this man's experience on for size: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/fac ... le4455624/


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02 Aug 2012, 11:52 am

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Don't be so quick to turn this into a sexist issue.


How many men do you know that give birth and breastfeed?



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02 Aug 2012, 1:02 pm

What if the mother is a crack addict, will they still insist on breastfeeding?



AngelRho
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02 Aug 2012, 3:40 pm

YippySkippy wrote:
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Don't be so quick to turn this into a sexist issue.


How many men do you know that give birth and breastfeed?

How many men are lactation consultants? I'm sure there are some, but I've never met one.

On that note, why is there are so many men who are gynecologists? Where I live, there are 5 male gynecologists and only 1 female that I know about. "Good ol' boy system" in the university? I dunno... But if my wife's life is on the line and we know a C-section is imminent, who am I more likely to trust? A L&D nurse who has seen it done a few times, and maybe had a C-section herself, because she's a WOMAN, or a highly respected MALE OB who has wielded the knife 1,000+ times and could probably do it with his eyes closed an one arm tied behind his back? This isn't about sexism. It's about who can do the job adequately enough to literally rip your guts out, put them all back in the right place, and sew you back up leaving the minimal risk of infection.

In a perfect world, sure...a woman has a woman's perspective. Although, truth be told, a lot of women don't look at their OB/GYNs as such. They look at them as OB/GODs. A female OB just doesn't have the "tools" to illicit that kind of response, but I imagine that there is something about having a strong male figure that is reassuring. Besides, women let their OBs do things to them they won't even let their husbands/boyfriends do. So the choice of a male OB over a female OB might be more nuanced than a simple matter of availability.

But that still doesn't resolve the problem of why there aren't more female OBs.

But it does debunk the idea that a man can't possibly understand the female body more than the woman who lives in one.

Oddly enough it's so-called "breast nazis" who seem to be predominantly women and have some specialized training in the matter. So crying sexism here still doesn't work.

So if it is true that MOST (not all) women are able to breastfeed when they are supplied the right information and hospital policies allow feeding to occur as the baby leaves the womb and allow mother and baby to be close during recovery, there's no reason why hospitals can't encourage breastfeeding. Especially if those who are giving birth are uninsured and/or on public assistance, by reserving formula for emergencies and if breastfeeding is impossible or otherwise out of the question for a legitimate reason--and formula is EXPENSIVE, did I ever mention that?--then it's perfectly reasonable for a government trying to get welfare WHERE IT IS NEEDED to have a say in who can and can't get the formula. Either way, it's a tremendous payoff. Not just in the cost of formula itself, but ultimately in reducing first-year risks and improving the health of both mother and baby.

I propose this: formula should be considered an alternative to breastfeeding if and only if the boobs are broke through no fault of the mother and/or there is some reason why breastfeeding would pose a danger to the child (transmission of disease, for example). If the mother cannot justify why a baby should be formula fed, then formula should be provided as a luxury item and the cost attached to her hospital bill as an item not covered by insurance. If you want it, if you can afford it, and you don't need it, you pay for it.

@YippySkippy: On a personal note, none of this is intended as any affront to you or people who actually do have difficulties with breastfeeding, nor am I one to demonize those who do formula feed. My wife and I strongly favor breastfeeding, obviously, and we understand all too well how traumatic it can be to experience something like that and all of the feelings of inadequacy that comes with it.