Moms turning to bottle too soon

i agree that the breast is best, but for me, i didn't have a choice. because of the medications i have to take everyday to keep me healthy, i could not breast feed and had to use the bottle only. the choice was, breast feed and be in the hospital every few weeks with an asthma attack, or to take my meds and not miss a single second with my son. so it's nice that new york wants to press the issue, but what would they do with mother's like me who cannot breast feed?

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I am pretty sure this isn't about the women who can't breastfeed karen, the majority of us can do it.

It would help that at 4 months the pediatricians lay off of offering that baby solids, the recommended age of offering solids is 6 months. For all the women around me that breast feed, they all start solids about then - and pretty soon their babies are weaned around 10 months. Some babies (like my youngest) did not want solids until 10 months, and still nurses like a 6 month old at 13 months - and he is average weight while way above average length. We feel pressured by the food industry (do you read the baby food boxes at the store?) and our healthcare to start food too early.

Then I am convinced that your brain is open to letting down to almost any stimuli for a couple months after giving birth, but after a while you're brain & body have learned what to let down for. So, if you haven't been using a pump and only breastfeeding that baby directly and all of a sudden you need to go back to work and try that pump only to find it not working very well that has to be incredibly frustrating. I think moms who are planning to go back to work be counseled in hospital to start pumping then in order to be be ready for work.

And then there is the shame factor - which we all know is alive an well today. We have been taught to be ashamed about so much, and on top of having a baby, not getting enough sleep, not being as well groomed as we would like and having that after baby body, in order to do anything we need to sometimes nurse in public. Well, some of us might turn to the bottle to avoid that situation of feeling exposed when we are feeling our least put together. I really do think those that find breastfeeding in public offense to be doing our world a disservice and need to be censured for it. They can say whatever they want, but we don't need to listen and we could reply against the attacks and support all moms around us a little bit more.

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When is our government going to realize that people have FREE WILL?

Just like smoking, drinking, drugs (they're bad, don't do them), wearing a helmet while riding bikes of any kind, wearing a seat belt and recycling (do them, they're good)... all the public service announcements and programs in the world are only going to go so far. You are always going to have a segment of the population that says "no, sorry, that's not for me" for whatever reason - either they can't quit (in the first three instances) or they don't want to (in the last three).

Frankly, I'm sick to death of hearing about breast feeding. I understand that "breast is best". I also understand that an ongoing, REASONABLE education program regarding breastfeeding needs to be in place, because new mothers are created every day. But for the love of Pete, quit with the militaristic tactics already. Making laws requiring businesses to set aside time and money to accomodate breast feeding, beating up on non-breastfeeding mothers, and banning everything but the breast is just a little to fascist for me.

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I couldn't agree more with LS. Women should be educated on their options and given the proper guidance/support, then left to chose for themselves. It is their body and their baby, after all. I'm all for education and support, but I don't think bullying women is going to help.

I also think people should be more upfront about how painful breastfeeding can be. It wasn't for me personally, but I have a few friends who experienced terrible pain while breastfeeding; they were totally un-prepared for that possibility and felt bullied when they talked to people from LLL, who didn't seem to care about treating their pain, only that they would continue to bf no matter what. They all stopped early and I don't blame them. If I had been in their shoes, I might have to. So maybe some more education could be directed to preparing women for some of the potential pain and difficulties they might encounter when bfing, so, much like we do for childbirth, they can start developing coping mechanisms early on. And I think fathers stepping in more to give bottles of pumped milk can do a world of good for a stressed new mom. I would have felt totally overwhelmed and suffocated if it hadn’t of been for my husband and all those bottles of pumped milk that were there when I needed a break.

But, in the end, I think LS is right. Kids on formula will be just fine. While we’ve all internalized the “breast is best” adage, formula is a perfectly fine alternative. I was a formula baby, for heaven’s sake. Women have free will and will (and should) continue to exercise it.

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I'd be willing to bet a lot more women would continue breastfeeding if it wasn't banned everywhere you look. It just isn't convenient to stay home for a year so one can keep breastfeeding, but that's the only place the public seems to feel is appropriate.

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Breastfeeding is NOT banned everywhere you look. Women run into problems when they assume that their right to breastfeed supercedes someone else's rights. For example... sitting quietly in a public place, breastfeeding while holding a light blanket over the child usually goes unnoticed. Plopping down in the aisle of a store (covered previously here on PD), whipping out a breast to feed, and expecting other customers to walk around you is a problem.

When we all step back, take a deep breath, and stop jamming our "rights" down each other's throats, I'll bet we'll find that we can coexist pretty peacefully. And when the government stops thinking that they know better than we do, we'll all be a lot better off.

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I agree with LS. The amount of guilt and shame I felt after having so many breast feeding issues.....and professionals in the field judging me for my decisions etc etc. I understand that breast is best, but like abortion, I think women have a right to decide what they want and can make educated decisions. To assume that can't, means that you assume women are like pawns to the media and not capable to decide.

I tried for 3.5 weeks to feed, with a cup, a tube, an eye dropper, and finally a bottle. She never latched even though we tried and tried and tried with tears, sleepless days and night, baby wailing in hunger etc.

I spent more money on renting a breast pump, buying an adapter for car when I was on vacation, buying nipple shields, going to a private breast feeding clinic with the resident expert (Dr. Newman) to no avail....she still would not latch or feed properly so I pumped for 3 months until I could not do it anymore b/c my hubbie was returning to work, and it was too time consuming, I could pump and leave my daughter screaming on the couch as I could not pick her up while pumping or I could give her formula.

So I think that things have swung so FAR the other way towards the breast, that women who can't or have problems, and make CHOICES about what to do as they are judged by everyone and the neighbour.

I was out before and a complete stranger commented on how cute my baby was and I was bottle feeding breast milk ( although none of her business) and she gave me a dirty look and said "you aren't breast feeding?". I mean come on, she is a stranger and doesn't even know me, what right does she have to judge me?

As far as formula samples and whatnot.....well it is expensive so what the hell give me some samples!! I have yet to be offered a sample of formula from the hospital, from my family doctor etc. Also I was NEVER EVER offered a sample of a breast pump or accessory - I purchased all those things myself!!

I swear before I had a baby, I was all about the breast feeding, I was going to be one of those mommas on the go who whipped out the breast whenever and fed my child, who fed her in a sling etc etc but that never happened. So what can you do??

Also if this had been a 2nd or 3rd child, there is NO WAY I could have devoted the time, engery, emotional craziness, that I did to trying to breastfeed. And if my husband was not off work for nearly 3 months, then I could not have done it either.

Go ahead and judge me!!

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Adequate maternity leave. Period. How can women possibly be expected to exclusively breastfeed to six months when they are expected to be back at work at six weeks? Most breastfeeding relationships are just getting well established at six weeks. To be forced to interrupt that to support the family is just plain wrongheaded and counterintuitive.

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This is such a touchy issue it seems right now, I just had my daughter 5 weeks ago and have been very fortunate to have an over supply of milk. I pump all the time and still feed her every 2 hours as she desires. My husband and I both wanted the breast feed so bad that I felt pressure and was scared that something was going to happen and I wouldn't be able to. The first week was pretty ROUGH....my breasts were sore, tired and I didn't think I would make it a week...but I pushed through and am so glad I did...it has been amazing and I even get jealous when we give her a bottle of breast milk pumped (since I will be returning back to work in a couple of weeks). I love the bond, but I also understand it is not for everyone and it wasn't until I relaxed and said "okay what is the worst that could happen...we would have to put her on formula" that I really started to enjoy breastfeeding. I def. agree that it should NOT be pushed on people, it is supposed to be a bonding experience and it is def. not for everyone.

My husband and I did recently take our daughter out to eat for the first time and although I had a bottle pumped and ready to go she ate all of it and was still hungry. So I found myself nervous as I carried her to the ladies room and sat down on a toilet in a stall to breastfeed. The whole time I felt bad because every time someone came in the bathroom or flushed the toilet my daughter would jump and cry. But we got through it and I know it will get easier each time we do go out in public. My advice is to hang in there if you are breastfeeding and don't be ashamed...you made a decision based on what you think is best for you, your family and your baby and you should be proud of all your hardwork and determination.
If you are giving your baby formula, you also should be proud....you made a decision based on what you think is best for you, your family and your baby and you should be proud of all your hardwork and determination.

Let's face it all of us mom's need to stick together instead of arguing over the choices we make with our own children. We are all doing the best job we can do!

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Militaristic tactics? Beating up on non-breastfeeding mothers? Banning everything but the breast? Fascist?

Wow. Those claims are quite a leap from simply banning formula freebies (which are hardly freebies.... the consumers absorb these costs) and advertisments. Seeing as how the majority of formula advertisments are false (Similac recently had to pull a bunch of ads) and misleading (baby has gas, switch to soy formula! The AAP states only milk-allergic or vegetarian babies should have soy and that it is NOT indicated for gas), I would have no problem with pulling all ads. Of course, I'm not a fan of pharmaceutical companies advertising at all. Such information should come from medical professionals not catchy advertisements and jingles.

Formula advertisements and freebies and Big Pharm are the ones doing the bullying in my opinion. The government is merely looking at saving dollars (yes, breastfeeding saves millions in health care costs), the environment (formula production and use contributes a lot of waste), and telling the truth. Ross, Mead Johnson, Nestle, etc... only care about the bottom line.

I realize this is an emotional subject- I have both breastfed and formula fed- but the fact is that this is a PUBLIC HEALTH issue and nothing more. It has nothing to do with who is the better mommy or breastfeeders against formula feeders or the government forcing women to do with their body something that they don't want. It is public health and this is something the government certainly should have a say in.

Breastfeeding advocacy is NOT about forcing women to breastfeed or taking away the choice! Public health, pure and simple.

Here is an excellent article on the Barriers to Breastfeeding:

http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada/hs.xsl/advocacy_3330_ENU_HTML.htm

Finally, a discussion of sociocultural factors cannot overlook the effect of the commercial sector on breastfeeding. Aggressive marketing practices (40) and the use of products associated with shorter duration of breastfeeding (41-43) promote the use of human milk substitutes. Prenatal exposure to human milk substitute advertising significantly increases early termination of breastfeeding in the first 2 weeks and shortens overall duration among women with uncertain breastfeeding goals or goals of 12 weeks of less (44). Marketing or providing these products in discharge packages promotes maternalinfant separation, undermines maternal confidence, and contributes to early mixed feedings that interfere and sometimes interrupt establishing an adequate milk supply (40,45).

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I hate the way the lactivists assume that if you formula feed, you couldn't have possibly made an informed decision and breastfeeding is something every woman can do. I think the majority of women in developed countries are informed of the benefits of breastfeeding if they had any pre/postnatal care at all.

My breasts are defective for anything more than looking at. I went through hell trying to breastfeed. I spent several hundred dollars on lactation consultant visits and hospital grade pump rental not covered by my insurance and was never able get more than a couple of teaspoons per pumping session, even after diligently following the instructions the lc gave me. If I had gone with just formula from the first, I would have saved money.

My experience breastfeeding probably triggered my post partum depression. I don't recall ever hating myself before my failure to breastfeed.
For me, using a bottle wasn't a political statement or encouraging other moms to not breastfeed. It was about feeding my son, and nothing more.

If you bring out a bottle, it's open season for everyone to tell you what a selfish bitch you are. After getting that reaction from other women in the new mom groups, and in the grocery store, I just avoided people until my son was about a year old. Women always seem to assume the worst about your motivations when they see the bottle.

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Do these people think all new mothers are idiots? We know the statistics, we know the benefits, and we know the costs or both ways of feeding. They're shoved down our throats every single day by media, family, and medical professionals...not to mention strangers we meet in the store, on the street, and everywhere in between. To suggest that a mother would be so flippant as to decide to feed her baby purely based on the advertising campaign of a formula company degrades us all, new mothers, old hands, and potential mothers too. Each woman who has a child is faced with a choice, and most (I'd say 99%) want to do what they feel is right for baby and for their family. That choice is different for everyone, and no amount of advertising will change that. Banning things and pushing others in facist fury will only serve to degrade mothers for making a choice that is theirs to make. I thought we left the shame of peer pressure behind in high school!

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To suggest that a mother would be so flippant as to decide to feed her baby purely based on the advertising campaign of a formula company degrades us all, new mothers, old hands, and potential mothers too


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I am certainly not trying to degrade anyone but studies have shown that those formula feeding bags do have an impact on breastfeeding rates and they have also shown that the average person thinks that formula is just as good or better than breast milk:

Title: Do infant formula samples shorten the duration of breastfeeding?
Source: Lancet
Breastfeeding mothers who received free formula samples at discharge were less likely to still be breastfeeding at one month (78% vs. 84%, p=0.07)
Breastfeeding mothers who received free formula samples at discharge were more likely to introduce solid foods by 2 months (18% vs. 10%, p=0.01)
The above trends were more significant among less educated mothers, first time mothers, and mothers who had been ill post partum.
Bergevin et al., Do infant formula samples shorten the duration of breast-feeding? Lancet. 1983 May 21;1(8334):1148-51

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Title: Commercial hospital discharge packs for breastfeeding women
Source: Cochrane Database Systematic Review
Meta-Analysis shows that giving breastfeeding women a commercial formula discharge pack decreased exclusive rates of breastfeeding at any point in time, from 0–6 months postpartum
Donnelly et al., Commercial hospital discharge packs for breastfeeding women. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2000;(2):CD002075

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Title: Infant formula marketing through hospitals: The impact of discharge bags containing formula on breastfeeding.
Source: American Public Health Association Meeting and Conference
Women who did not receive discharge packs containing formula were more likely to be exclusively breastfeeding at 3 weeks postpartum (OR 1.52, 95%CI 1.12-2.05).
Eastham et al., Differential effect of formula discharge packs on breastfeeding by maternal race/ethnicity. APHA 133rd annual meeting and exposition 2005, Philadelphia.

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Title: Commercial discharge packs and breast-feeding counseling: effects in infant-feeding practices in a randomized trial
Source: Pediatrics
Mothers who received a discharge pack that did not contain formula breastfed exclusively for longer (p=.04), and were more likely to be breastfeeding at 4 months postpartum (p=.04)
Frank et al., Commercial discharge packs and breast-feeding counseling: Effects on infant-feeding practices in a randomized trial. Pediatrics, 1987 Dec;80(6):845-54

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Title: Effect of discharge samples on duration of breast-feeding
Source: Pediatrics
Women who received a discharge pack with a manual breast pump but no formula breastfed longer (mean = 4.18 weeks) than women who received infant formula in their discharge package (mean=2.78 weeks) p

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What is needed? - Better education so women can make the best choice for her family. The fact that breast feeding is linked to education level shows the current standard of education is not enough.

- regulations on advertisements for formula. 99% of those who benefit from sales of formula are the shareholders. Granted,some women can't breastfeed for physical or emotional reasons but the percentage is small in comparison to the rest of the population.

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How in the world does our government expect 60 percent of mothers to breastfeed exclusively for three months if they don't have three months of maternity leave? Most of the groups listed here--poor, less educated, or rural mothers--are the most likely to have minimal maternity leave, probably six weeks, possibly unpaid. In addition, the kind of jobs they go back to are not going to offer time or space to pump, so even if they try to pump many eventually stop because it's too hard to fight their way through. I want to know what percent of mothers have to go back to work before three months, as that is extremely important to consider as an obstacle to breastfeeding.

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OAM, I think you're missing the point here. Nobody is saying that you shouldn't breastfeed. Nobody is saying that they will NOT breastfeed. What we are saying is that most mothers (regardless of your statistics, since it is well-known that stats can, and are, manipulated to suit a desired outcome) know the benefits of breast vs. formula. Most new mothers take into consideration the needs of the baby and the lifestyle of their family, and then make the decision that works for them. For some, that means breastfeeding a single child well into toddlerhood, and for others, it means not breastfeeding at all.

What we're saying is that the government should provide the information - for BOTH methods, in a factual and UNBIASED way - and then let us decide, with our families and doctors, what is best.

And yes, I stand by my original statement about "beating up on breastfeeding mothers" - you've seen plenty of stories right here in this post about that; and the "militaristic/fascist tactics" - when the government starts banning things "for the good of all", we start treading on soft ground. A ban on anything should be completely analyzed before becoming law.

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This strikes a nerve with me. My wife lost several units of blood during childbirth and nearly died, yet nurses at the hospital were waking her up every two hours, every night to ensure we were taking "proper" care of our new baby by feeding her breast milk.

Days later, when my wife was trying to recuperate at home, she was driven nearly crazy by "lactation specialists" at the hospital calling her every day reminding her how important it is to continue breast feeding every two or three hours. When I floated the idea of feeding our daughter formula during the night so my wife could get some sleep and rebuild her blood volume, the "specialist" intimated to me that I wasn't being appropriately dedicated to cause of doing "the best" for our child.

This is insane. Circumstances warrant honest analysis and action...bullying new mothers into doing "the right thing" when they're ill borders on criminality.

Two entire generations was raised on formula, incidentally (post WW II to the late 70s). I have yet to hear of any legitimate (LEGITIMATE - not editiorial) publication of studies indicating the the health of fifty million babies that survived to this day were hampered by the immorality of bottle feeding.

--Craig

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So if you are just absolutely sure you are going to breastfeed, and you go to the hospital and somehow, for whatever reason, you can’t – then what? Do you have to send someone out to BUY formula? Or do you just now buy some and bring it with you, just incase? Or does the hospital now just stock some brand and charge you 100times as much if you use some? (i.e. Tylenol?)

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A couple of people have already said it, but the issue is maternity leave. I'm in awe of people who continue to pump while working; I hated that pump with a passion. If I hadn't been in a position to stay-at-home I definitely wouldn't have nursed as long.

Everyone has a story. I have the reverse story of Craig. I lost a lot of blood at birth so my milk took a while to come in. My daughter was in the NICU and on IV nutrients. Nonetheless I was told that unless I could manage to succesfully breastfeed in the NICU with multiple other people and machines around that they WOULD give my baby formula. I couldn't find a lactation consultant for days. Yes, some people get too much pressure and guilt for not breastfeeding, but some of us also have to really struggle in order to breastfeed. You don't make policy off a single story, and studies like the ones OAM posted make a strong argument for eliminating free samples of formula. (And Kate, FYI, if a baby really needs formula, not to worry .... the formula company has made sure the hospital fridge is stocked. There's a big difference in giving an unrequested sample and a requested one).

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I don't think the length of maternity is so much an factor in successful breastfeeding as being able to afford a maternity leave. I grew up as part of the working poor. Women had their babies, took a week off and were back at work. Maternity leave is not an option for the working poor, since they don't have savings or short term disability insurance (or any insurance, really). And taking too much sick leave might mean losing a preferred shift.

I worked fast food in college, and it's almost impossible to pump, assuming you can afford to rent one. There's the open air break room, which means you get to deal with the "OMG, boobies!!" comments from the high school/college age boys working there. The shifts are irregular, and there's often no space to store your milk. And while smokers can get on the clock breaks, lactating moms get one break to eat and pump. Pumping was about a 45 minute process for me; most fast food breaks fall around the 30 minute mark if you're not a minor.

If lactating moms had half the consideration smokers got at every place I've worked at, pumping at work would be a non issue.

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