Here is an interesting comparison:
Many people seem to be unaware that ABA was one of the leading lights in turning around the very low breastfeeding rates of the last century when formula companies were running amok and exploiting mothers’ anxieties about breastfeeding by selling lies and misinformation about their products. Similarly to tobacco companies (who ‘normalised’ smoking), formula companies hijacked infant feeding and ‘normalised’ bottle feeding.
You have got to wonder what people who make comparison like that are about, and what they are up to. That comparison was made in the context of defending another comment:
“Formula is a little bit like AIDS,” one of the association’s leading counsellors told couples in the breastfeeding education class. “Nobody actually dies from AIDS; what happens is AIDS destroys your immune system and then you just die of anything and that’s what happens with formula. It provides no antibodies. “Every 30 seconds a baby dies from infections due to a lack of breastfeeding and the use of bottles, artificial milks and other risky products. Every 30 seconds.”
Then there is this:
It seems to me that what we all must do is look beyond the individual and see the big picture.
Well no. We shouldn’t. That is the rallying cry of extremists and totalitarians everywhere.
Sinc – what is the point here? It seems to be a simple case of associating something with a known nasty to achieve a rhetorical point.
Its a little over the top, but why the interest?
Driftforge
3 Sep 12 at 3:49 pm
Breastfeeding is easy and cheap and can help form a truly lovely bond with the infant as well as providing useful immunological factors particularly in the early months. At times for all, and at all times for some, it can also be difficult and uninteresting for both mother and child. Carried on for too long it can be deleterious to the mother’s health. Carried on for years it is arguably deleterious emotionally to the child (in terms of gaining independence). There is a lot of Wimmin’s mythology surrounding breastfeeding in first world countries since the ‘movement back to breast’ started after rebellion against the mechanistic bottle-feeding 4-hour scheduling of Truby King in the 1940′s. As with home births, much is hippie nonsense. The whole issue has become politicised and used, as above, to shade over into other debates.
Choice and personal preference should come into the equation here always, with women not being railroaded by ideologies of ‘naturalness’. On the other hand, nor should women feel that childbirth and breastfeeding necessarily take away their charms, although for some this might be a valid consideration.
Personally I’m still more wineglass than melons and have always breastfed for the first six months or more. It’s every woman’s own judgement when to stop, or even when to start. We all have our own priorities but the nannies on this issue can be ferocious. Resist them if you have to.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
3 Sep 12 at 4:10 pm
If infant formula was a cottage industry instead of coming from large international companies, there would be none of this absurd overstatement and outright lying.
Same with smoking. If we all grew our own tobacco in the backyard (which is quite legal, BTW), nobody would give a shit.
It’s all about those evil multinational corporations.
DavidLeyonhjelm
3 Sep 12 at 4:11 pm
Just pointing to silliness and nanny argument.
Sinclair Davidson
3 Sep 12 at 4:40 pm
The worst thing about formula is that it enables the wife to wake the husband at 3am and ask him to feed the hungry child.
Infidel Tiger
3 Sep 12 at 4:44 pm
As a new parent myself, I can add something here. My wife tried breastfeeding our nine-week old little boy but we found that after four weeks he wasn’t putting on weight, so on medical advice we switched to formula and he hasn’t looked back. He’s putting on weight and developing normally, so far as we can tell…
My wife tried incredibly hard to breastfeed and we switched out of concern for our child, not because we found formula ‘more convenient’ or anything like that. I make sure to try and reassure her that she is not a bad mother and to protect her from what I refer to as the breastfeeding nazis.
LOL, that IT, is my one regret from switching to formula. Luckily my wife, who is on maternity leave, is pretty understanding that I am still working and so doesn’t ask me often!!!
Skuter
3 Sep 12 at 5:19 pm
My wife uses the boob and the Nestle factory for our sprog.
Great thing about formula is that you know exactly how much the kid is eating and you can leave them with a grandparent or whatnot for an hour or so without having to worry. The missus was expressing for a while but she ended up spending half her life trussed up like a dairy cow just to produce one bottle.
infidel tiger
3 Sep 12 at 5:29 pm
I hope she has friends who can assure her she is not alone. My wife was the same so we did a mix of bottle & breast like IT suggests. Even on the 2nd when the taps were running a little dry and we topped up we got the tutting from the “experts”.
The midwives intentions are good, but for those of us who are not 18yo waiting for the sprog to get off the bottle so we can get to boozing all night, a bit of nuance would be appreciated.
Token
3 Sep 12 at 5:39 pm
…the sprog to get
offon the bottle…Token
3 Sep 12 at 5:40 pm
Was going to comment, but luckily I read IT’s at 5:29 and realised it was going to be exactly the same, including the expressing/dairy cow observation.
After 3 weeks of boob, we experimented with formula yesterday and bub slept like a charm for 4 hours. So fucking brilliant as far as I’m concerned. We’ll use sparingly just so the mrs gets a break, and also we can dump the screaming shitting machine on the grandparents.
harrys on the boat
3 Sep 12 at 5:42 pm
I’m of the opinion that breastfed is best, it’s just perfectly individually made milk for your baby, i had a few difficulties but perservered and it came good, thank goodness, but would have gone to forumula if necessary for sure.
I’m a little against mothers going straight to forumula, you know, it’s a bit selfish. The AIDS comment is entirely atrocious but.
candy
3 Sep 12 at 5:49 pm
aah the joys of the first three months. I’d almost forgotten…
Rather than being pushy moral busybodies and fear-mongerers, the Nipple Nazis ™ would be better off trying to sell the benefits of breastfeeding.
It costs a hell of a lot less, you don’t have to faff around with sterilisers etc, and for the ladies it’s great for getting your body back into pre-childbirth shape. For the blokes you don;t have to get up at 3am to do the feed.
papachango
3 Sep 12 at 5:50 pm
I am a grumpy old bush doc of 30 yrs experience. Firstly let me state that I am an advocate for breast feeding, it is the best for newborns, however not all attempts to breast feed are successful, and parents should not be made to feel bad for it. Further most mums who “choose” to bottle feed rather than breast feed do it for lifestyle reasons, I may not agree but it their choice. To suggest that some multinational corporation selling formula is behaving like the tobacco companies is simply insulting. The tobacco companies know their product kills. That is the difference. Further to compare with AIDs is just pathetic, there is no comparison. Firstly the infection is HIV, AIDs is the clinical condition that exists when the immune system fails. Also people do die directly as a consequence of the condition, not just the secondary infections, There is cancer that develops in some AID’s patients called Kaposi’s Sarcoma, it can be fatal. At least could people get their facts right before trumpeting their fundamentalist beliefs.
bushdoc
3 Sep 12 at 5:52 pm
BTW I was brought up on formula, as mum dried up within a couple of weeks. I’m offended and humiliated by the implication that I have lower than average IQ.
Where do I go to sue the Nipple Nazis(tm)?
papachango
3 Sep 12 at 5:52 pm
the compariosn of infant formula with tobacco just highlights, once again, how we dropped the ball with not sticking up for smokers’ rights.
The precedent has been set and the moral fascists will use it for more and more draconian laws.
Severe marketing restrictions, plain packaging and prescription only for baby formula? It’s already being suggested.
papachango
3 Sep 12 at 5:58 pm
So now they think it’s their turn?
Ellen of Tasmania
3 Sep 12 at 6:24 pm
Initially breast fed, but after a couple of weeks got put on the bottle.
Never lost my admiration for the original container, but.
Winston Smith
3 Sep 12 at 9:01 pm
I just knew you’d say something like that Winston Smith.
Mick Gold Coast QLD
3 Sep 12 at 9:05 pm
I got started on a bottle because mum landed in hospital with a nasty infection shortly after I popped out and I was parked with some relatives. Asking a male to look after a baby back then was thought to be quite a bizarre imposition.
Years later, the aunty that took care of me (a nurse by the way) told me the beauty of a bottle is the ability to add a bit of gin to the mix when I wouldn’t conk out properly.
So there you go – booze and formula. No wonder I am the way I am today. Whom do I sue?
boy on a bike
3 Sep 12 at 9:43 pm
The ABA is full of PC nazis. They used to be called the Nursing Mothers Association until breast zealots pushed out all other “nursing mother” issues and focused on one goal; to vilify bottle feeding.
My wife had lots of trouble getting our first born to breast feed and had a visit from a breast nazi who banged on about how “breast is best” and succumbing to bottle feeding was a white flag of failure. We perservered until the pain of cracked nipples, lack of sleep, and an increasingly distressed baby made it impossible to continue.
Once we washed off the guilt trip heaped on us and moved to formula the turn around was amazing. Our daughter is now 18, at uni and never had a serious illness.
Our two other boys were bottle fed (we did try breast but had the same issues)and are heathy high achieving students.
Whenever a mother says they are breast feeding but the baby is always crying I ask how much milk do you think the baby is getting? If they don’t know then it’s likely the baby is not getting enough.
If a mother can breast feed and produce enough on their own to satify the baby then that’s great but if not don’t throw a guilt trip on those because they don’t conform to a breast nazi ideology.
Splatacrobat
3 Sep 12 at 9:51 pm
Whats really ironic about breast feeding is that all the recent studies have shown the formula fed babies are more healthy because the average western diet is now so poor.
We now how breast feeding rates in society that are really low – less than 20% breast feed to 6 months, and this has been going on for decades. Yet we don’t have children with problems everywhere. Yes the chances of such and such increase often by a factor of 2 or more, but they were already so rare its hardly even worth worrying about.
Worse is that the ABA is now full of loonies. For example, the ABAs official stance is that steam sterilisation is a bad idea… they recommend you only wash battles/breast pumps etc with warm soapy water and spout non-sense about how sterilization is actually bad because its better for some bateria to get into the child’s body (they never say what bacteria).
mundi
3 Sep 12 at 9:56 pm
then you’ll not be surprised to hear Quentin Bryce is their patron. These Emily’s Listers are everywhere. Why can’t they just let people be.
Gab
3 Sep 12 at 9:57 pm
and they receive government funding, of course.
Gab
3 Sep 12 at 10:02 pm
Oh, I do loathe the breastfeeding nazis. Quite a few of my friends had problems and could not feed their babies, and the guilt they carried was awful to see.
The pressure to breastfeed is enormous, and the nazis do their damndest to make sure that every new baby is fed by breast.
My disclaimer: I fed my offspring for 2 years, and while it’s fantastic for bonding, saves a crapload on formula and bottles and the like, because mine wouldn’t take a bottle or anything else, I wouldn’t necessarily go all zealot on an expectant mum.
I was bottlefed myself and survived.
Bottom line is, babies and parenting are stressful enough without harridans nagging you about how you should be nurturing your own child.
Do what works. If breastfeeding doesn’t work, don’t do it. We’ve got formula to help there, so we don’t have the high infant mortality rate we used to have.
Now that’s something to consider…
nilk
3 Sep 12 at 10:04 pm
Oh, bullshit. So much bullshit, I don’t know where to start.
These people are scientifically and medically illiterate.
It’s like the claim in the UK that
Or, closer to home, the claim that at one point 80% of all Australians smoked cigarettes and they wouldn’t have stopped but for State legislation banning them from smoking in certain places.
Listen, activists. Just believing that you’re on the side of the angels doesn’t give you licence to make shit up. It just calls everything you have to say into question, even if you do have a valid point or two in there somewhere.
sdog
3 Sep 12 at 10:11 pm
I hate those f’ing busy bodies trying to guilt me into breast feeding a very very sick little baby with a heart condition. You try feeding a baby that cant breathe.
When the breastfeeding nurse told me that i could still breast feed her after 6 weeks of tube and bottle feeding (and me with very little milk due to her not feeding off me and I did give her as much as I could to help her through her heart operation and recovery), I told her to f off out of my room and not to ever set foot in there again. I put in a complaint about her as well.
Stupid bitch came back when i had my second one and was once again told to get lost. For reasons I wont go into, he couldnt feed either, and I was very very ill. I put in second complaint about her.
My kids would have starved to death if I listened to that moron, who never bothered to check with our pediatrician or even the nurses in the special care ward.
Formula is definitely preferrable to poor milk quantity and/or quality, and also to babies with conditions that dont allow them to feed. Yet you never hear that when the nursing nazis are spouting their bullshit at young mums.
dianeh
3 Sep 12 at 10:39 pm
These people sound like the anti-vaccine crowd. They would also vote green. Nutballs.
Keith
3 Sep 12 at 11:00 pm
the anti-vaccine thing is dangerous and it’s manipulating vulnerable young parents
candy
3 Sep 12 at 11:03 pm
Howdy all, just wanted to say thanks to all of you. I feel much more reassured knowing that my wife and I aren’t alone. It is nice to know that it is not abnormal to have issues with breast feeding. We will just keep finding our own way through the various stages of parenthood.
Skuter
3 Sep 12 at 11:15 pm
Other people to avoid are the parents who boast about their babies sleeping straight through the night.
You’re supposed to feed it every 3 hours, so how the fuck does it sleep for 12 hours straight?
Infidel Tiger
3 Sep 12 at 11:23 pm
IT, we have been lucky. Our boy sleeps for about 5 hours straight. Any longer than that and we’d get worried…
Skuter
3 Sep 12 at 11:27 pm
You pray for them to sleep and then when the do, you shit yourself! Just as well they’re cute or you’d leave them on the neighbours doorstep.
Infidel Tiger
3 Sep 12 at 11:33 pm
They are either liars or sadists.
Fisky
3 Sep 12 at 11:34 pm
Well I never heard ours. I slept all the way through it.
You guys should have done a deal before having kids. You’ll have them but no getting up to them in the middle of the night… and stuck with it.
JC
3 Sep 12 at 11:41 pm
Yes, there are quite a few of them at the kooky anti-pharma anti-vax alt-health site whale.to. One of their main claims is that Big Pharma has brainwashed people into wanting formula over breast milk because Big Pharma wants to deprive the population of “natural immunization” so that they can then push them their ‘poison-laden’ vaccinations… and profit!
One of their house scienticians makes the claim that no breast-fed child ever developed polio, so that’s why Big Pharma started pushing breast-milk, so that they’d have a bigger market for their polio vaccine.
Put on your tinfoil hat…
sdog
3 Sep 12 at 11:45 pm
Yes, there are quite a few of them at the kooky anti-pharma anti-vax alt-health site whale.to. One of their main claims is that Big Pharma has brainwashed people into wanting formula over breast milk because Big Pharma wants to deprive the population of “natural immunization” so that they can then push them their ‘poison-laden’ vaccinations… and profit!
One of their house scienticians makes the claim that no breast-fed child ever developed polio, so that’s why Big Pharma started pushing
breast-milkformula [corrected], so that they’d have a bigger market for their polio vaccine.Put on your tinfoil hat…
sdog
3 Sep 12 at 11:46 pm
I am distressed that young mothers are still facing what I faced nearly 40 years ago. The pressure to breast feed was enormous. I assumed I would when I had my first child, but had enormous problems and developed mastitis. This created further problems for me for many years. I was never prepared to try breast feeding again.
oldmum
4 Sep 12 at 6:06 am
We used breast milk up until 4 months with formula for top ups before switching to formula.
The breast milk did seem to help a lot with the little tykes immune system earlier on (never did get sick until the switch).
We did have problems using nestles through – switched to another brand after too many vomitting spells.
I think the science is in that breast milk is better, however I don’t think anyone should feel like a bad parent if they can’t breast feed, can’t express or simply choose not to due to personal preference.
Combine Dave
4 Sep 12 at 7:21 am
I can’t ignore him, but he does sleep from 10pm to 5am by himself. Well most nights….
Combine Dave
4 Sep 12 at 7:24 am
De nada, Skuter. It’s probably more abnormal to not have problems with breastfeeding, and there are way too many busybodies out there who know what’s best for your baby.
Ignore them, and you’ll be fine.
It’s also a lot of fun when you do things like drag a screaming toddler through the supermarket or put them in the corner (the corner is wherever I say it is). You can tell who has kids and who hasn’t. The ones who haven’t are usually the ones with the look of horror on their face at overhearing you tell your spawn you’re going to sell them for parts when you get home.
nilk
4 Sep 12 at 12:49 pm
My wife had a run-in with one of those “breast is best” nazis in hospital when our son was born. She accused my wife of “deliberately not producing breast milk” after multiple attempts to both breast-feed and to express. (The above comment came after the breast-nazi fitted the expressing device and found no production after 2 hours).
After examination by the doctor it was found that my wife suffers from a condition where she just cannot produce breast-milk.
Despite repeated complaints we never did get an apology from anyone for the comments and, as far as I know, the breast-nazi is still employed by the hospital to “advise new mothers” about how to care for their newborn….
Brian of Moorabbin
4 Sep 12 at 3:32 pm
The problem is that in poor countries formula is excessively diluted to save money, and it is reconstituted with dirty water (breastmilk is sterile).
These problems are largely irrelevant in (most of) Australia
Rob
4 Sep 12 at 5:20 pm
Brian
lodge a formal complaint. I would.
JC
4 Sep 12 at 5:34 pm
Yep, there are a lot of thugs and zealots among the militant breast-feeding sorority. If you ever venture onto a parenting site, they are always there, complete with dodgy statistics, guilt trips and obsessive behaviours. Very scary.
Apart from bullying and frightening new mothers, what really irritates me is that many of them advocate ‘self-weaning’, meaning let the kid hang on the boob for however long it takes for them to give it up voluntarily (which may be years). They regard women as human cows with no rights over their own bodies or lives.
johanna
4 Sep 12 at 6:12 pm
JC
We did. All the way up to the (then) minister for Health, Daniel Andrews (yes, he who is now Opposition Leader).
Only response we ever got was a form letter which ‘thanked’ us for our comments on ‘improving the health network’….
Brian of Moorabbin
4 Sep 12 at 10:35 pm