"Proud Formula Feeder"?

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-23-2004
"Proud Formula Feeder"?
1054
Thu, 12-14-2006 - 8:27pm

In my playgroup, I've noticed some members have a blinkie I haven't seen before: "Proud Formula Feeder". In the past, I've seen the "Formula Feeding Mom" and "It's formula, not rat poison", but this new one struck me as odd. I can understand simply stating that you formula feed or saying that formula isn't rat poison (because it isn't), but I've been trying to figure out just why someone would be "proud" to FF.

While I don't think that women should necessarily feel guilty about not BF, I don't get what about FF there is to be proud about. Most (or maybe even all) of the women with said blinkie acknowledge that breastmilk is better, so why would they be proud to feed their babies something they know is substandard, even if they couldn't BF and FF was their only choice? What do you ladies think? Is/should there be such a thing as FF pride?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 12-12-2006
Thu, 12-21-2006 - 1:41pm

>>This is a debate board. This is a board people come to when they want to take a side. I can't speak for everyone, but I myself have never once "bashed" a family member or friend for breastfeeding. We can all see the other side, but being middle of the road hardly makes for fun debate.<<

I did not mean to imply that anyone *here* was being bashed or bashing anyone else, my point was that it does happen and our focus is wrongly directed. Educating health professionals would be far more effective than confronting random women.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Thu, 12-21-2006 - 1:56pm

I wonder where all this is really happening though.

Cathie

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-12-2006
Thu, 12-21-2006 - 2:05pm

I was very curious about looking into Dr. Palmer's study. The claim that "formula doubles a child's risk of death" seemed rather extreme to me, especially since I had never heard anything like that before. I wanted to know specifically, three things :1. who conducted this study and why; 2. who funded this study; and 3. how the research was conducted. This is what I found:

1. A lady named Dr. Linda Palmer who has published a book entitled 'Baby Matters' (I'll give you 3 guesses what the book is about ;)) conducted the "research". Her motivation may have been to come up w/ alarmist stats that would make her book (which is primarily about bfing, BTW) fly off the shelves. I have a hard time seeing someone who is selling something as *impartial*.

2. There was no mention of who funded the "research" - mostly because all it cost was the aspiring author's time.

3. There was no study conducted. I would very much like to see a study conducted, in this country, of two large groups of closely matched infants (based on maternal age, maternal smoking, socio-economic class, incidence of preg complications, incidence of premature births, incidence of genetic abnormalities, etc) one ffed, the other bfed, that follows them through infancy and finds out how many in each group die. That was not what the aspiring author did. Dr. Palmer piggy-backed on other people's work by taking inferences and assumptions made based on other studies in other countries and applied those inferences to information gathered, by other researchers, about a totally different sample set. This is not what most people would call real research.

Even if we assume her "findings" are true, we are still talking about "doubling the infant mortality rate" by using formula, not the childhood mortality rate (so again use words carefully). Furthermore, it still poses a less than 1% risk to any given child, ffed or bfed. Take a look at big killers of children:

http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/children.htm

If you click on the "data" link, you will find that feeding formula is a very low risk act (.9%), comparativly speaking. And I know, I know, anything over 0% is too high.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 12-12-2006
Thu, 12-21-2006 - 2:13pm
Well, I suppose we will have to disagree here, because I believe it does happen, and just like you said - it goes both ways. If I remember correctly, I was asked what I would consider "bashing" a woman, and I gave a hypothetical example of what I would consider bashing. A real life example, would be that when I was deciding how to feed my child, my SIL, without my *ever once* asking her opinion (mostly because she had only been nursing her first child for a few weeks and I didn't see her as a expert on the subject), would regale me with the virtues of bfing at every opportunity. She would force it into totally unrelated conversations. So much so, that now I get reports about how my nefew is doing solely from my brother, and avoid calling when I know my SIL will be home. I didn't like her presumptuous attitude. If I wanted her advice I am more than capable of asking. I am also more than capable of doing my own research on the topic. I found her methods insulting. That is what happens when people give unsolicited advice.
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iVillage Member
Registered: 07-11-2006
Thu, 12-21-2006 - 3:12pm

“Looking at infants between 28 days and one year of age, researchers concluded that promoting breastfeeding can potentially prevent up to 720 postneonatal deaths in the U.S. each year.”

http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/may2004/niehs-02.htm

“For every 1000 babies born in the U.S. each year, four die because they are not breastfed.”

http://www.breastfeedingtaskforla.org/ABMRisks.htm

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Thu, 12-21-2006 - 3:37pm

I believe I did say that among famlies that sort of thing DOES happen- breastfeeding, formula feeding, whatever.

Cathie

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-12-2006
Thu, 12-21-2006 - 11:34pm
I guess I wouldn't have minded so much if she had just expressed her opinion and let it go; it was the going on and on about it that I found aggrevating. Of course it would have been even better had she let me *ask* her what she thought first, rather than just piping up without my initiating a conversation on the topic. I don't mind if someone suggests/recommends something, it's the harping that grates on my nerves, and that can be somewhat patronizing. I think that is why someone might want to head that sort of unsolicited advice off at the pass by claiming to be proud of their decision - that way there is no doubt that the subject is, at least with that person, closed.
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iVillage Member
Registered: 12-12-2006
Thu, 12-21-2006 - 11:38pm
BTW - My SIL is *usually* a rational, reasonable person. She is opinionated, but, obviously, so am I. She has always taken the hint before, my changing the subject or whatever. In retrospect I think it was possibly just hormones; or maybe things weren't going as smoothly as she had hoped and she was trying to justify her *own* decision, at least in her own mind. This didn't really occur to me at the time, but after the fact I can see that more than likely that was all it was.
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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Fri, 12-22-2006 - 2:16pm

I am proud to do anything for my kids that is the best I can do. I am proud that when my first born son was not getting enough milk (I don't care about propeganda, it DOES happen), I realized that I had to switch. I was in so much pain (clogged ducts), Had no support system because no one in my family had ever BF, and so depressed, I just had to think about my boy and realize that while "breast might be best" it wasn't best for him....

I realize that we are supposed to breast feed but I was proud to realize my shortcomings and fix it. I was proud to say that after 7 weeks of a painful, sleepless, horrible struggle with breast feeding that I could FINALLY bond with my little boy. I was proud because I had not succumbed to the pressure of outside people to put myself thru more sleepless nights and my son through more days of not really getting enough to eat. At 7 weeks when he started on formula I could almost hear him say AAHHHHH and he began to sleep thru the night and we began to really enjoy each other.

What I was not proud of was hearing other people who didn't even know me, scold me for not trying harder (yes, this did happen to me by a total stranger who over heard me speaking to my friend about quitting BFing)....I did the best I could and my boys are both big and strong despite the fact that one was bf for only about 7 weeks and the other not at all....

Mel...

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-06-2003
Fri, 12-22-2006 - 3:03pm

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Me neither. Even when I was "extended" nursing, no one ever said anything negative to me at all. I'm sorry that women (on both sides) have ever been in a situation where they had to justify their choice.

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