You keep asking why...

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-13-2008
You keep asking why...
1104
Tue, 12-16-2008 - 2:48pm

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iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2007
Fri, 12-19-2008 - 12:44am

"The only assertion I was countering was that the human race would not have survived if today's bf'ing problems were real, so the breastfeeding issues must be a new creation that came along with popular formula use."

I don't actually think anyone has made that particular assertion. What has been said, however, is that most bf problems (which are all real, I will personally agree) are typically overexaggerated. For example, low supply is nowhere near as prevalent as many people would have you think. The reason we know this is the means of "diagnosis" that many people (even some medical experts) use to "diagnose" it:

1. Low pumping output
2. Baby seems hungry only an hour or two after feeding
3. Baby isn't gaining weight fast enough (often based on ff baby weight charts)
4. Baby will drink a bottle immediately after nursing, even "gulping it down"

What these "diagnostic" tools do is tell women they aren't making enough, when these factors actually do not reflect true low supply. Counterarguments to the above:

1. Pumps are far less efficient at extracting milk than babies are
2. BM is digested much more quickly than formula, and thus bf babies typically need to eat more frequently
3. Compare baby's weight gain to other bf babies, and they're likely just fine
4. Babies cannot stop the flow of milk in a bottle, so they must either "gulp it down" or drown

Does this mean that true low supply does not exist? Of course not. But the methods used to determine it (and other bf problems that are used as a reason to wean prematurely) reflect a culture that sees ff as the norm, and bf as the exception that most women cannot achieve.

"But if you would like to write a doctoral dissertation about the wrongness of my assumptions please go ahead, I'd love to read it. I'd be just as fine with you countering them in a post with some evidence rather than just telling me I'm wrong."

Sure. I was pumping at the keyboard and so typing one-handed. I was also getting ready to go to class, so I didn't have enough time to go really into detail.

1. It is Eurocentric and elitist to assume that modern people of developing nations are like primitive Europeans. It is highly unfair and inaccurate to compare modern peoples to people living 500-1000 years ago in a very different place under very different circumstances.
2. It is inaccurate to treat people of developing nations as if they have never heard of formula or wouldn't want to use it if it was available. It is also inaccurate to assume that they know nothing of western culture, which on the whole prizes the ability to ff.
3. Conflating dichotomies does not help your argument. Besides trying to make it seem as though people in Africa are like Europeans from hundreds of years ago, you are shifting back and forth between women who can't bf and women who don't want to. Just because there are women in Africa or India who don't want to bf now does not mean that that was the case in France 500 years ago.
4. No access to formula does not mean that there were not alternatives to bf in the early modern period. Typically, a baby might be given a piece of cloth soaked in cow's or goat's milk instead if the mother or another bf woman was unavailable.

"Were breastfeeding rates always high throughout history up until modern day formula use?"

You know, I have to go off of the information I have. And the information I have suggests that women who didn't "want" to bf had to have means to an alternative. See, they may have been different from a modern population, but medieval/early modern people weren't allowed to starve their infants without any kind of retribution. Records of infanticide are much more likely to happen when the woman just drowns her newborn because she can't deal with one more child.

It's worth noting that after about the 13th century, abortion is still legal up to a certain gestation (quickening) so women who had no interest in having children had recourse. There were orphanages and foundling homes around at the time too so families who just could not take another child could drop them off their, typically at a convent.

Records for this kind of thing are scant (records for anything on the peasant classes typically are), but my research on infant mortality seems to suggest that the typical route was either death as a newborn or later from disease.




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iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2007
Fri, 12-19-2008 - 12:56am

And then you asked him how he knows?

Reminds of the arguments I got into with my nurses about the pain I was having during labor. I had this horrible epigastric pain from the pre-e, and it felt just like a gallbladder attack from when I had gallstones eleven years ago. I'd say it felt like a gallbladder attack and they'd say, "That's not what labor feels like." Well, that's what my labor felt like. The contractions were an afterthought. Maybe they would have been worse if I hadn't needed a c/s at 3 cm.




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iVillage Member
Registered: 06-04-2004
Fri, 12-19-2008 - 12:59am
Wow, I'm so impressed with this post, Holly.
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iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2007
Fri, 12-19-2008 - 1:04am

I know I've seen you around, I just can't remember which board.

"And I also have to say that I don't understand how anyone can get an epi."

Mine was a dream come true. It took the anesthesiologist about 15 seconds from start to finish. I was only 1.5 cm, but my water had broken a half-hour before and the contractions had become much stronger. I probably could have held out longer (and I had originally intended to do just that), but I had this horrible, horrible epigastric pain from the pre-e that was like a constant gallbladder attack (and I mean every second, no waves like typical contractions). I was so weak from it that the contractions made everything too much to bear.




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iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2007
Fri, 12-19-2008 - 1:05am
Thanks! I hoped it would make sense. I am finally done with school after having about 60 pages of papers due in the last three weeks. I am so done!




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iVillage Member
Registered: 07-11-2006
Fri, 12-19-2008 - 2:51am
lol, I mean I don't think I could psychologically handle it...well, I'm sure I could if I absolutely had to, but like with a lot of fears, it's very very hard to get over that initial hump...and I don't really trust the doctors & nurses at the hospital much further than I can throw them, so I see the risks for me as faaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr outweighing the benefits. But I've never had a gallbladder attack, so I don't know if I'd still feel the same then.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2007
Fri, 12-19-2008 - 3:42am
Heh. You know, snot doesn't really bother me much. But poop. Ohghghghegkhog!



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iVillage Member
Registered: 06-24-2008
Fri, 12-19-2008 - 8:00am

So based on that, here are my questions.

"The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding."
Malcolm Gladwell Blink

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-17-2008
Fri, 12-19-2008 - 8:05am

"If you want to keep asking me what-if questions like that

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Fri, 12-19-2008 - 8:36am

"I am going to assume there are three reasons women don't end up bf'ing today, and my questions are about how these would have played out in the past or in other nations today.

Cathie

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