Breast IS Best

As I get older, I find myself getting angry. We live in a society that prefers convenience over health, and in the process we are killing ourselves or, perhaps even worse, causing ourselves to live with diseases and ailments for years. We justify it all saying that it's just the card we were dealt, just luck (or lack of) the draw. But looking back at the changes Americans have made in our lives, particularly when it comes to diet, it shouldn't be a surprise that we're all starting to fall apart.

I will preface this by saying I am NOT perfect. I eat all sorts of things I know (or am beginning to realize) I shouldn't. I just had a bowl of Cocoa Puffs with milk...organic milk, but cow's milk nonetheless. I've been known to hit a drive thru because it's easier. And there are some nights I enjoy a little too much drinky drink, even though I know it's not good for me. See? Not perfect. Not even close.

What burns me up the most, though, are the food choices we make for our children. And even worse are the choices we make for our BRAND NEW children. Our country has done an amazing job of making questionable companies with questionable practices very rich (Google Nestle...they have literally killed thousands of babies in third world countries. Disgusting). We've done this by giving new mom's formula in the hospital, by "fixing" any breastfeeding issues with supplementation, by allowing relentless marketing of this liquid that is "almost as good as breastmilk". We don't have any kind of required PAID maternity leave for mothers who will return to work, lactation consultants are few and far between (and often aren't as knowledgeable as they could be...I personally think that having personal breastfeeding experience should be a requirement to be a LC). We tell moms-to-be how great breastfeeding is, but that's often as far as the support goes. Once that baby is born, there are 10 sources shouting "use this formula!" to every one trying to support the breastfeeding relationship. It's ridiculous.

The rest of this isn't going to be PC. It's not going to be popular. It's how I feel, though. I will stress that I am not upset at or judging moms who feed formula. I am upset at a country, society, and medical community who push it as if it's completely fine, that by feeding it we are not damaging our children.

My first thought is that breastfeeding should be as natural and as expected as pregnancy. Nursing our children is the next natural step after giving birth. Just like we can't pass pregnancy onto someone else, we can't (or rather, shouldn't) pass infant feeding on either. It's biologically WRONG. As women, we are meant to nurture our growing babies with our bodies, from the moment they are conceived until some point in the future when that child no longer needs the comfort and nutrition of mama's milk (although, in our country, the popular opinion is that occurs once baby grows a tooth, starts solids, or has a birthday...an entirely different post for a different day...).

I realize that sometimes formula is necessary and THANK GOD for it. It has saved lives, I don't deny it that in the least. I feel like formula should be treated more as the "NICU" part of some babies lives, though, rather than the "pregnancy" part. The ideal is clearly to be pregnant until the point in time when the baby is healthy enough to be born. The same should be true of breastfeeding. Breastmilk should be the ideal with the "NICU" formula as the backup. It should not be considered as good and healthy as breastmilk because it's not. It's great and wonderful for babies and mommies who can't breastfeed, but it is not equal.

This leads into my next point, and that is advertising. But I'm not going to go the usual direction with this and say that formula advertising is bad. I feel that way, but that's not the point I want to make right now. The point I want to make right now is that BREASTFEEDING advertising is misleading. "What?" you say? Well, let me explain.

This poster came from bestforbabes.com. It's nice enough. It shows all the great things that breastfeeding "lowers" the risk of. But I don't like it. Know why? Because I don't believe that breastfeeding lowers the risk of ANYTHING. Breastfeeding is the norm, it is the way babies were made to be fed, the way mothers were meant to feed. The amount of risk that breastfed babies have for SIDS, obesity, allergies, cancer, diabetes, asthma, etc is the AMOUNT OF RISK THAT THEY ARE BIOLOGICALLY INTENDED TO HAVE. Same applies to the lowered risk of breast and ovarian cancers in mothers--those are the levels of risk we are SUPPOSED TO HAVE. Breastfeeding doesn't lower anything. It's like saying breathing oxygen lowers your risk of suffocating. It's ridiculous. The fact is that formula INCREASES THE RISK of all of those things. A more accurate and fair depiction of why breastfeeding is important would be a poster showing why formula is harmful. I think if a poster were made stating that "Feeding this product increases your child's risk of leukemia by 15%" a lot more people would think twice about feeding their child that product. The point is not to make parents feel bad, the point is to fully educate. We're not helping anyone, especially not our children, by sugar coating the fact that we are giving our babies a processed, flawed food as their primary source of nutrition.

So, again, this is not intended to make moms feel badly or guilty. This is intended to show the backwards craziness of our country when it comes to public health. I understand that formula was developed because there is a need for it, and I appreciate that need. But I also know that it is not "needed" nearly as often as it is used, and that's what upsets me.