The Case Against Breastfeeding

By Hanna Rosin
The Atlantic

One afternoon at the playground last summer, shortly after the birth of my third child, I made the mistake of idly musing about breast-feeding to a group of new mothers I’d just met. This time around, I said, I was considering cutting it off after a month or so. At this remark, the air of insta-friendship we had established cooled into an icy politeness, and the mothers shortly wandered away to chase little Emma or Liam onto the slide. Just to be perverse, over the next few weeks I tried this experiment again several more times. The reaction was always the same: circles were redrawn such that I ended up in the class of mom who, in a pinch, might feed her baby mashed-up Chicken McNuggets.

In my playground set, the urban moms in their tight jeans and oversize sunglasses size each other up using a whole range of signifiers: organic content of snacks, sleekness of stroller, ratio of tasteful wooden toys to plastic. But breast-feeding is the real ticket into the club. My mother friends love to exchange stories about subversive ways they used to sneak frozen breast milk through airline security (it’s now legal), or about the random brutes on the street who don’t approve of breast-feeding in public. When Angelina Jolie wanted to secure her status as America’s ur-mother, she posed on the cover of W magazine nursing one of her twins. Alt-rocker Pete Wentz recently admitted that he tasted his wife, Ashlee Simpson’s, breast milk (“soury” and “weird”), after bragging that they have a lot of sex — both of which must have seemed to him markers of a cool domestic existence.

Read more...

Salma Hayek Breastfeeds Another Woman's Baby

Got milk? Salma Hayek does - and she's happy to share.

The sultry "Frida" actress breastfed another woman's baby during a trip to Sierra Leone in front of "Nightline" cameras. Hayek, 42, discovered the child, who's mother was unable to produce milk, during a tour of a hospital in the war-torn country.

"The baby was perfectly healthy, but the mother did not have any milk," she later recalled to USA Today. "He was very hungry - I was weaning my daughter Valentina, but I still had a lot of milk, so I breastfed the baby." (New York Daily News)

Breastfeeding Multiples Can Be Done!

By Rachael
BBA Contributor, Mother of Triplets

Of course, breastfeeding isn't possible for everyone. Often it is an incredibly personal choice a new mother has to make and it is one that needs full support of family and friends. If you choose to go with formula for your multiples' early needs, there are a lot of wonderful benefits to doing so. But if breastfeeding your multiples is something that you would like to do, it can be done. In fact, I was successfully able to pump for/breastfeed my triplets for 14 ½ months.

After a lot of trial and error in the beginning, I realized some very important things…

1) Invest in a good quality pump, preferably a hospital grade pump. If you cannot afford to purchase a hospital grade pump, they are available to rent through your hospital or other locations such as medical device stores. They are often covered by insurance, so check with your carrier prior to renting or buying one.

2) Pump or nurse regularly (and avoid supplementing as best you can) in the beginning. If you nurse, do so on demand and put the babies to the breast each and every time they are hungry. It will likely be rough with constant feedings, but that is their way of increasing your milk production. If you stick with it, it will be over in a few days! If you pump, do so every 2-3 hours around the clock for the first few weeks, then every 2-3 hours during the day, with 4-5 hour stretches at night. Make sure you vary the times that you pump as well. The body operates on a supply and demand schedule, so the more you pump or nurse the more milk you will make.

3) A baby is far more effective at extracting milk from the breast than a pump, so put the babies to the breast as often as possible!

4) Drink plenty of liquids. Seriously, this is probably one of the most important things you can do. If you are dehydrated, logic would indicate that you will not be able to make as much liquid.

5) Eat plenty of calories. This is also one of the most important things you can do. Your body needs the energy provided by calories (and fat) to make the milk your babies need.

6) Get plenty of rest. I know, something that is so difficult in those first few months, but your body is working hard to make milk so you need to let it rest. Let things go (it is only temporary) and sleep when the babies are sleeping.

7) If someone offers to help, accept it! Let them come cuddle the babies while you get some shut eye or pitch in around the house. Whatever you do, don't fall into the trap of thinking you can do it all or you will be overwhelmed and exhausted in no time at all!

8) Preemies can nurse. Although it is usually a more difficult beginning, they will likely eventually get the hang of it around their original due date. Persistence is key! Keep putting your preemies to the breast, starting slowly at first and gradually adding in more sessions as they get stronger. Also, until your babies are nursing like pros, make sure that you pump after each nursing because it is likely that you will need to help stimulate your milk production.

9) Be willing to be flexible. There may come a time when you realize that your body just isn't able to produce enough milk for your growing babies' needs. If you reach that point, don't be discouraged. You can continue to pump and give your baby a mix of breast milk and formula.

10) If you decide to call it quits, there is no shame. Both you and your baby have to enjoy the experience for it to be worthwhile! It was a difficult road at first, and I was armed with a lot of inaccurate and misleading advice, but I stuck with it and the experience turned out to be quite fulfilling to me and my babies. In fact, when my babies stopped nursing and I returned my pump I was sad. It signaled the end of my babies being babies and their transformation into full-fledged toddlers.

A Must-Watch for Clueless All Parents-to-Be

My husband and I were pretty clueless about pregnancy and parenting when I found out I was pregnant. I knew we needed to learn as much as we could before the baby arrived, so we wouldn't be more overwhelmed than we needed to be facing parenthood. We read books, took classes at the hospital (childbirth, newborn care and breastfeeding) and checked out some videos from the library. This all helped, but was very time consuming.

I was recently introduced to the Laugh and Learn DVD Series (Childbirth, Breastfeeding & Newborn Baby Care). Wow! I watched the DVDs and all I can think is that I wish I had known about this series three years ago.

Sheri Bayles is the nurse with the personality behind the successful DVD series. She is an award winning childbirth educator and lactation consultant. Plus she is the mother of twin boys, so she knows what she is talking about.

The great thing is that you can watch the videos in the comfort of your own home, on your own time frame (you can press pause every time you get a little overwhelmed about the childbirth explanation or if you feel the need to pee every 10 minutes) and even go back to certain parts as a refresher when you are reaching milestones like giving your baby it's first sponge bath or deciding what pump to buy for breastfeeding.

The About Childbirth DVD was great. I don't think I was the only one who still felt a little clueless about the whole childbirth thing, even after the classes I took. These two dvds about childbirth are very thorough. In them, Sheri gives some great pros and cons of using drugs like demerol, pitocin and epidurals. She also talks about the window of opportunity and how it works. I found the part about a c-section to be especially interesting since I really didn't pay attention to it in our hospital childbirth class only to find myself having a c-section for my son. It's best to just pay attention to it all just in case.

I would suggest watching the dvds then passing them on to your pregnant friends when you are done. You might just want to write your name on the dvds, so you can get them back as a refresher for baby #2!

PETA: Use Breast Milk in Ice Cream

This is one of those stories we couldn't make up if we tried. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is urging Ben & Jerry's ice cream to replace the cow's milk they use in their ice cream products with human breast milk, according to a statement released by a PETA spokesperson.

"PETA's request comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner will begin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milk for 75 percent of the cow's milk in the food he serves," the statement says.

Ben & Jerry's response? Classic. In a statement, the company said, "We applaud PETA's novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother's milk is best used for her child."

PETA points out that using cow's milk for Ben & Jerry's ice cream is a hazard to their customer's health.

"Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer," the statement says. "The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America's leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow's milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease-America's number one cause of death."

Read the full statement from PETA here.

Bill Would Guarantee Right to Breastfeed in Public

It's a question most nursing moms have to face sooner or later -- whether or not to breast-feed in public. In Boston, advocates are pushing the Legislature's Judiciary Committee to support legal protections for mothers nursing infants in public areas.