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This article makes me happy

September 19, 2006

The breast of times | Salon Life

If asked to explain why this is right for my own child, I would answer by asking whether it might not be right for many children, if their mothers' inclinations and social support allowed. I might cite anthropologist Katherine Dettwyler, whose research posits a natural biological age for weaning of 2.5 to 7 years, or add that my son is unremarkable, globally speaking: The worldwide average age of weaning is 4.2 years. But there are few facts beyond these to offer.
No matter; in this, as in many other parenting dilemmas, I've come to rest as much on hope as on fact, and more on our own idiosyncratic story than on any official one. Dostoevski wrote that a single happy memory might be all man needs to avoid despair. My son will probably have many. Maybe one of them will be one I share, one involving the ABCs and a few peaceful moments at the edge of sleep. And maybe one day that will matter more than either of us can know right now.

So I will just enjoy it and let Jill pick apart the nasty comments that ensue.

Posted at 9:27 AM • Comments (0) • TrackBack

Breastfeeding averages

November 4, 2005

Every once in awhile, I like to point out facts that I think most mamas have heard, but some non-mamas might not have even thought about. This little essay is filled with such facts, the gist of which, for those who don't like to read a bunch of stuff, is:

The minimum predicted age for a natural age of weaning in humans is 2.5 years, with a maximum of 7.0 years.

Posted at 10:13 PM • Comments (0) • TrackBack

The evil and indecent booby strikes again!

October 18, 2005

CBC New Brunswick - Irving news pulls breastfeeding cover, fires editor

The Irving newspaper group has pulled the latest issue of Here magazine from store shelves and fired its editor after a photo of a breastfeeding baby appeared on its cover.
The photo is an extreme close-up of a tiny baby suckling at its mother's breast. The cover promoted a story about World Breastfeeding Week, which began Oct. 1. The story also highlighted the low rates of breastfeeding in New Brunswick.

Only in Amer...wait! That was fucking Canada?! What the fuck, eh?

[link via Dominion Paper]

Posted at 9:18 AM • Comments (3) • TrackBack

My sentiments, exactly.

November 17, 2004

JB and Sandy.com

Oh, good grief. I had no idea there were so many ignorant people in Austin. It's just a breast. I really don't see what the big deal is.

The 620 Cafe and Bakery will never have my business. Instead, they will get e-mails and phone calls from me.

Here is a resource for breastfeeding media watch from the Texas Department of Health. I'd like to point this out to the proprieters of the 620 Cafe and Bakery in Austin:

SUBCHAPTER A. BREAST-FEEDING RIGHTS AND POLICIES

Sec. 165.001. LEGISLATIVE FINDING. The legislature finds that breast-feeding a baby is an important and basic act of nurture that must be encouraged in the interests of maternal and child health and family values. In compliance with the breast-feeding promotion program established under the federal Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (42 U.S.C. Section 1771 et seq.), the legislature recognizes breast-feeding as the best method of infant nutrition.
Added by Acts 1995, 74th leg., ch.600, SS1, eff.Aug . 28, 1995

Sec. 165.002. RIGHT TO BREAST-FEED. A mother is entitled to breast-feed her baby in any location in which the mother is authorized to be.

Posted at 8:02 PM • Comments (0) • TrackBack

Starbucks Lactivism

August 23, 2004

I guess I missed last Saturday's nurse in here in Austin, but there's lots of information here about the campaign to convince Starbucks that harassing nursing mamas is not cool.

Granted, I don't really actually ever go to Starbucks, but I think it's really important that breastfeeding as an act is totally safe and accepted whereever a mama is welcome.

Posted at 7:28 PM • Comments (4) • TrackBack

suck my left one, hoover house.

July 22, 2004

Just read this news story about a woman who was asked to leave Hoover House restaurant in Iowa for feeding her baby:

Carl Nelson, owner of the Hoover House Restaurant, on July 3 asked Iowa City resident Amy Schoon to either nurse her 8-month-old son in a restroom, cover herself more, or leave the restaurant. Schoon, who said she was appropriately covered, left.

Joy had this, among other things, to say in response:

Some women feel that they should be able to whip their breasts out and feed a baby regardless of who is around them. Pull the shirt off and bare everything. No blanket, no coverups, no nothing, because it's the natural way to feed a child. One woman even commented in the article that no one complained about seeing a baby exposed when it's diaper was changed. Well I would rather see a 3 month old babies butt than a 35 year old woman's breast to be honest.

I don't have much time to respond right now, but I totally disagree with Joy's take, and I'd like to send out a hearty fuck off to the proprieter of this Hoover House restaurant. While I respect Joy's right to choose to not breastfeed in public, I don't think anyone should feel self-conscious or wrong about doing so. The law is actually on my side on this one. Many states, including Iowa and Texas have laws that specify that women have the legal right to breastfeed their children whereever they are allowed to be. There's nothing in the law that specifies that a woman must wear a freaking blanket over her body in order to do so.

I'm so terribly sorry that some people can't deal with the sight of my floppy, milk-swollen breast. I understand it's not the most beautiful thing to most of the world, but it's beautiful to the one person who counts when I'm whipping it out for the purpose of breastfeeding.

People who have problems with the idea of women who breastfeed in public need to seriously get over themselves and examine what their real issue is. I've hung out with dozens of breastfeeding moms in my lifetime and have never once had an experience where a woman was waving her breast around in the air, demanding the attention of anyone other than the hungry baby. If that bothers you, maybe you ought to move to a planet where everyone chooses to feed their children synthetically so that there's no potential whatsoever for any natural processes will interfere with your view of the wet t-shirt contest.

Posted at 1:55 PM • Comments (16) • TrackBack

How Doctors and Hospitals Undermine Breastfeeding

October 21, 2003

I'm coming up on the three-year anniversary of my nursing relationship with Coley. At this point, he nurses maybe once or twice a day at the most, and he seems to be working towards weaning naturally, without any interference from me.

Monk self-weaned at seven months of age, but I don't blame the doctors or the hospital for that. I think much of the reason Monk weaned early was because I was working full-time and just wasn't able to spend as much time establishing the nursing relationship with him. He was fed bottles of pumped breastmilk mixed with artificial baby milk (ABM) for much of the time that he was nursing. And by the time he weaned, he was pretty much eating three square meals of solid food a day.

When Monk was a newborn in the neonatal unit, I wasn't actually given the option to nurse him - I pretty much had to demand it. I was also sent home with a package of "information" about my new baby, much of which included coupons for ABM and free samples. My doctor put me on a mailing list for the manufacturers of ABM to send me still more samples...

It's easy to see how some parents might reach for that first can of pre-mixed ABM in a panic or out of frustration. The first few weeks of breastfeeding can be very stressful and almost uncertain, particularly for a first-time mama. It starts to look like a really good idea to feed a baby ABM on the fifth or sixth night in a row that the baby has been up screaming and it just doesn't "feel" like he is getting enough milk. ABM manufacturers know this - and this is the reason for the free sample.

Once a mama has used ABM, it can be a slippery slope from which the nursing cycle has difficulty recovering. The biology of nursing is based on a supply and demand relationship in which there are often phases of frequent demand to build up supply for a growth spurt or recovery from illness. Giving a baby ABM, while definitely understandable, can interfere with the process and cause diminished supply.

Let me make it clear, too, that ABM is not merely an alternative choice. Rather, it is an inferior method of providing a child with mere nutrition, where breasfeeding supplies a child with not only nutritional balance, but also with immunity to disease, as well as skin to skin contact that is vital to emotional well-being.

"Sure, you can speak of the benefits of breast-feeding," explains Dr. Gartner. "But it's really just as accurate -- maybe more accurate -- to speak of the risks of formula-feeding. Unfortunately, the large volume of medical literature we now have that demonstrates this is written from the perspective of proving the 'advantages' of breast-feeding -- as if formula-feeding were the gold standard. But when you read the literature the other way around -- as it should be read, really -- the results are rather startling."
These "startling" results were crystallized in the AAP's exhaustively researched 1998 Policy Statement on Breast-feeding and the Use of Human Milk. For the first time, parents can easily access a readable, comprehensive overview of all the most current medical literature related to infant feeding. Summarizing the results of their study, the AAP Policy Statement notes that infants who are not breast-fed "in the United States, Canada, Europe, and other developed countries, among predominantly middle-class populations" see an increased incidence and severity of such diseases as diarrhea (a malady from which approximately 500 American children aged 4 and under lose their lives each year), lower respiratory infection, otitis media (ear infections), bacteremia, bacterial meningitis, botulism, urinary tract infection, and necrotizing enterocolitis. The AAP goes on to say that a number of studies now indicate that breast milk may lower babies' risk for sudden infant death syndrome, insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, lymphoma (cancer), allergic diseases, and other chronic digestive diseases.

"More than 1,000 childhood deaths per year in the United States could be prevented through breast-feeding," says Dr. Allan Cunningham, associate professor of pediatrics at the State University of New York Health Science Center, Syracuse and the author of scholarly articles on the mortality risks of bottle-fed babies in the United States. "This includes infants who die from a wide variety of illnesses such as diarrheal diseases like rotavirus, as well as pneumonia and bacterial meningitis. Although the 'Back to Sleep' campaign has made a large dent in the number of babies who die each year from crib death, my estimate is that you roughly double the statistical risk of a baby dying of SIDS if you formula-feed. This is something parents just aren't made aware of."

Why, then, is ABM aggressively advertised to new parents IN hospitals? I can understand why doctors would want to give free samples and coupons to parents who have not chosen to nurse or who are not able to nurse, but why are they given to parents who have clearly stated a desire to breasfeed?

Um, money? Money. Money. Money.

I'll have to come back and add more links later, I need to feed the kids breakfast.

Posted at 9:05 AM • Comments (5) • TrackBack

Breastfeeding Photo Contest

September 11, 2003

Thanks to aimee for the link to this site, which contains some really beautiful photos of breastfeeding mamas.

Posted at 7:32 PM • Comments (3) • TrackBack

Breastfeeding Awareness Week

August 2, 2003

Word has it that the Austin mamas will be holding their nurse out at the big fancy hoity toity Barton Creek Mall. Meet us there to nurse with us, or offer moral support. From the ProMom nurse out organization site:

Austin-area nursing moms will be gathering on Friday, August 8, 2003 at the Food Court at the Barton Creek Square Mall from 11 AM to 12 Noon.

It should be quite a time. Coley DID end up nursing last year, at the very end. I doubt very much that he will actually nurse in public this year, but you never know. He might be inspired by all of the other booby babies.

Meanwhile, Scratchmittens is raising breastfeeding awareness by sharing breasfeeding anecdotes on her blog all week. Go read them...they are very nice.

Posted at 12:37 PM • Comments (0) • TrackBack

It's almost that time again...

July 29, 2003

August is almost upon us, and it's almost time for the National Nurse Out, sponsored by ProMom. I can't believe no one has organized a nurse out in Austin yet. I'm going to have to get my lactivist mamas on that task right away.

Last year, C was too interested in laying down on the floor and playing with his friend P to be interested in nursing at all. I doubt he will want to nurse this year, either...but I'm going to go anyway to lend moral support to the other mamas.

Meanwhile, Veggiemama linked up this awesome pro-breasfeeding Baby Blues strip.

Posted at 4:08 PM • Comments (3) • TrackBack

Nummy Detectives!

July 18, 2003

Through the superior investigation skills of Charris, a pretty significant link between the idiot who wrote that article for Real Simple and the makers of Enfamil. Proving that the fucking formula companies have their dirty little bacteria-laden fingers in just about everybody's pie.

Dr. Petrikovsky's major research interests are fetal medicine, prenatal diagnosis, fetoscopy, fetal cardiology, ob/gyn sonography and invasive procedures. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and 10 book chapters. His most recent contribution is a textbook 'Fetal Disorders', which was published by John Wiley & Sons. His research awards include a recognition award from the Brooklyn Gynecologic Society and the Obstetrical Society of Boston. He has also received the Howard Levine, MD Science Award, a Traveling Fellowship from Bristol-Myers, Squibble/Mead Johnson and an award from the Italian Society of Perinatal Medicine.

Thanks to Scratchmittens for the link.

Posted at 4:26 PM • Comments (3) • TrackBack

Madame Insane Vs. Real Simple

July 12, 2003

Ms. Insane linked up a ridiculous tip from Real Simple magazine that listed breastfeeding as something that could be cut from your schedule to save time.

I know, I know it sounds absolutely ridiculous. Anyone with more than 2 contiguous brain cells knows that not only does breastfeeding save time spent washing bottles and preparing formula, not to mention going to the store and getting formula, not to mention potential sick time due to the lack of antibodies in formula, not to mention...I could go on and on.

Anyway, this kind of shit is totally unacceptable, and it makes me feel that it's absolutely imperitive that we reclaim the phrase "simple living" and apply it NOT to the consumerist movement that dictates which expensive accessories one must buy to live simply, but to the true state of consuming as little as possible and utilizing resources and time in an environmentally efficient manner.

Read what Ms. Insane says about this, educate yourself on breastfeeding vs. bottle feeding, if you aren't already educated, and give Real Simple (a subsidiary of time freaking life) a piece of your mind. I'll be composing my letter tonight.

Posted at 5:22 PM • Comments (2) • TrackBack

An update on the terrorist breastfeeding mom.

May 13, 2003

Action Figures Sold Seperately sent me here for an update on this story. Tell it, mama!

I mean, here we are, with lots of death, drought, destruction and disaster in the world, but mention "breasts" and invariably, you get this collective nervous giggle - even though their primary purpose is the nourishing of infants.
While I have never met anyone who disputes research that shows breast milk is the healthiest thing we can feed infants, the b-word is an integral part of our popular culture.

Women get breast implants so they'll feel more attractive, while breasts bulge enticingly in commercials and out of teensy designer wisps of fabric at the awards shows.

Now, when is that national nurse out again?

(and I still say she should have just squirted them all in the eyes, but that's not on ProMOm's "3-minute activist" list. Go figure.)

Posted at 11:04 AM • Comments (3) • TrackBack

UNbefuckinglievable

April 25, 2003

Yomama sent me to this article:

Wolfe began to nurse the baby again, using her own bib and blanket. She says the man got out of his seat, walked over to hers and stood staring at her. She says she approached him afterward and twice asked if he had a problem with her feeding her son.
"He marched past me and to the very back of the cabin to talk to the flight attendant," she wrote. "He told her, 'This woman just assaulted me.' ... He then explained that the asking of two questions by a 'foreign national' in international airspace made him feel the victim of terror and as such he wanted to file an assault charge."

She says the flight attendants also began to call her and her travelling party "foreign nationals in international airspace on an international flight during a time of war." And she was informed both of the complaint and that it could be upgraded to a Level 3, which meant possible mandatory detainment by U.S. authorities for 24 hours, RCMP involvement and criminal charges for an act of war upon an American.

I suppose it wouldn't have helped for her to squirt them all in the fucking eyes...

Posted at 11:46 PM • Comments (0) • TrackBack