Posted on 04/05/2010 2:31:01 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CHICAGO – The lives of nearly 900 babies would be saved each year, along with billions of dollars, if 90 percent of U.S. women fed their babies breast milk only for the first six months of life, a cost analysis says.
Those startling results, published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics, are only an estimate. But several experts who reviewed the analysis said the methods and conclusions seem sound.
"The health care system has got to be aware that breast-feeding makes a profound difference," said Dr. Ruth Lawrence, who heads the American Academy of Pediatrics' breast-feeding section.
The findings suggest that there are hundreds of deaths and many more costly illnesses each year from health problems that breast-feeding may help prevent. These include stomach viruses, ear infections, asthma, juvenile diabetes, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and even childhood leukemia.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Sorry to hear that,, I would hope that lactation nurses would be able to handle delicate situations without making things worse..
The kid will eat when he is good and hungry and if he doesn’t, the formulas can do the job just fine. Ya can always breast pump and sneak some to him on the side in a bottle..
Even LIFE Magazine thought it was so cool they ran a full page picture of it--a whole line of women sitting in a factory-like setting, expressing milk into little beakers.
I think breast feeding is fine but way beyond where any damn busybodies have a right to tell people what they "should" do.
Teach me to generalize from personal experience!
I didn’t find that breastfeeding prevented ear infections, in particular. All my kids had them, including the ones that went longest without eating food, until I started cleaning out their ears with Tea Tree Oil. On the other hand, one of my friends has a daughter with Down Syndrome, and she attributes the avoidance of ear infections (endemic in Downs children because of defects in the ear canal) to breastfeeding.
So, in conclusion, nurse the babies as long as humanly possible! It’s free! And I’ve lost the snake. Oh, dear ...
Suggest that they consult the Couple to Couple League to learn about fertility awareness and nutritional support. Dues are about $20 a year.
www.ccli.org
Thank you so much for the info! I will definitely pass that along!
Maybe if a baby starts out sickly, breast-feeding has an advantage. But my kids could not be any healthier if they'd been raised on nectar of the gods.
Mrs WBill credits the breast milk. Makes as much sense as anything, I guess.
Lots of Boob-Nazis out there, though. I had to toss one out of the hospital room our first time around. She was making my wife cry, she was so dead set on making sure that our kids were breast fed. "Pumping is not the same as breastfeeding", "What you're doing isn't correct" etc etc etc.
Sometimes, it's nice to be one of those eeeeeeeeevil conservatives. Gives me license to say what's on my mind, and not apologize later. :-)
On a related note, Mrs WBill made all of our baby food herself. Worked great, got the kids liking veggies, something that I've not mastered yet, myself. And, it saved a small fortune.
See my post 27. Wonder if we were at the same hospital.
You’re welcome. Fertility awareness can help many couples with marginal fertility to conceive naturally. In addition, if the issue is with the woman, observation of her symptoms can help to pinpoint whether the cause is hormonal, physical, nutritional ... or what. This makes treatment much easier. Simple interventions (change of underwear, for example) can also help if the issue is the man’s fertility.
I myself was breast-fed. That may explain how I became the infatuating individual that I am today. /humor
God’ perfect food in the perfect package.
I hear that from others, although I didn't meet them. I haven't met the anti-boob Nazis, either. I must just spend all my time with *nice* people. One of my college friends, having her first child around 35, was surprised when I said the baby would be fine being formula-fed. "Whatever works for you, just feed her!"
Breastfeeding often isn't effortless, especially for a first-time mother, and isn't always possible for a mother. It's not easy to draw the line between promoting an ideal and being unreasonable and unrealistic.
Those would be non-aborted babies, I presume.
I can’t help wondering, based on my own experience, how many lives would be save if every parent wiped the baby’s ears out with Tea Tree Oil twice a week. What else do babies die from, other than antibiotic allergy, and how would breastfeeding vs. formula feeding, as opposed to other changes, affect those deaths?
P U K E !
Just make sure they all do it out of view of anyone else!!
1 to 2 years? To me that borders a sickness.
I’m not sure formula works just fine. I was fed mostly formula and I have a very poor immune system.
My youngest came out of the womb puking everything up. After she barfed up her first feeding, the nurse and I thought that maybe she had swallowed some amniotic fluid and it upset her stomach. But that was to be her experience for almost a year and a half. I gave up breastfeeding very quickly as I just didn't have the stamina or the desire to double feed her constantly. The first bottle always came up but the second stayed down. It got quite expensive especially since we had to get more expensive kind. Today, at 6yrs old, she won't eat hardly anything.
One thing that I have noticed is that half the neighborhood kids have caps all over their teeth and cavities galore. My kids don't. Although my youngest did get formula, I held her when she was feeding--like you do when nursing. Neither of my kids walked around with bottles hanging from their teeth or fell asleep with them and i'm sure that's helped.
I hear so much about boob-nazis, but I’ve never met one.
My youngest son quit nursing at about a year, and was losing weight, so I put him on formula...It seemed ridiculously complicated, I can’t imagine doing it unless there as no other choice. Any time I went somewhere, I had to make sure I had water, formula, adequate bottles, burp rags, etc...Trying to figure out how much he would eat per pay period...watching dollars go down the drain when he didn’t finish a bottle...ugh.
I think if women knew how much of a pain in the butt formula is, more would at least make an effort to breastfeed.
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