Bloomberg’s pro-breast-feeding initiative to lock away baby formula at 27 hospitals

nypost.com ^

[Sub-Driver]

Bloomberg’s pro-breast-feeding initiative to lock away baby formula at 27 hospitals

By MARY KAY LINGE

Last Updated: 5:52 AM, July 29, 2012

Posted: 11:19 PM, July 28, 2012

The nanny state is going after moms.

Mayor Bloomberg is pushing hospitals to hide their baby formula behind locked doors so more new mothers will breast-feed.

Starting Sept. 3, the city will keep tabs on the number of bottles that participating hospitals stock and use — the most restrictive pro-breast-milk program in the nation.

Under the city Health Department’s voluntary Latch On NYC initiative, 27 of the city’s 40 hospitals have also agreed to give up swag bags sporting formula-company logos, toss out formula-branded tchotchkes like lanyards and mugs, and document a medical reason for every bottle that a newborn receives.

While breast-feeding activists applaud the move, bottle-feeding moms are bristling at the latest lactation lecture.

“If they put pressure on me, I would get annoyed,” said Lynn Sidnam, a Staten Island mother of two formula-fed girls, ages 4 months and 9 years. “It’s for me to choose.”

Under Latch On NYC, new mothers who want formula won’t be denied it, but hospitals will keep infant formula in out-of-the-way secure storerooms or in locked boxes like those used to dispense and track medications.

With each bottle a mother requests and receives, she’ll also get a talking-to. Staffers will explain why she should offer the breast instead.

[Tea Party Terrorist]

Ignorance of whom? This notion of a newborn baby immediately latching onto their mother and having a drink right after birth simply is a fantasy in the overwhelming vast majority of cases. There is a reason why humans have been supplementing breast milk for thousands of years.

[petitfour]

I must know a whole heckuva lot of exceptions. And I must have birthed 10 exceptional children. I have ONE child who had formula. ONE. And that was a month after she was born. My mother must’ve birthed a lot of exceptions. And my grandmothers. And great-grandmothers. Now, on hubby’s side, things were different. My m-i-l was not interested in breastfeeding. I haven’t noticed any unusual health problems in hubby or his siblings. His maternal grandmother had a hard time breastfeeding her second child. She used formula over 60 years ago.

I was talking about replies from pro-breastfeeding folks as much as the pro-formula folks.

[Tea Party Terrorist]

Maybe it’s the mountains I live in. Our hospital has a bustling lactation center full of specialists to help new mothers with breastfeeding. (I wonder why they even have one if it’s so easy?) They try to tell you it’s simple but they privately admitted to us it was rare to not ever supplement.

Congrats on your 10 kids, I couldn’t even begin to imagine.

[petitfour]

Formula probably costs the government a lot of money via WIC or other government agencies. Breastmilk is free. And studies show that breastfed babies are less likely to grow up to be obese.

The Mayor needs to let people make their own decisions about what to eat and drink.

[petitfour]

I have never needed a lactation consultant. That doesn’t mean that they did not barge into my hospital room over and over again to check on me. I did have one (but maybe she was a nurse) who taught me something new. I guess she had been very ill and living overseas when one of her children was born. She was devastated that she could not breastfeed when her child was born. But she learned that all the plumbing would still work months after giving birth. So after she was recovered from her illness, she breastfed her then several months old baby. That was fascinating to me.