Nursing Your Kids

Elizabeth Jett, mother to an exclusively breastfed infant and a five-year-old, failed to show up for jury duty in Maryland this October. She initially attempted to get out of service until the summer, but court officials denied her request offering her dates in January instead. Rather than agree to a date in January, she just didn’t show up to court and called in the morning of her service to say she wasn’t going. In January she was asked to come in to talk with the judge about her situation and found she was actually being held in contempt of court.

Breastfeeding a young infant is incredibly time consuming. Even if Jett were able to find appropriate child care she’d still need to be excused from court proceedings several times a day in order to express milk. Postponing her jury duty for a few extra months makes it more likely that she’d be able to serve well, rather than being distracted by her rock-hard boobs and the fear of squirting breastmilk all over her fellow jurors. I don’t think that it was right of her to just skip out on jury duty and I don’t think that it was wrong of the judge to hold her in contempt of court under the circumstances, but mothers of infants should be given some leeway in regards to rescheduling jury duty.

Lawmakers have proposed legislation that would allow breastfeeding mothers with young children to be excused from jury duty. This hasn’t gone over well.

Brian Frosh, Chair for the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, said the law would cause more people to try to postpone their duties, “If you start saying, we’re gonna excuse people for breastfeeding, you’ve gotta say ok to kidney dialysis, chemotherapy and all the other maladies that afflict the human condition.”

Frosh was also quoted as saying, “I really hope we don’t have to get in the business of passing laws for every excuse you may have for jury duty,” because obviously chemo is a lousy excuse for skipping out on one’s civic duties. Did my sarcasm come across clearly enough there? Because clearly Frosh is a dick. I mean seriously, chemo isn’t a good enough excuse to be excused from jury duty? Has he ever met anyone going through chemotherapy?

Frosh’s dickheadery aside, I think that Jett screwed up big time by failing to report. The law is law. Had she responded to letters and agreed to reschedule she wouldn’t be in this position.

Want to hear about my spectacularly bad birthday? We were our way to the zoo Saturday morning, with Bob’s cousins and cousin’s children following us in their car. I was driving. I merged onto the highway and a car a few cars ahead of us was scared to merge and stopped. The next car in line stopped, I stopped, but Bob’s cousin didn’t. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw he was still moving so I was prepared for the impact and I was relieved that it didn’t cause us to hit the car in front of us.

Sam in the back seat was fine, Bob and I were fine, the cousin and family were fine, but the cars? Not so much. Their small SUV smashed in our bumper pretty good. The trunk won’t latch, the taillights are busted, the license plate is pushed under the car, the license plate light is dangling and there’s other damage I can’t think of right now. Their car fared a bit better, but the front was smashed and was leaking antifreeze so it wasn’t safe to drive either.

We went directly to an auto body shop (where the cars are still waiting to be inspected by Bob’s cousin’s insurance.) We made some phone calls, rented some cars at the rental place next door, and about an hour later we stopped back at the house so I could pick up a book and my laptop. Bob drove me to the hospital where I reported to Labor and Delivery. They strapped me to contraction monitors to make sure the baby was okay and I wasn’t going into premature labor. I had to stay there for four hours which ended up being closer to five since the resident on duty didn’t put the time into the system until he saw me, about half an hour after I arrived and twenty minutes after I’d been hooked up.

Awesome. My car was smashed, its value to us is way more than its value to the insurance company which means they may or may not fix it rather than total it, and I spent four hours hooked up to contraction monitors on my 30th birthday. Let’s hope that’s not an omen for the year to come.

2.30 am.
I’m jolted awake by the sound of Sam screaming, “Dada! Dada!” Since Bob got up with him for the previous night’s wakeup I drag myself out of bed to get him figuring a trip to the bathroom wouldn’t hurt and this is as good of an excuse as any.

Sam, standing at the gate trying to close the door behind him, is not happy to see me and screams, “No, mama! Mama, go! Mama back in bed. Mama back in bed. Dada! Dada! Dada!” I walk past him and go to the bathroom. I hear Bob get up. On my way back to bed I hear Sam still complaining about something. I get back into bed. Sam and Bob are still talking then it’s quiet. I fall back to sleep.

3.30 am
I’m jolted awake by the sound of Sam screaming, “Dada! Dada!” I look over and see that Bob’s not back in bed which means that Sam probably woke when Bob was trying to leave his room. I drag myself out of bed to get him figuring a trip to the bathroom wouldn’t hurt and this is as good of an excuse as any. Bob’s beaten me to the bathroom so I stop at Sam’s door to tell him to get back into bed. He’s dropped his Thomas train over the gate. He tells me to get back into bed, to go and that he wants dada. I tell him to get back into bed if he wants Thomas back. He yells, “Mama go!” so I continue down the hallway and meet Bob coming out of the bathroom.

On my way back to bed I look in and see that Sam and Bob are in Sam’s bed. Bob’s trying to go back to sleep and Sam’s sitting up, complaining. I walk over the gate and give Sam his Thomas train back. He cries, “Mama, stay! Mama lie down.” So I tell Bob I’ve got it and he gets out of bed and I climb in. Sam’s quiet for a moment and hands me his Spencer train. “Mama hold it.” I take it.

We both lay in bed, clutching our respective trains then there’s a noise from my bedroom. Sam bolts upright and yells, “Mama go. Mama out of bed. Dada!” He starts to push me and pull the covers off of me. I say, “Alright, alright,” and I sit up at the foot of his bed. He tells me to go a few more times but I ignore him. He’s tired and looks like he’ll fall back to sleep. He murmurs for me to take the gate off a few times. After 10 minutes or so I stand up and cover him. He sits up and tells me to lie down. I’m tired, so I do. I fall asleep scrunched in the small space of twin bed he’s allowed me.

4.54 am
I wake and realize I should try to sneak out of bed. I look over and Sam knows exactly what I’m trying to do. He’s got one eye open. I lay back down. His eye closes. I sit up. It opens. I realize I’m dreaming and that Sam’s sound asleep. I get up and go back to my own bed.

I saw a question on a message board where a mother with the flu asked if it was still safe to nurse her child, fearing that she’d pass on whatever illness she had to him.

Last winter, when Sam was still nursing regularly, I became ill with a stomach virus on two separate occasions. The first time I got it first and he didn’t get sick at all. At the time I attributed it to him receiving my anti-bodies through my breastmilk. I figured he was better able to fight the virus because he was nursing full time. The second time I got a virus he got it first and passed it to me. I definitely got the worst of it. He woke up in the middle of the night vomiting. He vomited three or four times then he was done. I wasn’t so lucky. I was ill for days starting the morning after he was sick, but he stayed well hydrated and calm because he was able to nurse. Again, I felt that he benefited from the breastmilk. If he’d been on formula he may not have fared so well.

Here’s what Kellymom has to say:

The best thing you can do for your baby when you’re sick is to continue to breastfeed. When you have a contagious illness such as a cold, flu, or other mild virus, your baby was exposed to the illness before you even knew you were sick. Your milk will not transmit your illness to baby, but it does have antibodies in it that are specific to your illness (plus anything else you or baby have been exposed to) - they’ll help prevent baby from getting sick, or if he does get sick, he’ll probably not be as sick as you.

You can also take measures to prevent baby from getting sick by doing the usual things to prevent the spread of illness: washing hands often, avoid sneezing/coughing on baby, limiting face-to-face contact, etc .

A Utah couple recently lost their second child. Their first child died in 2003 after accidental asphyxiation while sleeping in her parent’s bed. The second child, whose cause of death was undetermined, died in the night sleeping between his parents. The couple is being charged with child-abuse homicide. According to court documents, the couple was warned against co-sleeping by their pediatrician the day before their child’s death. From the Salt Lake Tribune:

Prosecutors and health officials say the case should serve as a reminder to parents to put their kids to bed in a crib, in part because studies have found connections between bedsharing and SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome.

“If you do it safely, the risks are so low. The fear is really taken out of it,” said Melissa Knighton, a Salt Lake City mother who sleeps with her 19-month-old daughter, Abigail, and uses a crib to store toys. “By just saying, ‘The child died of co-sleeping,’ that doesn’t tell us anything at all. There’s dangerous ways to crib sleep, too.”

I don’t know what to make of this. First of all, I can’t imagine the grief this family must be feeling. But I’m not sure about whether it’s right to prosecute them for parenting. I don’t know the circumstances of how they slept. I don’t know if the parents are drug or alcohol users/abusers, if they sleep in a fluffy bed full of pillows, down comforters and feather beds, if they’re obese or if they’ve just been the victims of misfortune. Without knowing more details about the sleeping arrangements it’s difficult to determine whether this was a form of child-abuse homicide.

Salt Lake County District Attorney Lohra Miller - who said she nursed her children and occasionally fell asleep, only to startle awake - said her office is not out to prosecute co-sleeping parents when deaths occur.

The couple were reportedly heavy sleepers, and advocates advise against co-sleeping in such cases.

We co-slept off and on for the first year of Sam’s life. I didn’t want to at first because I was terrified of SIDS, but nighttime nursing sessions inevitably ended up with both of us falling asleep. I’d startle awake and transfer him to the pack n play beside our bed six or seven times a night. But then I found myself startling awake to check to make sure he was breathing. If I couldn’t hear him or couldn’t feel his little chest rise and fall I’d panic and hover above him looking for signs of movement. As sleep deprivation took its toll it became easier to just adjust his swaddle and put him on his back beside me. Then I read some arguments in favor of co-sleeping.

Here are the preliminary findings based on mother-infant pairs studied in the sleep-sharing arrangement versus the solitary-sleeping arrangement (Elias 1986, McKenna 1993, Fleming 1994; Mosko 1994):

Even though these studies are being conducted in sleep laboratories instead of the natural home environment, it’s likely that within a few years enough mother-infant pairs will be studied to scientifically validate what insightful mothers have long known: something good and healthful occurs when mothers and babies share sleep. (read the full article at Dr. Sears’ website)

Dr. Sears and other co-sleeping advocates made me feel better about my choice to keep Sam in bed beside me. We took all precautions, making sure that no pillows or blankets were close to Sam and always placed him on his back. Nighttime wakings were frequent, but rolling over to nurse became second nature and I no longer had to fully awaken. When he started sleeping for longer, six-hour stretches when he was about four or five months old we moved him to a crib in his own room, next door to ours. Each night when he’d wake up to nurse I’d bring him into bed with me where he’d stay until morning. We kept this arrangement up until he was close to a year old and no longer slept well in bed beside me.

I truly believe that co-sleeping is beneficial for mothers and babies when done safely.

The research on bedsharing and infant death is mixed. A 2005 study of SIDS deaths in Scotland found the largest risk occurred when parents slept with infants on a couch and when the baby was less than 11 weeks old. Other studies have found a higher risk of SIDS with infants of low birth weights, among mothers who smoked, among parents have consumed alcohol or are overtired.

Supporters of co-sleeping often cite James McKenna, director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. He says a blanket admonishment is simplistic and confuses “normal, healthy human behavior” with pathology.

I’m sure that co-sleeping is dangerous if you’re drunk or stoned or on a soft, fluffy couch. But for the parents who aren’t reckless, for parents who sleep together with their child mindfully and safely, co-sleeping allows for a good night’s sleep and provides bonding time for working parents who don’t always have the luxury of spending time with their baby during the day.

To sleep safely with your child:

For more information on co-sleeping safely, the benefits of co-sleeping and the risks, Sleeping with Your Baby is an excellent resource.

First up a video from Fox News Boston. If you don’t feel like clicking over, the story is that a woman brought her five kids to Old Country Buffet for lunch. She wanted to nurse her youngest privately in the banquet room. The lights were on in the room and the doors were open, but the woman was told by a waitress that the room was closed. She and her family were seated in the center of the restaurant. She asked the waitress and the manager if she could just nurse her son in the room, but according to her story she was told no by both employees and that she had to nurse her son at her table. She wants an apology. The manager claims she never said she wanted to breastfeed in the banquet room. The waitress claims she told the woman she could breastfeed in the room but they couldn’t eat their meals in the room. An apology is unlikely since Massachusetts has no public breastfeeding laws.

My take is that the woman doesn’t deserve an apology. She wasn’t asked to leave the restaurant she was just told she couldn’t use a private section to do so. The restaurant was perfectly comfortable with her nursing her child. She wasn’t. I can understand why the restaurant employees wouldn’t allow her entire family to eat in a closed section. The section wasn’t staffed and opening it to her family would encourage others to eat there as well. It sounds to me like the woman just wanted a private section where all of her children could eat undisturbed. What do you think?

The next story out of Albany is about a woman, Kristin Kelly, who was asked to leave the New York State Museum by an employee. She stopped to nurse her child on a bench, covered up with three blankets, and a woman wearing a name tag who looked like a museum employee told Kelly she was offended and that she should nurse her child in the bathroom. Kelly kept breastfeeding her son, but she was upset and embarrassed by the incident.

The museum’s response was that based on Kelly’s description the woman who asked her to move was probably not a museum employee. They also want to stress that they are family friendly and women are welcome to breastfeed wherever they want. New York state laws protect a woman’s right to breastfeed wherever they want.

It sounds to me like the woman who asked Kelly to move was probably not a museum staff member, but if she was I think the museum’s response was appropriate. It sucks to feel nervous and embarrassed when you’re trying to feed your child in public, but it’s good to know the museum was on Kelly’s side. But three blankets! She really wanted to make sure she was adequately covered. I’ve always found that the more you try and hide what you’re doing the more attention it seems to draw. I’d like to recommend a Hooter Hider. They’re lightweight, stylish, and you only need one to cover up completely.

I started getting sick on Superbowl Sunday. We were on our way to a party and I could feel my head begin to fog over. Since Sam was with us we didn’t stay at the party too long, but by the time we got home I was officially sick.

Monday morning I was so foggy I could barely function. Sam was fine and I knew I’d never survive without him taking a nap so I took him out to the children’s museum for the morning, being careful to sanitize my hands at every sanitizing station and making sure to cough into my sleeve so as not to infect the other children. By the end of our two-hour visit I needed a nap more than Sam did. By evening I was running a fever.

My mother-in-law came over Tuesday morning so I could take a nap, but I still had a slight fever by evening and Sam had gotten my cough and stuffy nose. By Wednesday morning, after a mostly sleepless night for the entire family, Sam had a fever and was as miserable as I was.

I’m not usually a baby when I’m sick. I don’t whine about it and I’ll generally just pop some ibuprofen and get on with my life. Most of my illnesses just last a few days anyway. But being sick when you’re pregnant is tough. And being sick when you have to take care of a sick toddler is tougher. Aside from the fact that Sam’s been waking at night whether he’s sick or not, I’ve been waking up several times a night because I’m pregnant. Last night I was in bed with Sam by 9 after he’d woken up miserable in his own bed. By 7 this morning I’d been out of bed half a dozen times to use the bathroom and Sam in his restless, feverish state had woken me up another half a dozen times.

The thought of doing this with two kids is terrifying.

On a lighter note, here’s a recipe for chicken noodle soup and a picture from the always hilarious Lol cats.

ABC News reported on phthalates in baby products. Like reports on BPA, I find this alarming.

Some environmental medicine experts worry that parents using any one of dozens of baby products could be exposing their children to chemicals that could hurt their reproductive ability later on in life.

I keep going back and forth between using expensive, all-natural products for Sam’s bath and deciding I can’t spend $11 on a small bottle of bubble bath. But I think I’m going to have to suck it up and shell out the big bucks or figure out how to make something natural and effective myself.

In the comments of my post about pumping exclusively Katharine wrote, Exclusive pumping because you don’t want to sit still and breastfeed sounds mechanical and icky to me.

Caro followed up by writing, Katharine, I bet that one woman’s relaxing is another woman’s icky.

These are both excellent points. When I first read about exclusive pumping (note: for some reason I can’t help but write pumpkin instead of pumping-and yes I just corrected that- every single freaking time I write it) I assumed women did it because they had to. It never occurred to me that someone who didn’t want to physically nurse their baby would actually go to all of the trouble of pumping. And pumpking (see!!!) is trouble. There’s equipment to wash, there’s milk to store, parts to assemble and disassemble, and then there’s the actual part where you have to hope the letdown reflex will kick in and hope you’re pumping enough. When you’re pumpking (ugh, I can’t make it stop- I may have to switch to the verb expressing) exclusively every ounce counts much more than if you’re just expressing occasionally.

It seems strange to me that someone (once all latch problems are under control) would rather hook up to a machine than hook up to a baby, especially for those middle of the night feedings. But strange to me isn’t necessarily strange to someone else. Like caro said, one woman’s relaxing is another woman’s icky.

A recent article in Babble about expressing exclusively brought some interesting points.

“I don’t think there’s any question” breast milk is superior to formula, said Dr. Ruth Lawrence, a professor of pediatrics and expert on breastfeeding at the University of Rochester. “I would opt for breast milk in a bottle rather than no breast milk at all.”

Still, she said, drinking pumped breast milk from a bottle differs considerably from nursing. “Babies who suckle at the breast — that’s the physiological way to feed. The baby doesn’t get the same kind of activity — tongue, mouth, swallow — when it is feeding from the bottle.” And, she added, “it’s been shown that the die is cast for obesity in the first year of life, and we tend to overfeed babies when we bottle feed them.”

For the two months I was expressing for Sam I remember that everyone who tried to bottle feed him, especially his grandmothers, tried to insist that he finish what was in the bottle whether he wanted it or not. I’m sure that this would have been the case whether it was formula or breastmilk, but that desire to see a baby finish a bottle is completely different than letting a baby nurse until he or she is finished. I’m sure that bottle fed babies are over fed, which is why they created a growth chart for breastfed babies. Even so, I don’t know that this is the best point for a breastfeeding advocate to make. So many women are turned off by experiences with pushy and rude lactation consultants that this point, that you’re basically setting your kid up for obesity by bottle feeding them isn’t going to make them feel any better about their decision to breastfeed, no matter what form the breastfeeding takes.

The balance of foremilk and hindmilk that helps nursing babies first satisfy their hunger, then feel full is missing when pumped milk mixes in a bottle. And psychologically there can be more pressure to finish a bottle when expressed breast milk represents so much work for the mother.

Yes! They call it liquid gold. It’s painful to see it go to waste.

Dr. Lawrence worries that most women aren’t getting the proper support when they set out to nurse their babies, and that some women find the idea so distasteful they don’t try. “Some women do it because they can’t envision the baby suckling at their breast. I suspect it has to do with our whole modern attitude about the breast. It’s become such a sex object.”

Wanting to physically separate yourself from your baby because you view your breasts as sex objects, not a temporary source of nourishment, is something that I find icky. Yes, breasts are sexual, but the inability to put that aside for the brief time period that a child needs them for food just seems cold to me.

All the women I spoke with would agree on one thing: mothers who wish to breastfeed would benefit from better support and information. Inconsistent, inconsiderate nurses and lactation consultants, doctors who either push formula or ignore mothers’ requests for help with nursing, and rigid hospital policies regarding babies’ weight need to change. As Dr. Lawrence points out, babies have been losing weight in the days after birth since the beginning of the human race: it’s a feature, not a bug. By fetishing weights and measures, the modern healthcare establishment borrows from the formula industry while paying lip service to breastfeeding — a recipe of mixed messages that sets mothers up to fail.

It’s hard to feel confident in your decision to breastfeed when your baby just keeps losing weight. At his first appointment with his pro-breastfeeding pediatrician, when Sam had lost more than 10% of his birth weight and my milk had yet to come in, he was weighed both before and after I nursed him. He actually LOST weight in between. I felt like a failure. When his pediatrician recommended supplementing with formula with a dropper until my milk came in I felt like more of a failure. But I’d read enough to know that it was normal and I continued to nurse him every two hours whether he seemed interested or not. A meeting with a good lactation consultant, a kind lactation consultant who was patient and thorough and sweet to me and my baby helped ease my mind two days later. And by then my milk had come in, only I didn’t really know it because Sam was nursing so often I didn’t really become engorged. I could have been set up to fail just as easily as thousands of other women who give up nursing in the first few days. But I wasn’t. I was well-informed and had a good support system including a pediatrician who reminded me for the entire first year of his life that breastfed babies just don’t weigh as much as formula fed babies and that I shouldn’t put too much stock into the percentile charts as long as Sam was healthy and growing.

Whatever the reason for expressing milk instead of nursing, I still think it’s a worthwhile pursuit. And while I don’t necessarily understand the women who prefer expressing for sexual reasons, or just don’t feel like sitting down with a baby who nurses on and off all day long, I still think they’ve made a good choice. Breastmilk is best.

On my baby message board a number of women have written about exclusively pumping for their babies. The majority of these women had to pump instead of give milk “from the tap” because their babies were unable to latch correctly. Some of the babies couldn’t latch for medical reasons, either they were premature or they had cleft palate. Other mothers just had bad experiences with lactation consultants who were unwilling to listen and unable to help. A few women on the board who are first time mothers-to-be have expressed interest in pumping exclusively for their children because they don’t want to breastfeed, yet can’t deny the health benefits. One woman just said she doesn’t have the personality to breastfeed- her baby was a lazy eater who would consistently fall asleep at the breast. She couldn’t handle just sitting there and pumped to avoid the stress relaxing brought on.

I have mixed feelings about exclusively pumping. The idea of it makes me incredibly jealous. Women who pump can go out and leave their babies in the care of their husbands, family, friends, or other caretakers for more than an hour or two. They can have a break when they feel overwhelmed, and trust that their babies will eat. At the same time, these women have to get up in the middle of the night and attach themselves to a machine. They can’t just drag their babies along when they have a day’s worth of errands to run, they have to schedule time to pump or run the risk of their supply dropping.

When I weigh the advantages and disadvantages to both I can’t help but think that mothers who pump exclusively are making the bigger sacrifice. Pumping, which is something I admittedly did on a very limited basis, seems like so much more work to me. It’s time consuming, yes, but there’s something so luxuriously lazy about just sitting down to nurse for hours every day.

I don’t really have any answers or profound thoughts on the matter. It’s just something I’ve been mulling over.

I saw this article about an office that’s so breastfeeding friendly that nursing mothers are allowed to bring their child to work. Sure, it’s a WIC office, so employees are setting a good example for their clients at the same time, but even so, I’m impressed. Very impressed. I hope that more workplaces take notice and make their policies more flexible.

Blest be the sling that binds
Moms bond with their babies as they wear them, even to the job

She dreads the day when the sling will eventually have to be retired.

The Mother’s Milk Bank of New England, which I posted about last week, is a finalist in a contest to win $10,000 for startup funds through Ideablob.

The Mothers’ Milk Bank of New England is a newly formed non-profit milk bank serving babies, hospitals, and families throughout New England. The Milk Bank will provide screened and pasteurized breastmilk to premature and critically ill babies, primarily in neonatal intensive care units. This milk will be donated by volunteer mothers in our region. For sick and premature babies, breastmilk can mean the difference between life and death, and a short or long hospital stay. Studies have shown that premature babies who receive banked milk are far less likely to suffer life-threatening complications and have much faster recovery rates.

Please go to the site and vote for this worthwhile cause. It requires registration, but it’s quick and painless and mother’s milk can save lives.

I haven’t gotten a single comment on this site since December. I didn’t really think too much of it at first, but I was starting to feel kind of down about it. I mean, I know that breastfeeding is sort of a niche market, and I’m not a huge commenter on other sites which doesn’t really encourage comments here. But a month without comments? Not even one?

Anyway, I checked my spam filter and sure enough every legitimate comment was stuck with comments from “people” named Halo and Neo encouraging me to pierce delicate parts of my anatomy. My eyes began to bleed after the third page of spam comments so I gave up trying to rescue comments from the abyss and just deleted everything. So if you’ve commented recently and it hasn’t shown up I apologize. I’ll try and do better!

It’s not just me. Comments are funky all over 451 press.

The Lactivist posted about an online contest going on at Ideablob that allows anyone to post a business or non-profit idea and compete for $10,000, given away each month. The Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog is also encouraging people to vote.

One of the contestants is The Mothers’ Milk Bank of New England, a newly formed non-profit milk bank serving babies, hospitals, and families throughout New England.

The Milk Bank will provide screened and pasteurized breastmilk to premature and critically ill babies, primarily in neonatal intensive care units. This milk will be donated by volunteer mothers in our region. For sick and premature babies, breastmilk can mean the difference between life and death, and a short or long hospital stay. Studies have shown that premature babies who receive banked milk are far less likely to suffer life-threatening complications and have much faster recovery rates.

The Milk Bank needs money for:

1) Processing and storage equipment. $5,000 for the purchase of equipment; freezers, pasteurizers, refrigerator, etc.

2) Milk Money Fund. Insurance doesn’t always cover the cost of donor milk. $3,000 would be for our Milk Money Fund, to provide donor milk to families who cannot afford the processing and shipping fees.

3) Start-up marketing costs. $2,000 for publicizing the Milk Bank in our region, particularly to recruit potential milk donors i.e. radio public service announcements, web and print materials to educate the parents and medical providers about milk donation and use.

So, here’s our chance to make a big difference today. Here’s what to do:

·Go to the Milk Bank page on IdeaBlob, and vote for this project! You have to register first and confirm by email, which doesn’t take long.

·Blog or post about this wherever you can to help bring in more votes.

Thank you for your time today! And cross your fingers…

BPA is also present in many different brands of bottles and sippy cups. After reading numerous reports I ditched almost all of our sippy cup stash and replaced it with a few BPA free plastic sippy cups and two expensive, but awesome aluminum sippy cups.

Z Recommends has a series of posts on BPA and the companies that produce baby bottles and sippy cups. Here’s their shortlist of BPA-free baby products.

ZRecs BPA-Free Shortlist:
Bottles: Adiri | Born Free | MAM | Medela | Mother’s Milkmate
Sippys: Born Free | Klean Kanteen | Sassy | SIGG | Thermos
Pacifiers: Playtex | Gerber/NUK | First Years
Pumps and Supplies: Medela | Mother’s Milkmate

As for the unsafe, here’s their quick take:

If you are here to check on information about bottles or sippy cups you already have, we can say with some confidence that you should be most concerned if you are using bottles by Avent, Dr. Brown’s, Evenflo, the First Years, Munchkin, Nuby, Playskool, or Second Nature, or sippy cups or breast pumps by many of these brands. You are also likely, but less certain, to be using products containing Bisphenol-A if you are using bottles by Gerber, Playtex, or Tommee Tippee. We have included BFree in our “Brands to avoid” section for reasons of its own, which you can read at the link.

Read more about BPA levels in infant formula at Z Recommends.

I’m glad that more options for BPA-free products are coming into stores in time for my second child. Dr. Brown’s has already released a glass version of their popular bottle, Evenflo has glass bottles, and stores like Whole Foods stock other, less widely available brands like Born Free. It’s also a relief to know that one of my breast pumps is a Medela, as all of Medela products are made without BPA.