Nursing Your Kids

Breastfeeding has educational benefits

Jackie — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:27:11 +0000

I saw this on the front page of Yahoo.com this morning. It’s not every day a breastfeeding article makes it to the front page so I thought I’d post it here. This study is particularly interesting because it compares children who were breastfed to their siblings that were not. While I’m sure the naysayers will make some excuses for why this study is bogus, at least they won’t be able to make the same tired arguments about parental intelligence and socioeconomic factors.

Study links breastfeeding to high grades, college entry

Breastfed babies seem more likely to do well at high school and to go on to attend college than infants raised on a bottle, according to a new U.S. study.

Professors Joseph Sabia from the American University and Daniel Rees from the University of Colorado Denver based their research on 126 children from 59 families, comparing siblings who were breastfed as infants to others who were not.

By comparing siblings, the study was able to account for the influence of a variety of difficult-to-measure factors such as maternal intelligence and the quality of the home environment.

The study, published in the Journal of Human Capital, found that an additional month of breastfeeding was associated with an increase in high school grade point averages of 0.019 points and an increase in the probability of college attendance of 0.014.

“The results of our study suggest that the cognitive and health benefits of breastfeeding may lead to important long-run educational benefits for children,” Sabia, a professor of public policy who focuses on health economics, said in a statement.

“But this is just a start. Much work remains to be done to establish a definitive causal link.”

Sabia said the study, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, was the first to use sibling data in order to examine the effect of breastfeeding on high school completion and college attendance.

“By focusing on differences between siblings, we can rule out the possibility that family-level factors such as socioeconomic status are driving the relationship between having been breastfed and educational attainment,” said Rees, an economics professor.

Breastfeeding link roundup

Jackie — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:04:33 +0000

This article from US News & World Report says that breastfeeding is good for your heart.

The women provided information on their diets as well as their breast-feeding history. Researchers also collected information on body mass index (BMI, a ratio of weight to height) and the women’s medical histories. All participants sent in an annual medical review during the study. The average time in the study was just under eight years.

The study authors found that women who breast-fed for one or more months were less likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes, abnormal cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, but it wasn’t until after six months of total breast-feeding time that the trend toward lower heart disease risk became statistically significant, according to Schwarz.

“Even one or two months is going to improve a woman’s heart health, but the longer women breast-fed, the more benefit they got,” she said.

After a year of breast-feeding, the odds of having high blood pressure dropped by 12 percent; the odds of diabetes decreased by 20 percent; the rates of abnormal cholesterol levels went down by 19 percent; and the overall risk of cardiovascular disease fell by 9 percent, compared to women who never breast-fed, according to the study.

The Motherwear Breastfeeding blog posted links to two videos showing different methods of hand expressing milk, The Marmet Technique and a technique taught at Stanford Hospital.

PHD in Parenting wrote about breastfeeding “Nazis.” The two points in the piece are that, “…lactivists have not killed millions of people like the Nazis did,” and that, “…calling someone that is an enthusiastic advocate of something a Nazi trivializes and minimizes the suffering of the victims of the Holocaust.” Yes, exactly. Thank you. You may recall that I am completely offended by the comparison and appreciated reading another person’s point of view.

AAP updates carseat recommendation

Jackie — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:52:01 +0000

Back in October I got up on my soapbox and wrote about the importance of keeping your child rear-facing in their car seat for as long as possible. Now the American Academy or Pediatrics has updated their recommendation. Instead of one year and 20 pounds they recommend keeping your child rear facing until the age of two.

Keep your toddler in a rear-facing car seat until age 2 (not 1)

Lori O’Keefe
Correspondent

New research indicates that toddlers are more than five times safer riding rear-facing in a car safety seat up to their second birthday. Following are some safety tips for car seat use:

All infants should ride rear-facing in either an infant car seat or convertible seat.

If an infant car seat is used, the infant should be switched to a rear-facing convertible car seat once the maximum height (when the infant’s head is within 1 inch of the top of the seat) and weight (usually 22 pounds to 32 pounds) have been reached for that infant seat as suggested by the car seat manufacturer.

Toddlers should remain rear-facing in a convertible car seat until they have reached the maximum height and weight recommended for the model, or at least the age of 2.

To see if your car seat is installed properly and to find a certified passenger safety technician in your area, visit www.seatcheck.org or www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cps/cpsfitting/index.cfm. You also can call 866-SEATCHECK (866-732-8243) or 888-327-4236.

If you think your child looks uncomfortable, remember that broken legs heal more easily than a broken spine. My 3 year old, still under the weight limit for his seat, rides backwards comfortably and happily.

Happy Earth Day

Jackie — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:05:18 +0000

From Ecomall.com, 10 reasons why breastfeeding is good for the environment.

1. Producing artificial baby milk contributes to inefficient use of land, deforestation, and soil erosion. Each grazing cow that produces milk used in artificial baby milk needs about 10,000 square meters of land. Wooded land is cleared for pasture, leading to deforestation as well as depletion and erosion of the soil.

2. The manufacturing of the packaging of artificial baby milk creates toxins and uses paper, plastic, and tin. For every 3 million bottle-fed babies, 450 million tins of formula are consumed. The resulting 70,000 tons of metal in the form of discarded tins is not recycled. The 550 million tins of artificial baby milk sold each year to bottle feed US babies alone stacked end to end would circle the earth one and a half times; 550 million tins equals 86,000 tons of tin and 1,230 tons of paper labels.

3. Making artificial baby milk contaminates water. Sewage from dairy cows as well as the fertilizers used to grow feed for them pollute rivers and groundwaters, affecting all ecosystems dependent upon the rivers and groundwaters. John Robbins of Earth Save International estimates that the water pollution attributable to US agriculture, including runoff of soil, pesticides, and manure, is greater than all municipal and industrial sources combined. In addition, half of all wells and surface streams in the US are contaminated by agricultural pollutants. In Third World countries, water is often contaminated, further jeopardizing the health of the infants. In addition, those who can’t afford the artificial baby milk often will dilute the formula, depriving the baby of nutrients and contributing to infant illness and mortality. “Baby bottle disease” is responsible for the deaths of one and a half million babies per year.

4. Producing artificial baby milk contributes to air pollution. Methane gas is second behind carbon dioxide in contributing to the greenhouse effect and global warming; cow flatulence and excretion account for 20 percent, or 100 million tons, of the total annual global methane emissions.

In Third World countries, the wood that is burned for fuel to heat the artificial milk creates further air pollution. Incineration is a common disposal method, and the burning of the packaging, plastic bottles, nipples, and other paraphernalia contributes to air pollution.

5. Processing artificial baby milk consumes energy. Artificial baby milk is factory processed and converted into powder at high temperatures. The process requires vast amounts of electric energy worldwide. Manufacturing of the bottles, nipples, and other paraphernalia of bottle-feeding also uses energy.

6. Artificial baby milk costs a lot of money that could be better spent to clean up our land, air, and water. It has been estimated that at least $429 million could be saved annually if mothers in the Women, Infants and Children’s supplementary feeding program (WIC) would breastfeed for just one month. A tin of powdered artificial baby milk in the United States sells for approximately $13. In the first year of life an infant consumes approximately 70 cans at a cost of about $910. Although currently the largest purchaser of artificial baby milk, WIC has been actively promoting breastfeeding, particularly to many immigrants who had abandoned breastfeeding for the more “American” method of bottle-feeding. In 1992, 38.8 percent of mothers associated with WIC breastfed; by 1996, that figure had risen to 46.6 percent.

7. Transportation of raw materials for the production of artificial baby milk, packaging, and all of the components of bottle-feeding consumes precious fuel. Once processed, artificial baby milk has to be transported sometimes thousands of miles to the consumer. Ecuador, for example, imports artificial baby milk from the United States, Ireland, Switzerland, and Holland.

8. Manufacturing of bottles, nipples, and other feeding equipment uses large amounts of plastic, rubber, silicon, and glass. Plastic feeding bottles, nipples, and pacifiers take 200 to 450 years to break down when disposed of in landfills sites, which are becoming increasingly scarce.

9. Menstruation is delayed for an average of 14 months for mothers who breastfeed exclusively, saving vast amounts of paper used in sanitary hygiene products. If every mother in Great Britain breastfed, more than 3,000 tons of paper would be saved every year in sanitary napkins alone. Breastmilk is absorbed very efficiently by babies, so breastfed babies excrete less and require fewer diaper changes than babies who are fed artificial baby milk. Producing diapers, menstrual pads, and tampons requires fibers, bleaches, packaging materials, and fuels used in manufacturing and product distribution-thereby sending more items to the landfill, especially if cloth diapers are not used.

10. Breastfeeding is a natural birth control/child spacer. The chance of getting pregnant while breastfeeding exclusively is less than 1 percent during the first six months as long as menstruation has not yet returned. Worldwide, breastfeeding is a more effective method of birth control than all other methods available to Third World women. In Chile, a study of new mothers found no pregnant breastfeeding women at six months postpartum, and a 72 percent pregnancy rate at six months postpartum for bottle-feeding women.27 Breastfeeding is credited with preventing a lifetime average of 4 births per woman in Africa and 6.5 births in Bangladesh.

Ban the Breast Pump?

Jackie — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:26:03 +0000

I won’t go so far as to say that Friday’s blog from Judith Warner is anti-breastfeeding and it is not nearly as offensive as Rosin’s piece in The Atlantic. But is it really necessary to ban the breast pump? I have been lucky enough not to have to pump milk with regularity for my two boys, but I have pumped on many occasions. While it is not my favorite past time, it is not grotesque, nor is it something that makes my husband cringe with disgust.

A few excerpts from the article and my reactions:

She’s talking about pumping breast milk – the grotesque ritual carried out behind closed office doors nationwide by beleaguered working mothers who are fully “committed” (as the lactation consultants put it) to the goal of long-term, exclusive breast-feeding.

Pumping is not just for the working mothers. Mothers of premature babies, babies with special needs, babies with trouble latching pump milk to provide the best possible nutrition for their child. Mothers pump so they go out on the town with their spouse or friends. Why supplement with formula if you don’t want to?

Why have we made such a fetish of breast milk when there’s no evidence to prove whether, as Rosin puts it in the Atlantic video, “what’s key about breast feeding is the milk or the act of breast-feeding”?

There is no shortage of evidence that breast milk has numerous benefits for babies and the act of breastfeeding has numerous benefits for mothers.

Why, as a society, have we privileged the magic elixir of maternal milk over actual maternal contact, denying the vast, vast majority of mothers the kind of extended maternity leave that would make them physically present for their babies?

Part of what I found so offensive about Rosin’s article is that she seemed to be against that kind of maternal contact. She made feeding babies out to be a chore. Maternity leaves in the United States are embarrassing. There is no question that parents should have time to bond with their children.

“…I’m hoping pump companies will just disappear.”

So am I. In fact, I hope that some day, not too long in the future, books on women’s history will feature photos of breast pumps to illustrate what it was like back in the day when mothers were consistently given the shaft. Future generations of female college students will gaze upon the pumps, aghast.

“Did you actually use one of those?” they’ll ask their mothers, in horror.

And the moms, with a shudder, will proudly say no.

Disappear? Really? So the preemies who need it most shouldn’t have breastmilk? So babies who have difficulty latching right away should be deprived? Why is it an all or nothing proposition? Why can’t women choose to supplement with formula without banning breast pumps?

Cross-nursing in the news

Jackie — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:53:07 +0000

This incredible and unusual story about a community of women who stepped in to nurse a baby when his mother died in childbirth had me in tears this morning. Here are some excerpts:

Women step up to breast-feed motherless infant

Charles Moses Martin Goodrich was born at 3:26 a.m. Jan. 11 at Marquette General Hospital. Eleven hours after giving birth, his mother Susan Goodrich, 46, died of amniotic fluid embolism - a rare obstetric emergency that is not age-related, Goodrich said. Moses is the Goodrich’s second child - Julia was born in 2007 - and Susan’s fourth. Still in shock over his wife’s death, Goodrich realized he had to figure out a way to feed his newborn son…

“They didn’t carry any breast milk,” the history professor said about the hospital, so a nurse looked into getting some for Moses. As it turned out, the nearest place to get breast milk was in Kalamazoo, and it would take several days to have it delivered to Marquette.

In the meantime, Goodrich received a phone call from family friend Laura Janowski of Marquette, who was still nursing her fourth child, 1-year-old Emily. In her message, Janowski offered Goodrich to nurse Moses.

“That’s when it clicked in my head,” he said. “I wanted the baby to be nursed. That’s something that Susan would have wanted.”

One thing led to another when family friend Nicoletta Fraire of Marquette began organizing a group of women who may want to help feed Moses.

“Basically, a couple of phone calls were enough,” she said. “I just had to leave my name and phone number and calls started to come in.”

She also made contact with Sally Keskey, founder of the Yooper Nursers - a local breast feeding support group. Within a brief time, nearly 20 women were found who offered to breast-feed Moses. Many of them belong to the support group and had never met the Goodrich family before.

“These women are advocates of breast feeding,” Goodrich said.

A schedule was put together with feeding times at 9 a.m., noon, 1:30 , 4 , 6:30 and 8 p.m. Six times a day a different mother has been feeding Moses for the past two months. During the night, Goodrich bottle-feeds his son breast milk that was pumped by the women…

Cross-nursing in this country is uncommon and often reviled. Many women are completely disgusted by the idea of it. But this story of a group of women giving up their time and bodies to feed and nurture a motherless child is inspiring. Moses isn’t only getting the benefit of breastmilk, he’s getting the benefit of skin to skin contact.

Milkscreen

Jackie — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:17:04 +0000

The nice people at Upspring contacted me to see if I’d be interested in testing out their milkscreen alcohol test kits. As a woman who enjoys a drink, I jumped at the opportunity.

Tonight I had one drink over the course of an hour and a half. It was a Manhattan, so it was all alcohol, no mixer. Figuring that one drink wouldn’t have much of an effect on me I tested my milk shortly after finishing the drink. It was a little awkward, hunching over a test strip in the bathroom trying to hand express some milk for the test, but I was able to get enough to thoroughly cover the test pad. I shook off the excess and waited. Then I remembered that I was supposed to set a timer so I yelled for my husband to set the timer for 2 minutes. The timer went off and according to the darkest patch on test I was basically loaded and shouldn’t be breastfeeding.

I waited an hour and tested again. The second test, timed exactly, was as clear as can be. But in the meantime the original test turned black. After a few minutes the second test started to get darker. Within an hour the second test also turned black.

Forgive the blur, but I’m having some formatting difficulty.

From left to right: test one, test two, and the two tests half an hour after the second test

My husband thinks that because I waited longer than the two minutes to check the results the first time that the test may have been compromised. The directions say that alcohol in the air can cause the strips to darken so perhaps my household (alcohol soaked as it is) influenced the initial test results. Or perhaps I was just boozier than I thought, and it was good that I waited. But the fact that both tests turned black made me question how sensitive they are.

I have two tests left. I haven’t yet decided whether to test them on the same night like I did with the first test, or if I should try testing two separate times. Stay tuned for more adventures in alcohol soaked breastmilk and a giveaway.

The Case Against Breastfeeding

Jackie — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:59:54 +0000

By now I think just about everyone has weighed in on the latest breastfeeding controversy. But if you have not been following I’ll gladly offer my opinion on Hanna Rosin’s piece in The Atlantic, “The Case Against Breastfeeding.”

Rosin describes the societal pressure to breastfeed and attempts to explain that the evidence that shows breastfeeding is superior to formula is either flawed or non-existent. While she’s right about societal pressure, elsewhere she fails. She admits that breast is best and still tries to convince the reader otherwise.

I don’t believe that formula feeding is bad. It is food. But it is food that has been engineered in a laboratory to be as close to breastmilk as possible. It is not the real thing. It is an imitation. Earlier today I read a response to the article that said formula is a luxury. That we are lucky to have the option of formula. I agree. It is a luxury to have the choice whether or not to breastfeed. My instinct is that the article was written as an excuse for women who don’t *want* to breastfeed and want to feel better about themselves about their choice.

The point that I found most irritating, and the piece more than anything else just irritated me, was the part where she responded to the notion that breastfeeding is free. She writes, “It’s only free if a woman’s time is worth nothing.” How is feeding a baby worth nothing? Whether feeding a baby by bottle or breast, feeding time is bonding time. It’s the time when mother (or father) and baby are closest. How is that worthless? And how is feeding a baby by bottle any less time consuming than breastfeeding? If you don’t want to take the time to feed your baby don’t have one.

Others have said it better than I have and have backed it up with research.

The Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog

Mama Knows Breast

Adventures in [Crunchy] Parenthood

Belly Fish

Jackie — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:23:45 +0000

I may be in the minority here, but I hated my Boppy pillow. As a nursing aid I found it completely useless. Although it was more time consuming, I was better off and more comfortable with a few couch cushions and bed pillows propped in various configurations. The only thing I really liked the Boppy for was sitting on. It helped relieve some post-childbirth pressure on my delicate nether-regions.

I’ve heard that the My Brest Friend pillow, stupid name aside, is far superior to the Boppy, but I never had the opportunity to try one.

Now there is another nursing pillow on the market. I saw this, the Belly-Fish, a nursing pillow and cover all in one in my web travels today. The Belly-Fish wraps around like the other nursing pillows, but it features two adjustable nursing covers on each side. You can unsnap them for privacy or leave them down and just use the pillow. There’s an adjustable neck strap for added support for positioning the pillow. The pillow folds in half so it’s not as bulky to travel with, and according to the testimonials on the website it fits in a diaper bag or in the bottom of a stroller. It looks pretty big to me, and I don’t know that I’d actually travel with it, but I know plenty of women who might.

Since I haven’t actually seen the pillow in person or had a chance to test it out I don’t know how well the pillow works for support, but the prints are beautiful. The fabrics alone would make this a great shower gift for a new mother to be. I also appreciate that the cover is machine washable.

The Belly Fish was created by two mothers in California. Check out their website for more information or watch a video about the Belly Fish.

Strange story of the day

Jackie — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:18:05 +0000

This story is so bizarre I have to repost it here. It’s so bizarre that I don’t even know what to say about it. I don’t know if it’s just a poorly written article, if the writer wasn’t working with much, or if it’s just a crazy story, but I am at a loss for commentary here. So take it for what it’s worth.

Police: Breastfeeding mom bit policewoman

Last update: 3:56 p.m. EDT March 9, 2009
MONTREAL, Mar 9, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) — A Canadian immigrant woman is charged with biting a policewoman after allegedly refusing to stop breastfeeding her baby during a Montreal traffic stop.

The incident happened Friday morning when police pulled over Rainford Jackson, as it appeared the tinting on the car’s windows was too dark under Quebec law. His wife, Lafleur Sprin was breastfeeding their child, and a 5-year-old daughter was in the back seat, The Gazette newspaper reported.

Police claim Spring refused to get out of the car, and that’s when they pulled her from the vehicle.

Spring alleges she was told to shut up and she refused, and was then slapped.

“Then she tried to pull me out,” Spring said. “She slapped me in the face, so I bit her … I know I’m from the Caribbean but I never thought I would be arrested for breastfeeding my kid.”

The family of four was left in a police cruiser for five hours before being told they could go home, the report said.

As well as the assault charge, each parent face charges for obstructing justice and must appear in court May 22, the report said.