Hospitals pressured to end free baby formula

[davsand]

56. "It's not a social priority" sums it up quite well. The health of mom and baby SHOULD be the focus

There is a huge divide between the ho-hum medical establishment and the "breast feeding nazis." I dunno how you bridge that gap unless you take the focus of the discussion to what works for mom AND baby and the rest of that family.

There is a lot about having a baby that you just can't control, and from the get-go I was fighting every step of the way to have the kind of pregnancy and childbirth I wanted. I fired one OB-Gyn practice in the first trimester (which I'd do again in a heartbeat and it is almost 15 years later...) because they seemed determined to turn me into a sick person instead of a "pregnant lady." Everything I had read said an active pregnancy was best for the baby, and by gawd, I wanted that for my child. I still ended up with a problem pregnancy and on bed rest for the last half of the pregnancy, but I was really trying to do it "right."

I wanted to have natural childbirth--no drugs. I was convinced that it was best for the baby to do it if you could--and by golly--I wanted that for my child. Her heart rate dropped during labor and we ended up with an emergency C-Section. I ended up numb from the nipples down and stoned off my ass from the morphine, but I had a beautiful healthy baby and that really was all that mattered--even if I did feel like some kind of failure for not being able to have a child the "normal" way.

I've already explained how our nursing experience went--again--more failure...

It AMAZES me, to this day, that I allowed myself to be so victimized by the whole mindset that everything must be *THIS* way or else it is some kind of failure on the mom's part. Post partum might be, in part, created by all the crap we lay off on the moms in the form of well intentioned advice and expectations. Instead of turning it all into some kind of failure maybe the thing to do is to revamp our societal attitudes to support the experience and celebrate it rather than stand around pointing fingers at anybody. I agree with you 100% and more that we need longer maternity and paternity leaves. I agree completely with everyone on here saying we need to drop the militancy of the BFNazis and the natural childbirth proponents. We need to reduce the number of drive by deliveries and ill considered C-Sections. I also think that getting the formula companies out of the delivery room is a good idea.

We can do much better than we have been.


Laura