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Posted by Same Here:
I tried breastfeeding, but it simply didn’t work. I was harried by breastfeeding nurses and had plenty of strangers staring at me and probing and prodding while trying different positions to help the baby latch on. It was very awkward to say the least.
Finally I decided that enough was enough and switched to bottle-feeding. The guilt that I was made to feel was unbelievable. Thank God for my husband’s support in bottle-feeding.
Every woman is indoctrinated with the ‘Breast is Best’ mantra and failure to breastfeed becomes equal to failure in womanhood and motherhood.
I’m expecting again and this baby will be formula-fed from her very first feed.
I think that breastfeeding should be a choice, on an equal footing as formula-feeding. No woman should be made to feel guilty over her choice.
And no woman should be asked, ‘Are you breastfeeding?’ That’s no one’s business. I’m asked that question repeatedly about my eight month old daughter. Seriously? Do you really want to know whether I’m using my breasts in the way you think they should be used?
As regards to the ‘partially breastfeeding’ issue, I would recommend it to any woman who is breastfeeding. Just hand over your baby to your husband at 10pm, go to sleep, he can give a bottle at midnight (and have some bonding time with baby), then wake up again at 3am to give a breastfeed (or another bottle which is easier and faster), and go back to sleep till 6am in time for another feed.
Why should the minister dictate whether I formula-feed, exclusively breastfeed or partially breastfeed my baby? The minister should shove his opinion up his arse.
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Chris Fearne is getting on everyone’s tits.
Indeed with all his tit bits.
Fancy that, an a*****le getting on everyone’s tits.
He keeps telling udders what to do.
Mela mela, ma’ Fearne tikber u titghallem.
You had me in fits, Ciccio….this is the funniest of all.
I totally agree it is a question of the mother’s choice. If she is not comfortable, the baby will not be happy. More focus needs to be placed on the mother’s well being and state of mind. If she is well, that of the child will follow.
Whilst whenever possible I prefer natural over artificial in all circumstances, Fearne’s pedantic approach verges on psychological bullying – and that is so typical of this band of sorts.
Considering that the “whenever possible” is becoming extremely rare due to lifestyle issues more than physiological reasons, I wonder if this drive is at all sensible
Other than that, Fearne’s reputation is as good as his pre-election promise to deliver medicine to the door in a few weeks
Was Chris Fearne himself denied the maternal tit maybe?
Sorry to change the subject, but shouldn’t we be watching what is happening south of Malta where the Hagar Qim oil well is being drilled?
The oil company behind this project, MOG, sold off its shares just days before the drilling started a few weeks ago! Not a promising start considering Joe Mizzi’s pompous declarations at the Economist conference held in Malta that prospects are very good.
Does anyone know anything about what is happening and what results are expected from this well?
If this turns out to be another dry well, what catalogue of excuses are we to expect from Joe Mizzi?
Will he keep to his word and resign? Or will he revert to the geofantasies (the ‘ghax ikkrakjaw il-caprock!’ type) he conjured up for the Madonna taz-Zejt well catastrophe for which he is responsible (namely the 30 million euro paid by Malta for that well)?
Watch on U-tube Joe Mizzi’s geofantasy nonsense argument on the presumed ‘cracking’ of the cap rock at Madonna taz-Zejt well in Gozo (at 6.48 minutes), rather than admit that this 8 km well (the deepest in the Mediterranean) was a total failure paid by taxpayers to feed his whimsical oil fantasies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YS8Ar3xQ50
Actually, what is superior to formula-feeding, apart from the bonding aspect, is not the act of breastfeeding per se but human milk which contains anti-bodies made by the mother’s immune system which are then transmitted to the baby to protect it from certain pathogens. Such antibodies, obviously, are not present in formula.
If the mother does not find it distasteful, the milk can be pumped out from the breast and easily fed to the baby by means of a sterilized bottle – that’s the theory, at least.
[Daphne – Yes, there’s also a theory which says that all women should give birth in their early 20s, so let’s start a bullying campaign on that too, why don’t we.]
That’s the problem though, mammal, it’s a theory. Theories in science abound. However, the sheer number of theories does not mean that there is a similar multitude of empirical research that verifies or falsifies them.
Even the two terms I mention here “verify” and “falsify” reflect different philosophical approaches to scientific knowledge and method (the first looks for support of a theory, the second looks for evidence that rejects it and, therefore, is more critical, valid and reliable).
In addition, many of the empirical studies that are cited freely to “prove” a point are written using a certain kind of language that politicians and laymen do not understand (even though they think they do).
For example, if a study says that a positive correlation is found between, say, breast feeding and brain development in 80% of the population studied then it does not mean that breast feeding causes positive brain development in everyone.
What it means is that:
(a) there is a population of subjects. The population could be between 15 to 100 or more, the larger the more representative the sample, The smaller the sample, the more inapplicable/generalisable your results will be to the broader population.
(b) Breast feeding in the past and positive brain development occurred together (not caused) when compared to the control group (that is that group with no breast feeding and some measure of brain development). Correlation is NOT cause and effect but two variables varied together (covariation) to produce a result.
(c) The measures used to study breast feeding and brain development vary from study to study and you can bet anything in the world that the scientific papers would have much information on that which the politicians and lay people would disregard.
One key difference is the one that Daphne mentions: to have a real test you need to get the baby, breast feed him/her and measure brain development. You then need to get the SAME baby and see what would happen if you did not feed him/her breast milk. Since that is impossible, all the measures that remain are proxies with varying degrees of accuracy to be used with extreme caution and noting all possible biases.
(d) You cannot generalise to larger populations because these are experimental studies and there are tonnes of other extraneous variables that you cannot account for. And, experimental studies (i.e., studies with an experimental design) have methodological limitations despite their strengths.
My take on this entire issue is an attempt by Labour to control the female segment of the population. We wouldn’t want women to be better than us men, do we now. They are, after all, our property.
I see that you don’t have any children yourself, or at least you never had to take care of a young baby.
I did try using a pump for two weeks. Let me explain the schedule and see what you make of it:
9.00-9.30 Feed baby from bottle containing breast milk
9.30-9.45 Burp baby
9.45-11.30 Put baby to sleep. Use pump (30 minutes on each breast). Sterilise bottles. Take care of laundry. Tidy up the house.
11.30-12.00 Baby wakes up. Interact and play with baby.
12.00 Start all over again
As the baby gets older, feeding time falls to 15 minutes and burping becomes easier. However the baby also spends less time sleeping and more awake seeking entertainment. You may also get away with pumping on alternate cycles if you manage to produce enough milk but at the risk of having your milk dry up.
Believe me, pumping and feeding through a bottle is practically impossible. There’s no time left for anything else.
The mother’s infectious diseases and whatever medication she takes are also transmitted through breast milk. Given all the emotional turmoil, sleepless nights, and relentless pressure, breastfed babies are probably overdosing on stress hormones too.
It is the same story with co-sleeping, nurses here will try to do everything to persuade you not to co-sleep your baby. It is very difficult to put a baby to sleep in a cot the whole night and fact is that a recent research found out that co-sleeping is good for the early brain development.
[Daphne – I am sorely tempted to write an entire post about this. Co-sleeping? You mean it now has an official name? On this I am 100% with the nurses. It is crazy and stupid to have your baby sleep in your bed. That is most definitely not its place. Besides the risks to the baby, and the disastrous effects on the parents’ relationship, it means you are making a rod for your own back and that along with weaning, potty-training and getting the child used to going to nursery school you are going to have to spend tortured weeks and months of hell trying to get him to sleep in his own bed (the cot stage will have been made completely redundant by then). I know one situation in which the child (a girl) was still in her parents’ bed at nine. These situations are probably more frequent than we know, because parents who still have children in that bed at a few years old are reluctant to admit it, though up to the age of around two talking about it doesn’t seem to be a problem to women. Meanwhile, you can observe the man’s anger and irritation while this conversation is going on. He’s not so tolerant of having a child in his bed. Babies should be in their own cot from the word go, and that cot should be in another room and not yours. If the cot is in your room, you will face exactly the same problems getting the bed into a separate room as you would getting the baby into a separate bed. The baby should only be in your room while it is newborn, and then it must be in a separate crib. As soon as it is large enough to go into a proper cot, the cot must leave the bedroom.
With a baby in your bed, nobody gets a good night’s sleep – not the baby, not your wife and not you. The mother (not so much the father) will sleep in ‘alert mode’ like a soldier napping on duty, night after night, conscious of the fact that there is a baby next to her and she doesn’t want to roll over and crush it. Coupled with repeated waking for feeds, this is terrible for her health. The baby is disturbed and wakes more frequently. It becomes a self-perpetuating nightmare: because the baby wakes more frequently, the mother doesn’t put it in its own cot or crib.
It is really worth the ‘investment’ of time, energy and difficulty in the first couple of months to keep a baby in its own bed, because after that – unless there are particular difficulties – the baby will settle into a routine that remains unbroken, especially if it is bottle-fed, not so much it is is breast-fed. When my babies were born, I sometimes spent half the night sitting in an armchair next to their crib (in another room) while they fed and settled – with such frequent waking, it wasn’t worth going back to bed. Fortunately, I was in my early 20s, so didn’t find it so taxing. At four months, they began sleeping right through the night, and my reward for the initial hassle was that so could I. I kept a very strict bedtime – 7pm – and they slept right through to 5am, then 6am and finally, 7am.
Putting children in your bed makes no difference to brain development. Severe emotional deprivation in early childhood affects brain development negatively, but you cannot look at it the other way round and conclude that spoiling and petting your children and putting them in your bed will affect brain development positively. If that were indeed the case, most people over the age of 50 in Malta would have had optimal brain development (clearly not so) because sharing a bed with your parents and a whole bunch of siblings was a social reality – not on the advice of childcare specialists but because of poverty, crowded homes and general deprivation.]
I’m not sure what research you’re quoting, Dissident. All I can say is that co-sleeping increases the risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) considerably.
Co-sleeping is very dangerous: squashing the baby to death or over-heating which is another contributing factor to SIDS.
My baby slept in her cot from the very first day (admittedly in her pram placed on the cot in the first few months), with no problems at all. She too started sleeping through the night at 4 months and I can’t see any signs of development delay, rather to the contrary.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/8854674/Babies-should-sleep-in-mothers-bed-until-age-three.html
[Daphne – You have clearly not read the entire story, which makes it clear that this particular researcher is out on a limb. As any sensible parent will tell you, allowing children to sleep in your bed until they are three years old will mean 1. a whiny, clingy and insufferable child, 2. a child who, at 3, will refuse categorically to leave your bed and sleep in his own, which means you are in for a year of sleepless nights when the child should have long been past them, 4. a divorce or close to it, 5. absolutely no sex life unless you are prepared to sneak out of bed and use the carpet or the kitchen table or are a pervert, 6. bedtime at 7pm with your child, because if the reason he is in your bed is to sleep with you, then obviously, he is not going to sleep there alone until midnight. Oh wait, I almost forgot! The children of crazy parents like those NEVER have bedtime – they go to bed when they feel like it, around 11pm.]
You are so right on this (as with most insomma) I went with new age bed sharing, breast feeding on demand, the works, etc., with my second born (funnily enough I was decently normal with my first born daughter – must be the age difference) and now he reckons he owns me. And her brain developed quite well too.
I think in the end nobody knows what’s best for other people’s children. Nowadays everyone tries to be expert on this and on that. There are safe ways of co-sleeping and like in the case of breast feeding, it’s the mother who knows best.
So very well said! And then there are those at the other end of the spectrum, who make it a – very tedious and self-centred – point to declare “because I’m breast-feeding …” in the course of normal conversation EVERY time you meet them, EVEN when it has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation, and even though I have no babies myself right now and so couldn’t give a toss.
Back to the economy.
If you ask the prime minister, it’s “Everything is on track.”
If you ask Konrad Mizzi, it’s “Everything is ‘fenomenali’.”
Meanwhile, Malta Stock Exchange index:
– 27 June 2014: 3309.69
– Opening, January 2014: 3676.86
– 8 March 2014: 3324.122
http://www.borzamalta.com.mt/
The 27 June 2014 is now below the level of 8 Marh 2013.
In the real world, the Dow Jones index:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27938041
“The Dow Jones and S&P 500 eased to new record highs on Friday, and ended the week up more than 1%.”
DJI over the last 12 months:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business/market_data/stockmarket/2/twelve_month.stm
FTSE 100 for the past year:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business/market_data/stockmarket/3/twelve_month.stm
Is the Maltese economy in deflation already?
“8 March 2014: 3324.122”
Oops. That should read: 8 March 2013: 3324.122
The idea of having to face the Nazi nurses in 6 months’ time is making me break out in hives. I wish to find some stickers, like those anti-Jehovah Witness ones, that I can place on my forehead: Don’t touch my breasts.
[Daphne – The key thing to remember is that just because you have given birth it does not follow you have been reduced to the status of an animal, there to be ordered around and poked and prodded by invasive strangers. If some nurse comes along and begins pushing and poking at your breasts, react exactly as you would if somebody were to come up to you and do this in the street. They’ll soon get the message.]
Plonk a tin of Aptamil on your bedside table. They’ll soon get the message.
Though this is an interesting debate it feels like it has become another battle ground, not because the topic is being debated – that feels fine. Also the tone feels fine in a blog. My worry is if this spills over with mothers feeling they need to take one side or another.
Human milk is made specifically for human babies. It contains the nutrients, antibodies etc that the human baby requires.
[Daphne – The argument that human milk should be used for babies because it is made specifically for them was fine in the days when the only alternatives were goat-milk and sheep-milk. Most people who use this argument overlook the very obvious fact that formula milk is made specifically for human babies too, and that it is very often better for the baby than human milk, which is erratic in quality, consistency and quantity, depending entirely on the many variables in the individual’s mother’s health, diet, emotional state and physical ability to produce the milk.]
It is there produced on site fresh, requires no containers, sterilising or washing. Sometimes this is not possible, convenient or mother or child does not take to it. Commercial companies have produced a perfectly good alternative.
My only grip with baby milk companies is that they have on occasion advertised these widely in third world countries in rural communities where breast feeding is more hygienic and where poverty has led to diluted milk made with unsterile water being given to babies in the mistaken belief that this was better for them. Nestlé were heavily criticised for this.
[Daphne – Yes, you are right, and that is why the campaigns for human milk began: in the Third World, with strong justification. They were then transferred to the first world, with no justification.]
Why do people feel they have to be rude in such situations? I’ve always found that being polite but very, very firm always works.
I went through the same thing as above. I tried breast-milk with my first child but after a week of pain and crying I decided to start formula and it felt good even though I had post-natal depression.
I had my second baby and I’ve tried once again to breastfeed but as soon as I tried to give her formula instead of breast-milk, one of the so-called “caring” midwife was calling me names because I was changing from breast-milk to formula. I discharged myself and left the hospital immediately.
They say motherhood is natural but I suggest new parents should read this book because it worked wonders with my babies: Baby Wise by Gary Ezzo, Robert Buckman
The human body is amazing – it even has brail round the teat saying ‘suck here’
Agree, with same, well said. Some women’s health doesn’t allow them to breastfeed, and they are still made to feel guilty.
My doctor insisted that my physical health could not sustain breastfeeding after the birth of one of my children. Whilst my midwife was in full agreement I still had one nurse who kept on insisting, until I lost it and told her where to shove it.
Dr. Fearne should watch this from 3.00 onwards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQB2X9T0l20
Now he should stop telling women what they should do.
I’m not sure what the problem with this is. Buy a breast pump, put the goods in the fridge and into a thermal bag and feed your child from that when you’re in public.
Was that so hard? Or maybe you’re making the mistake of thinking, since breast is natural then everyone has to put up with it. Context and environments are irrelevant, it is my right to breast feed and I’ll breast feed quddiem il-Kappilan if I have to… come on.
Breast feeding is a beautiful and natural thing to do, in private or in sheltered environments such as a restaurant booth, rather than sitting in open-plan seating right next to the glass wall facing a main-street).
If they’re comfortable with it you can do it in the presence of your close friends (or colleagues) or with your family.
Do we really need to go back to 1920s Sicily with women breastfeeding on their doorsteps and men hollering about how they’d like to suck the lonely one hanging there and little boys screaming, “Look that woman’s with her titties out!”
Does modern woman really want to be reduced to what they were for thousands of years and what they are now in some Muslim countries?
Next time you decide to hold off your call to nature to be in time for a 60-minute meeting, appreciate the fact that some women will take it upon themselves to go as far as breastfeeding during important business meetings.
I heard of a case from a good source (who happened to be female) where a woman brought her baby to a business meeting with a VIP (who also happened to be female) and half way through the meeting, this woman randomly started breastfeeding with her left tit just hanging there for all to see, mouth agape.
No one in the meeting could concentrate. All she could see in this meeting was this person’s swollen nipple staring at her. Someone gently made a request that maybe she should excuse herself to the empty room next door until she was done and she was met with, ‘its only natural, everyone does this, there is no shame’. Yeah maybe not in the middle of business meeting and especially not in the presence of a VIP.
Defecation, urination, eating, sleeping and having sex are all natural things that everyone does, but there is a time and a place for everything.
The reality is that if you tell women that you have to breast-feed then some of them will take it upon themselves to breast feed almost anywhere. If it’s OK to breast-feed behind your office partition on a quiet day, then it’s OK to breast-feed at a party while others stand around you with drinks trying not to notice.
Breastfeeding is healthy and passes things to do the child that formula milk simply does not. If you cannot breastfeed your child without doing so in public then do what women with sanity and sensitive nipples do.
Buy a breast pump. put the milk in a bottle in the fridge, put it in a Thermos and feed your baby your own milk without acting like you live in 1920s Sicily.
I was never coerced to breast feed, I did out of my own free choice, it was cheap and readily available at all times. In fact a few hours after the baby was born, a nurse came and brought a box of Aptamil.
Could this have been the fact that this was a private hospital?
[Daphne – Yes. The policy at Karin Grech Hospital was absolutely no formula milk and let’s not even talk about it or consider it as an option.]
When my first was born at Karin Grech Hospital, the fridge in the kitchenette was stocked with ready-mixed bottles of baby milk formulae (different brands). I was not forced to breastfeed, nor was I in a physical state to do so after an emergency caesarean and after haemorrhaging very heavily the next day (as in a 1m-circumference puddle of blood when I attempted to stand up after a few hours).
When my second was born at a private hospital, it was an entirely different story – I sent the nurse to blazes when, barely out of the anaesthetic from my second caesarean, I was asked if I wanted to breastfeed … and I continued to be pestered about breastfeeding just the same for the entire duration of my stay there.
Joe Grima was breast-fed.