It’s a hugely fraught area of paediatric practice. Women should be supported to make an informed choice about infant feeding. The reality is they are given messaging that makes them reluctant to say what would work best for them and their family. It can takes days, weeks, even months to get to the bottom of neuroses around infant feeding.
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I know. It’s a deeply personal issue, and I would never in my life judge anyone for the choices they have to make to feed their kids.
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My cousin (not the fussy one) , an RN, had a fairly traumatic delivery recently, and I’m not sure breastfeeding will be possible. The baby is home and doing okay now. The baby had a rough first week.
Obviously, the studies are useful, and help increase knowledge, which is good.
Some nurses and MDs say things to patients who don’t get their milk or have babies who won’t breast feed, that make the patients feel terrible about not being able to breastfeed.
The last thing that someone who just delivered a baby needs is to be told is that her non breastfed baby probably won’t turn out quite as well as some other person’s breastfed baby.
Many mothers who found it easy to get their babies to breastfeed have no idea how much of a challenge it is for other mothers.
I realize you are posting links to studies, honkman.
I am mentioning this because breastfeeding is a sensitive topic for those who cannot breastfeed. It still comes up as a sore topic for some friends of mine, 40 years later. They wanted to breastfeed, were unable to breastfeed. Then a Sister-in-Law will bring up the topic at a family gathering, which makes the now postmenopausal friend feel bad that she couldn’t and didn’t breastfeed 40 years ago.
I spent 30 minutes giving a pep talk to my 30something cousin yesterday afternoon, because she dealt with a specialist with a less than average bedside manner this past week.
People do the best they can with the cards they are dealt, and the knowledge they have.
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Mainly experience through my wife who often told how many of her friends stopped doing it quite early or not at all because it is quite complicated in many cases. There are a numbers of articles around it that up to 70% of women stopped breastfeeding much earlier than they planned
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Right. A huge variety of reasons why breastfeeding may not be possible/difficult.
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There’s a saying amongst paediatricians - if men had to breastfeed, everyone would be formula fed. And if men had to give birth, humankind would be extinct.
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And abortions would be available at the drive-through on every corner like Starbucks.
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I dont know anyone in the pediatric wellbeing circle who doesnt simply state that fed is best.
There are plenty of generations now who were breastfed, plenty who were formula fed, and plenty who were a little of both, with little to no statistical proof to justify belittling a mother for whatever method made her and her baby’s survival work for their family.
I was breastfed. My sister was bottle fed. We’re both healthy and well adjusted and eat a wide variety of different foods.
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We are dealing with this in my family this week. One nurse cousin delivered a baby last weekend, and her first cousin, a nurse specialized in lactation at the hospital, and a breastfeeding zealot, is making the new mother feel like crap.
The mother of the lactation specialist and the aunt of the new mom, a retired school teacher and retired school board director for the province, mentions she cannot tell which students were breastfed once they start Grade 1. Became many factors are at play when raising a child, of course!
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we have three kids.
some bottle
some breast fed
there is no difference in their appetite for ‘anything’
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It’s conditioning, pure and simple.
That seems to be the conclusion of the article (can’t tell if you actually read it). That, along with the kiddie food industrial complex peddling sugary shit & blandness.
This anecdotal evidence which is the lowest level of scientific evidence.
If individual HO’s kids or relatives turned out fine, that’s great. But it’s not scientific evidence to support any one hypothesis over another.
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In addition to Anecdotes being Personal Experiences, and not being Science, Soft Science happens sometimes, too!
Personal experiences and anecdotes add to the Discussion on HO, I think, even if and when they do not qualify as Scientific Fact. 
That is part of what makes a Discussion Board interesting, hearing different experiences from people around the world with different backgrounds and opinions, and POVs.
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Hear, hear.
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My own kiddo bf’d and was fed a blend of formula and sterilized donor milk. He ate everything until about age 1, then became very selective (which also coincided with his sleep going to absolute hell). He also went from accepting of spicy foods to highly averse around the same 12-month mark. He experienced a lot of sensory sensitivities with food (and across other areas of life) and struggled with gagging. Our first Valentine’s dinner out together (~8 mos.), he barfed avocado all over me due to his mouth being overfull and it hitting his gag reflex. Good times.
We have tried to follow (loosely) Satter’s Division of Responsibilities in feeding and be flexible, mostly undemanding, and present a wide variety of cuisines and foods. I don’t serve dessert with the meal though, and he does need to eat some accepted fruit or veg to access dessert.
Our approach seems to be working overall – I take his preferences into account when I meal plan and also challenge them gently from time to time. Having him participate in dinner prep seems to help slightly with acceptance. Also – hunger is the best seasoning. We rarely snack between meals except for fruits or veg. Keeping alternatives unexciting is helpful, too. Leftovers, plain yogurt, maybe PBJ; on the rare occasion he really dislikes dinner, those are his options. He is an enthusiastic explorer of new cuisines, loves restaurants, and likes to cook. Vietnamese, Chinese, and Mexican are his favorites right now.
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To those not familiar with Ellyn Sater’s division of responsibility the short version is my job as parent/food provider is to provide reasonably healthy and tasty meals. The child’s job is to eat from the food provided If child doesn’t eat not my problem I did my parT ( that’s a 150 or so page paperback in 3 sentences )
We have followed this with our kids and it works for us one kiddo has some sensory processing issues and she feels in control of her food choices
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I think it’s great that he’s learning how to cook; it’ll be useful his whole life.
Following recipes teaches you to pay attention. We all make mistakes; I put away flour etc as I go along … sometimes I see something still on my counter from mise en place and say: Uh Oh, I forgot to add.
Once it was the sugar for banana bread; I’d already put the pan into the oven. I removed it, stirred in the sugar, turned out fine.
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That’s awful. I hope the fam collectively muzzles her and supports the new mom’s best path for her and her new little.
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When mine was little I spent an enormous amount of time volunteering in the classroom.
There were lots of chances to make food a part of the lessons … one of the big ones was the sorting and counting lesson.
The kids were given a cup of mixed beansand the lesson was to count them by type and make simple bar graphs.
I made 15 bean soup (new beans, of course) in a crockpot and they got to sample it. I had moms calling me for the recipe because their kid who never ate beans was begging her to make it. There was never any pressure; it was their choice to try it or not.
We had all kinds of silly food adventures that year (Stonehenge made of rice krispie treats, anyone?)
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