In lieu of a real entry,

[bronwynrh]

I give you the most brilliant thing I've read all week. All year!

"Somos Los Perdedores"

Comments

A reply from A.G. Pym

[(Anonymous)]

Hello, Bronwyn. This is A.G. Pym, from goodideasgonebad.net, returning your comment there from a long-ago post I made regarding breastfeeding on theagitator.com. Sorry for the egregious delay - I had some serious connectivity issues at about the time you submitted your comment at gigb, and it took me this long to get everything more or less straightened away. As I don't have an email address for you, I'll use your wonderful blog (I mean that, too - just on the short sampling this evening, I'm going to enjoy exploring your site here) to reply. Anyway, aeons ago, you posted this comment to my Agitator post in which I opined that breast feeding was at an all time high: **************** "Hi AG, "Forgive me for busting into your personal blog like this, but I wanted to respond to your question/comment on Radley’s Culture Wars thread and for some reason, I can’t do it there. It’s important to me, so I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion. What I tried to say was the following: “At its highest point in years” comes nowhere close to “is once again a majority”, AGP. The numbers are still too low. "Here’s some data: stats1 [note: link to webmd.com breastfeeding stats] stats2 [note: link to kellymom.com breastfeeding post] "In that second one, note that the “in hospital” numbers are nice and high, but drop substantially by 7 days and drop precipitously after that. This is because, in hospital, women who indicate a desire to nurse are offered guidance by on-site lactation consultants. Once those women get home and no longer have that support (and their moms are of little to no help as breastfeeding rates were WAY low a generation ago), they come face to face with the hard realities (if you’ll forgive the pun) of engorgement and simply unreasonable amounts of pain. "They also, if they’re having difficulty with nursing, are faced with pediatricians who declare that baby is losing weight (as all babies do at first) and insist that formula supplements are given. Now baby is getting a bottle and forgets how to use a real nipple, and mother’s supply never gets up to snuff because she’s not getting the necessary stimulation. "No wonder so many give up. Only the most dedicated woman can persevere through all that without help. Our bodies may have been built for nursing, but it’s still a learning experience for mother and baby and once again, pseudo-science and the medical authoritative voices get in the way, in spite of all the best intentions." ****************************** Well, I'll admit that you've persuaded me that my view was certainly incomplete and based on false assumptions, in terms of continuing rates of breastfeeding. I will have to say, though, that that opinion was based mostly on my own experiences, both as a parent and as a friend to many nursing females. Our own daughter was subject to the exact pediatrician comment you give here - because she was losing weight during the time before my wife's breasts really freshened enough to provide for her. So, we did supplement with formula (which we initially did not wish to do, due to a definite history of food allergies in my family), but that never seemed to affect the ability or desire of the kid to nurse. We kept it up absolutely as long as possible (including my wife pumping and freezing for feeding at daycare or at night), until a weeklong stretch of overtime at work at about eight months caused her to essentially dry up, forcing a weaning will-we / nill-we. As for the friend part, I've had between 20 and 30 female friends and co-workers bear children over the last 20 years or so and, with only a single exception (she didn't want to "ruin" her breasts), they have all had a very similar experience to ours - nursing, pumping, and supplementation with no problems. So, that's a long way of explaining my position, and acknowledging that I need to learn more. Thank you for taking the time to track me down and enlighten me. This is the kind of thing I've loved about being online geek cred here)since 1985: having an easy way for people who know more than I do about something to share their knowledge with me. Thanks again, and my address for reply is agpym@goodideasgonebad.net.