this is so scary...

A Belgian couple are told by the court that they cannot sue Nestle b/c the risk of contamination is, drum roll please, KNOWN AND ACCEPTED. Yes, it is known, by lactation professionals and concerned medical staff, but is it know by the parents who give it to their infant children? It is accepted by the companies who produce the artificial milk, but what about the newborn baby who has it poured down their throat? Do the nursery staff inform the parents and give them an informed consent waiver to sign when they want to pop a bottle in the newborn's mouth overnight? (They do not in most hospitals in the USA even have to tell the parents they fed the baby a bottle at all, though, theoretically they are supposed to make a note in the baby's chart. Yet another reason to not let the baby out of your arms....)

http://boycottnestle.blogspot.com/2007/10/ruling-in-belgium.html

But you know what? We aren't supposed to talk about this stuff, it might get you labeled or cast out of mommy groups. God forbid we actually educate the public about the RISKS involved in NOT giving your child the biological norm. sigh.

How frustrating can it get?

J asks me why I allow myself to focus on things that are so depressing, and I think I will try to let go more often than I do, but sometimes it takes some righteous outrage from ordinary people to make changes that need to happen.

For example, the baby Friendly Hospital Initiative which was started to try to influence the many baby factory hospitals that churn out c-secs and send home poorly feeding infants who end up on formula (after routine and horrifying interventions that often traumatize not only the infant, but their mother as well) toward a more reasonable and evidence based way of practising, but as you can see here, it is not going well.

Another very distressing news item is the formula pushing and intimidation tactics of the company reps in the Philippines., which is leading to documented infant mortality rates skyrocketing, something which the media here would be loath to mention b/c it might make some women feel bad here in the USA. There are doctors and hospitals in the Philippines. who are making much more noise and forward strides about this issue than many here would dare, and though the government agrees that the problem is the formula companies, they are unable to remove them. (!!) How sick is it that this is even a problem we need to discuss?

Petition to ask USA to stop intervening on breastfeeding issues in the
Philippines.


http://www.petitiononline.com/probf1/petition.html

I am not trying to be inflammatory here, or get into a discussion about how we use formula here, and whether or not anyone should or shouldn't, just that it should not be PUSHED on people for whom it is causing a very obvious and studied phenomenon of infant mortality that is UNACCEPTABLE. I am very distressed that a country in which this would not have happened were it not for certain party's "generosity" and self interest now has generations of women who do not even know what normal infant feeding is. How dare these companies strong arm their way into wringing parent's last pennies away for an inferior and unhealthy product?