A mention of specific studies would be nice. Formula was developed in the 1800's for women who were unable to breast feed. I can't find any study that says formula is better, only that it is adequate. You've piqued my curiosity.
Specific studies on the composition of breastmilk?
OK, I will correct and say, doctors have usually given lip service to the superiority of human milk for human babies. With the addendum, "BUT, if you 'can't' breastfeed..."
And then they throw hundred of roadblocks up to sabotage breastfeeding, such as:
The alcohol on the nipples.
The recommendation to only breastfeed every 4 hours, and go 8 hours at night by forcing a baby to "cry it out" to stay in its own bed. Going 4+ hours between feeding causes menstruation to return, and pregnancy often occurs, thereby causing the milk to further dry up, robbing the first child of healthy food
Patronizing women and telling them it's OK to quit nursing and switch to formula, it doesn't make that much difference. It makes a HUGE difference! It brings doctors more patients, ie: sick babies (leukemia, diabetes, Crohn's disease). It brings dentists more children with rotten teeth.
Even calling synthetic baby milk "formula" when it wasn't a scientific formula, is deceiving. It was diluted cow's milk (with too much salt and casein, a known rubbery indigestible allergen) and the wrong kind of sugar, and not enough of the right vitamins and minerals, and NO immune properties, etc. To this day, formulas are recalled from rat feces contamination, from lead contamination, from too much or too little of this or that vitamin.
Telling mothers in the hospital, whose milk hadn't "come in yet," that the colostrum wasn't enough, the baby needed to gain weight, so forcing the mothers to choose to feed the baby some sugar water or formula, causing the baby to have "nipple confusion" when given the rubber nipple of a bottle, and to fill up on the artificial food, pass out, and miss one or two breastfeeds, and causing the mother to question her adequacy as a mother, as a woman, and to quit nursing this child, and perhaps not even try with subsequent children
Telling a mother to "top off" a breastfeeding with formula, for a small or premature baby, for whatever reason. Breastmilk is a supply and demand resource, the less you nurse, the less milk there will be, and so the spiral begins
Even telling a mother breastmilk is "best" is incorrect. Breastmilk is NORMAL! Formula feeding is abnormal, inadequate, and leads to health issues. Making a woman think breastfeeding is "special" and a "gift" to her child makes it seem like an extra, like an option. Many mothers will believe it's just a choice between Coke and Pepsi, she might as well quit.
breastfeeding in primates is not fully instinctive. We humans and the apes are meant to learn to breastfeed by watching other mothers do it. By being informed and educated on it by other mothers in our family or tribe. By having the childcare and housework done for us so we can focus on the baby. Nowadays women don't have tribes unless we seek them out. Many of us weren't breastfed by our own mothers, or we don't live near our mothers. Or aunts. Or older sisters or cousins. So if a hospital doesn't give mothers information about La Leche League, which provides mother to mother support for lactation, the new mother is often isolated and quits breastfeeding. Oh well, formula is almost as good! (No, it isn't, it's a dead substance with inadequate nutrition. It's meant to save a baby's life in dire circumstances.) (And many babies who allergic or sensitive to the casein in cow's milk, or to soy formulas, do better on goat's milk, believe it or not.)
Doctors are not trained in human lactation in medical school. There is good science on human milk these days, unlike in the early to mid 20th century. One of my points was to concur with River (for once), that "science" isn't perfect. Early researchers thought human milk was dirty and germy, thin and weak. They thought human mothers, middle class and upper class ones, were too "nervous" to lactate. Their science was clouded by classisism and racism. They believed breastfeeding was well and good for the "lower class," but richer woman didn't need to be bothered with it. Just look at those African women in National Geographic with babies hanging off their sagging breasts! We don't want to look like that, do we, dear?
People came to believe this, against their own instincts. A non-drugged mother does have an instinct to nurse. And a non-drugged baby will root for a breast. It will even climb up the mother's body unassisted to get to her breast. So, science, thinking milk was dirty and germy, thin and weak, and that women should be compliant to the male doctor, and be drugged to be made passive, sabotaged the nursing relationship in many ways, to be in control of the female right of passage to give birth in an aware state, and to breastfeed as nature intended.
We've all heard of penis envy. Many men have Venus envy. It wasn't enough to make women pregnant. They wanted to "deliver" babies as well. Women today still say "Dr So and So delivered my baby." They aren't empowered to understand, the mother delivers the baby. The nurse, doula, midwife, partner or spouse, her own mother, sister or friend, aid her labor. The doctor may come in in the last minute to "catch" the baby. And then take all the credit.
And so many fathers want to bottlefeed their babies! They can't wait 6 months to help a baby start table food. They want to feed it milk from a nipple! Well, you can say, a mother can pump her milk so the father can feed it from a bottle. But the milk supply can then get thrown off. If a mother pumps a few times so father can have the fun of bottle feeding, and then he loses interest, her supply will be too large, and she'll get swollen breasts and maybe an infection. Or if the father feeds his baby formula, then loses interest, the mother's supply will be too low, and she'll have a fussy underfed baby for a week or so until she can get her supply back up. Or she'll just give up and start to formula feed the baby herself.
Where are the doctors telling parents that it's a baby's right to be fed its own mother's milk from her breast? At least for the first 6 weeks... come on. (This is why we have lactation specialists and consultants, and midwives and doulas, in hospitals fighting doctors tooth and nail for the rights of mothers and babies to birth naturally and feed human milk to human babies.)
The doctor convinces the mother she needs his "help" to interfere in her labor and her birth, for the good of her child. No woman wants to harm her child. So she is cowed by his mansplaining and patronizing to go along with the program to keep her compliant. The drugs, the epidural, the bright lights and noises, the stirrups, the lack of food and water, the strange unfamiliar surroundings all extend her labor and weaken her resolve, and make her doubt herself.
The strange surroundings and strange people of the hospital cause adrenaline to be released into the blood of the laboring woman. This slows or stops her labor. Just like a laboring deer in the forest, if threatened by a predator, her labor will stop until she escapes to safety. Women in good strong labor at home, will often find labor ceases on the way to the hospital or in the hospital. Then she "needs" meds to restart her labor. And her adrenaline may still prevent labor from progressing, so she "needs" a big episiotomy or worse, cesarean section. And then she has to recover from major surgery while attempting to breastfeed. 25%-50% of all hospital births these days are C-sections! Left alone, in a home birth or birth center with trained certified midwives, only 5% of mothers will need to be transferred to hospital for C-section.
So, as many of us know, scientific "advancement" can exceed our ethics. And end up causing actual harm to humanity (and the planet).
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