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Friday, March 30, 2007

Answering the Question: What's So Wrong With Formula?

Yesterday Jodifur emailed me an article by Stacey Garfinkle from The Washington Post called What's So Wrong With Formula?.

Well, it probably won't surprise you to hear that I agree with what she wrote. I don't understand why there are so many judgments out there. I agree with making breastfeeding education available to pregnant women and offering good access to lactation consultants to new parents. It makes me mad that it is illegal in some states to breastfeed in public. I do think breastfeeding is best if it works. I've had a few interesting conversations with people both in person and over email about how I feel about breastfeeding. I absolutely support it. If any of my friends were to get pregnant and wanted my advice, I would absolutely encourage them to try breastfeeding.

On the other hand, I would never question anyone who decided that breastfeeding was not for them. There are a whole bunch of reasons why breastfeeding might not be best for a particular family, ranging from physical inability to emotional reasons to impracticality because of work schedules. And, as several people commented on the article, I think it is more important that the baby is fed than how the baby is fed.

I have heard some breastfeeding advocates make an absolute argument that because breastfeeding is natural it is somehow guaranteed to work. After all, in the good old days, there was no formula, and every baby was breastfed. I think these advocates have forgotten that society wasn't Utopian. A lot of women depended on wet nurses to feed their babies, if they were unable to breastfeed. I don't know about you, but I can't remember the last time I looked in the jobs section of the newspaper and saw an ad for "wet nurse for hire." And while I can't give you a specific link (you can do a google search on your own) I also remember learning that back in the olden days where multigenerational families always lived together and other relatives lived right by you, if you couldn't breastfeed your baby, then maybe your sister or sister-in-law could. Either way, there was a much higher infant mortality rate; I am not claiming that is linked to breastfeeding, but it does show that breastfeeding alone is not a panacea for all childhood health issues.

The two best two classes that I took in my life were college statistics and research methods. (I'm a graduate of Wellesley College, and if you're a woman, taking those classes at a women's college is pretty cool. Most of what we analyzed were studies done on women.) Every time I see a study, regardless of the subject - even if it is on gardening, I am grateful that I took those two classes. They taught me how to assess the validity of a study, based on its parameters and how to read and interpret the results.

If someone asked me what they should do to prepare for parenthood, I would encourage them to study statistics and research methods. After all, you can get knowledge from any number of sources on any parenting subject, without needing to take a class. One of the keys to parenting is knowing what information you should believe. My classes have given me substantial cause to question many of the studies that claim to prove the inferiority of formula feeding. Please read the next statement carefully: It is not that I believe that they are necessarily wrong; it is just that I believe that there is a common societal belief that the studies have made a far stronger case than I many times believe the data warrants. Along those lines, the largest problem with these studies in my opinion, is the a failure on the part of the public to differentiate between a correlation and causation.

There are often outside variables that you can't separate or in other words "are the other reasons why this could have happened." For example, many studies have shown that breastfed babies tend to have be smarter than formula-fed babies. Does that mean that breastmilk makes babies smarter? Not necessarily. The correlation could be the result of other factors. One argument that I've read in numerous sources is that more educated parents tend to be more likely to emphasize the value of education and ensure that their children are better educated (not something that was accounted for in the study.) More educated parents also tend to breastfeed their children. Thus the correlation between children being breastfed and children being more educated could plausibly be explained by the educational level of their parents.

My older son(OS) required ear tubes due to fluid in his ears from multiple ear infections. My younger son (YS) is being watched to see if he needs the same. Aha! They both were formula-fed. Could that be the cause? Well...maybe there are other factors. I was exclusively breastfed, but I lost 10% of my hearing from childhood ear infections. My exclusively breastfed husband had so many childhood ear infections that he was one ear infection away from tubes. When I asked my ENT if only breastfeeding for 5 weeks could have caused OS's ear problems, he looked at me like I was crazy and said it was because OS's Eustachian tubes were abnormally shaped and that it would have been a medical miracle if OS hadn't had problems with ear infections.

For the record, OS has never once had diarrhea either. So am I saying that you should go formula feed your babies to avoid diarrhea? That my mom should have formula-fed because, hey, I lost 10% of my hearing anyhow, so she might as well have thrown in the towel? No, I am simply pointing out once again that just because something might happen doesn't mean that it will, and even if it does, you don't necessarily know what the cause may be. (Again, I wish I had been able to breastfeed my kids.) OS might just have a great digestive tract. Maybe it's because since he was an only child I didn't take him to parks and indoor playgrounds until he was older, as opposed to my younger son who's already been to parks numerous times because OS wants to go. Maybe it's because I make him use soap and water to wash his hands before meal times (I'm not a big fan of those hand sanitizer gels but that's another post). Maybe as an only child he didn't have anyone bringing in germs from preschool...See how great a stats and research methods class can be?

A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: Understand the research before you believe it.

Labels: , ,

posted by Alex Elliot @ 9:52 PM   4 comments
4 Comments:

  • At 3/31/2007 10:41 PM, Blogger Jessie said…

    Thank you.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

     

  • At 4/03/2007 9:13 PM, Blogger M said…

    Yes, thank you.
    Despite the fact that I was unable to breastfeed due to a breast reduction, I still feel very self-conscious every time I have to give Signal a bottle. Thanks for pointing out to me that there is more to the breast-bottle debate than meets the eye.

     

  • At 4/04/2007 7:37 AM, Blogger Suzanne said…

    Rock it, girl! I love this post. You are the best.

    I'd also point out that many babies starved to death before formula was available.

     

  • At 4/04/2007 4:47 PM, Blogger Jodi said…

    I'm so glad you enjoyed the article, and I so agree with you. I attempted to and could not breastfeed, and it's nice to here people discuss that it is not the end of the world. While my ped. was quite supportive b/c of the problems we had, others were not.

    Here is my blog post about it-
    http://jodifur.blogspot.com/2007/01/thing-i-never-planned-to-blog-about.html

    Anyway, you rock Alex!!!!

     
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Name:Alex Elliot
Home:MA, United States
About Me:Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.

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