Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
More lies. The new guidelines do not say anything about nursing for one year. They say, and I quote:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for approximately 6 months after birth. Furthermore, the AAP supports continued breastfeeding, along with appropriate complementary foods introduced at about 6 months, as long as mutually desired by mother and child for 2 years or beyond."
The old guidelines said:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding as complementary foods are introduced, with continuation of breastfeeding for 1 year or longer as mutually desired by mother and infant."
Where it previously recommended continued breastfeeding "for 1 year or longer", it now "supports" (wtf does that mean, is the AAP paying women for their time? No, they are just trying to use another word for recommending) breastfeeding for two years and beyond. If you are being generous you could say the AAP is reducing its "recommendation" from 1 year to 6 months, but nowhere else in the document does it indicate that, rather they are doubling down on all the previous recommendations including numerous ones that are based on flimsy evidence and/or have been shown to actually harm women and babies.
If you read your own quotes, it will help. If breastfeeding is not something you want, which it clearly isn’t, then these recommendations are not about you.
What a mother "wants" is often defined by what they think is good for their child. Many of us follow recommendations because we want what is best for our children. We power through the exhaustion and discomfort. Too bad the evidence for the recommendations suck.
Ok so now women are not capable of deciding whether they desire to breastfeed? We’re just automatons to Big Lactation? If that’s true why do we so easily disregard other AAP recommendations without starting huge, moderately deranged threads about them? Do I *want* to roomshare with my child for a year? Nope! So I didn’t. And when the AAP suggested I did I did not start a thread about how my sleep was being undervalued due to weak evidence.
In other words, you don't think the AAP should be held accountable for making burdensome recommendations based on flimsy evidence. I do, I don't think that is "deranged" (and I also don't need to call you "deranged" express my opinion).
So far on this board I have seen one poster call people bonkers, psychotic, insane and every permutation whenever they are opposed. That behavior is deranged. The board stopped engaging with them, they were so distressed. If that poster isn’t you, my comment is not in reference to your posts.
How do you propose “holding the AAP accountable” for their opinions other than applying our own common sense and doing what we think is sensible for our families? It’s a group of people. Different pediatricians in this area will give different opinions on all sorts of things, we “hold them accountable” by seeing pediatricians whose practices align with our families needs.
The AAP is not some random mommy blogger that you can ignore. It is the national advocacy and trade group for pediatricians. It’s recommendations have great weight and result in material changes to pediatrician, hospital, and insurance practices. During Covid their opinion swayed some very important public policies. They are a powerful org making public health recommendations. So yeah, I think they need to be accountable. It’s honestly flabbergasting to me that they do not have a transparent control process rating the strength of evidence they base their recommendations on, like eg the US Preventative Task Force. The peanut allergy debacle ought to have triggered organizational reform, but it did not.
It really is though, and on every other subject people ignore it routinely without this degree of agitation.
I know not one single person who sleeps with their baby in their room until one. My pediatrician suggested moving my baby at 5M and that’s what we did. My insurance company still covered that visit.
I know several parents who co-sleep. No one has repossessed their babies. Two such parents are themselves physicians and they did not have their licenses revoked.
Formula, both RTF and canned, was sent to my house days after I had my baby, in 2020. Which means hospitals still share data with formula companies and the AAP hasn’t intervened to stop them. We handed it off to a family with new twins and moved on with our day.
Breastfeeding is only being treated as a bigger deal because people are emotionally attached to their side, but that’s just another choice.
It’s amazing you continue to refuse to understand why women are “emotional” about BF. It’s because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it. And this uneccesary stress started in the “baby friendly” hospital that sent them on their “breastfeeding journeys” completely exhausted.
I actually don't think the emotionality necessarily has much to do with the evidence-based (not moral) exhorting of organizations but I think it is more biological than that. I am someone who was totally FED IS BEST pre birth, I'll just breast feed shortly and then stop if I need to resume my medications (all of which i still think are much more rational positions than breastfeeding at any costs) to someone who ended up doing much much much more to try to make breastfeeding work than I EVER thought I would. (I did the whole triple feeding, using an SNS, bodywork, trying to pump all day (total craziness) etc.) It's like my rational brain completely changed in the process of giving birth and trying to breastfeed. Even now that my DC is almost 14 months emotionally the thought of giving up breastfeeding is too difficult even though it would be better for my work productivity to resume my medication. (but maybe not since I suspect I would have a hard time with the hormonal shifts and at risk of depression for stopping before DC and I am ready.) I was talking to my doctor about that yesterday the cost benefit analysis still tilted towards continuing to breastfeed (AAP didn't even come up ) I don't know if its the oxytocin, the preciousness of bonding in this way or what but it's definitely not the AAP that is driving my emotionality.
It is an emotional topic and why I am SO HAPPY that the AAP is supporting women who want to breast feed longer. FINALLY!
I didn't follow the AAP advice re: bedsharing and while there was a little angst there I felt confident in my understanding of the data and the risks and benefits involved. I feel if I were someone who decided not to breastfeed the data can also be interpreted to support that choice. There are so many health organization advices that are impossible to folllow to a T so I take what works and leave the rest.
Unlike some people on this thread, I do believe that women are capable of making the best and rational choices for themselves and putting AAP in context. I see it happening all the time in my mom's groups. Nobody is going to feel guilty about not feeding for 2 years if they planned to stop earlier just because the AAP says that women who want to feed that long should be supported.
Sorry you have such a low opinion of women's agency and don't support supporting them.
Bravo, PP. I totally understand where you are coming from. Also, as someone who suffers from endometriosis and severe PMDD, a huge benefit from my time extended BF my kids was not getting my period back. During that time, I felt the best I've ever felt in my life. We shouldn't have to talk around the positives of breastfeeding in order to support those who opt not to.
+1000 two well considered and well said points.
You shouldn’t have to fake or exaggerate the positives to reinforce your own choices either.
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
More lies. The new guidelines do not say anything about nursing for one year. They say, and I quote:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for approximately 6 months after birth. Furthermore, the AAP supports continued breastfeeding, along with appropriate complementary foods introduced at about 6 months, as long as mutually desired by mother and child for 2 years or beyond."
The old guidelines said:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding as complementary foods are introduced, with continuation of breastfeeding for 1 year or longer as mutually desired by mother and infant."
Where it previously recommended continued breastfeeding "for 1 year or longer", it now "supports" (wtf does that mean, is the AAP paying women for their time? No, they are just trying to use another word for recommending) breastfeeding for two years and beyond. If you are being generous you could say the AAP is reducing its "recommendation" from 1 year to 6 months, but nowhere else in the document does it indicate that, rather they are doubling down on all the previous recommendations including numerous ones that are based on flimsy evidence and/or have been shown to actually harm women and babies.
If you read your own quotes, it will help. If breastfeeding is not something you want, which it clearly isn’t, then these recommendations are not about you.
What a mother "wants" is often defined by what they think is good for their child. Many of us follow recommendations because we want what is best for our children. We power through the exhaustion and discomfort. Too bad the evidence for the recommendations suck.
Ok so now women are not capable of deciding whether they desire to breastfeed? We’re just automatons to Big Lactation? If that’s true why do we so easily disregard other AAP recommendations without starting huge, moderately deranged threads about them? Do I *want* to roomshare with my child for a year? Nope! So I didn’t. And when the AAP suggested I did I did not start a thread about how my sleep was being undervalued due to weak evidence.
In other words, you don't think the AAP should be held accountable for making burdensome recommendations based on flimsy evidence. I do, I don't think that is "deranged" (and I also don't need to call you "deranged" express my opinion).
So far on this board I have seen one poster call people bonkers, psychotic, insane and every permutation whenever they are opposed. That behavior is deranged. The board stopped engaging with them, they were so distressed. If that poster isn’t you, my comment is not in reference to your posts.
How do you propose “holding the AAP accountable” for their opinions other than applying our own common sense and doing what we think is sensible for our families? It’s a group of people. Different pediatricians in this area will give different opinions on all sorts of things, we “hold them accountable” by seeing pediatricians whose practices align with our families needs.
The AAP is not some random mommy blogger that you can ignore. It is the national advocacy and trade group for pediatricians. It’s recommendations have great weight and result in material changes to pediatrician, hospital, and insurance practices. During Covid their opinion swayed some very important public policies. They are a powerful org making public health recommendations. So yeah, I think they need to be accountable. It’s honestly flabbergasting to me that they do not have a transparent control process rating the strength of evidence they base their recommendations on, like eg the US Preventative Task Force. The peanut allergy debacle ought to have triggered organizational reform, but it did not.
It really is though, and on every other subject people ignore it routinely without this degree of agitation.
I know not one single person who sleeps with their baby in their room until one. My pediatrician suggested moving my baby at 5M and that’s what we did. My insurance company still covered that visit.
I know several parents who co-sleep. No one has repossessed their babies. Two such parents are themselves physicians and they did not have their licenses revoked.
Formula, both RTF and canned, was sent to my house days after I had my baby, in 2020. Which means hospitals still share data with formula companies and the AAP hasn’t intervened to stop them. We handed it off to a family with new twins and moved on with our day.
Breastfeeding is only being treated as a bigger deal because people are emotionally attached to their side, but that’s just another choice.
It’s amazing you continue to refuse to understand why women are “emotional” about BF. It’s because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it. And this uneccesary stress started in the “baby friendly” hospital that sent them on their “breastfeeding journeys” completely exhausted.
I actually don't think the emotionality necessarily has much to do with the evidence-based (not moral) exhorting of organizations but I think it is more biological than that. I am someone who was totally FED IS BEST pre birth, I'll just breast feed shortly and then stop if I need to resume my medications (all of which i still think are much more rational positions than breastfeeding at any costs) to someone who ended up doing much much much more to try to make breastfeeding work than I EVER thought I would. (I did the whole triple feeding, using an SNS, bodywork, trying to pump all day (total craziness) etc.) It's like my rational brain completely changed in the process of giving birth and trying to breastfeed. Even now that my DC is almost 14 months emotionally the thought of giving up breastfeeding is too difficult even though it would be better for my work productivity to resume my medication. (but maybe not since I suspect I would have a hard time with the hormonal shifts and at risk of depression for stopping before DC and I am ready.) I was talking to my doctor about that yesterday the cost benefit analysis still tilted towards continuing to breastfeed (AAP didn't even come up ) I don't know if its the oxytocin, the preciousness of bonding in this way or what but it's definitely not the AAP that is driving my emotionality.
It is an emotional topic and why I am SO HAPPY that the AAP is supporting women who want to breast feed longer. FINALLY!
I didn't follow the AAP advice re: bedsharing and while there was a little angst there I felt confident in my understanding of the data and the risks and benefits involved. I feel if I were someone who decided not to breastfeed the data can also be interpreted to support that choice. There are so many health organization advices that are impossible to folllow to a T so I take what works and leave the rest.
Unlike some people on this thread, I do believe that women are capable of making the best and rational choices for themselves and putting AAP in context. I see it happening all the time in my mom's groups. Nobody is going to feel guilty about not feeding for 2 years if they planned to stop earlier just because the AAP says that women who want to feed that long should be supported.
Sorry you have such a low opinion of women's agency and don't support supporting them.
There are a lot of reasons why I think the AAP guidelines are terrible, and none of them have anything to do with having a " low opinion of women's agency". I find it ironic that you feel so "supported" by the AAP's statement, but insist that those that don't should not care what they say. Either what the AAP says matters, or it doesn't. I'm sorry you only care about your perspective and think anyone who thinks otherwise is not "supporting" you. You're not "supporting" me either.
DP, but are you not the poster who said:
“because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it”
If so…that’s an example of a very low opinion of women’s agency. As above posters have said, people decide AAP recommendations are not right for them all the time. This one even comes with instructions to only follow it if you want to. I have no idea how much more “support” for not breastfeeding to two you can get than a statement about breastfeeding that says to do it only if you want to.
Ok then how about AAP stfu about breastfeeding altogether - then women can have full agency.
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
More lies. The new guidelines do not say anything about nursing for one year. They say, and I quote:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for approximately 6 months after birth. Furthermore, the AAP supports continued breastfeeding, along with appropriate complementary foods introduced at about 6 months, as long as mutually desired by mother and child for 2 years or beyond."
The old guidelines said:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding as complementary foods are introduced, with continuation of breastfeeding for 1 year or longer as mutually desired by mother and infant."
Where it previously recommended continued breastfeeding "for 1 year or longer", it now "supports" (wtf does that mean, is the AAP paying women for their time? No, they are just trying to use another word for recommending) breastfeeding for two years and beyond. If you are being generous you could say the AAP is reducing its "recommendation" from 1 year to 6 months, but nowhere else in the document does it indicate that, rather they are doubling down on all the previous recommendations including numerous ones that are based on flimsy evidence and/or have been shown to actually harm women and babies.
If you read your own quotes, it will help. If breastfeeding is not something you want, which it clearly isn’t, then these recommendations are not about you.
What a mother "wants" is often defined by what they think is good for their child. Many of us follow recommendations because we want what is best for our children. We power through the exhaustion and discomfort. Too bad the evidence for the recommendations suck.
Ok so now women are not capable of deciding whether they desire to breastfeed? We’re just automatons to Big Lactation? If that’s true why do we so easily disregard other AAP recommendations without starting huge, moderately deranged threads about them? Do I *want* to roomshare with my child for a year? Nope! So I didn’t. And when the AAP suggested I did I did not start a thread about how my sleep was being undervalued due to weak evidence.
In other words, you don't think the AAP should be held accountable for making burdensome recommendations based on flimsy evidence. I do, I don't think that is "deranged" (and I also don't need to call you "deranged" express my opinion).
So far on this board I have seen one poster call people bonkers, psychotic, insane and every permutation whenever they are opposed. That behavior is deranged. The board stopped engaging with them, they were so distressed. If that poster isn’t you, my comment is not in reference to your posts.
How do you propose “holding the AAP accountable” for their opinions other than applying our own common sense and doing what we think is sensible for our families? It’s a group of people. Different pediatricians in this area will give different opinions on all sorts of things, we “hold them accountable” by seeing pediatricians whose practices align with our families needs.
The AAP is not some random mommy blogger that you can ignore. It is the national advocacy and trade group for pediatricians. It’s recommendations have great weight and result in material changes to pediatrician, hospital, and insurance practices. During Covid their opinion swayed some very important public policies. They are a powerful org making public health recommendations. So yeah, I think they need to be accountable. It’s honestly flabbergasting to me that they do not have a transparent control process rating the strength of evidence they base their recommendations on, like eg the US Preventative Task Force. The peanut allergy debacle ought to have triggered organizational reform, but it did not.
It really is though, and on every other subject people ignore it routinely without this degree of agitation.
I know not one single person who sleeps with their baby in their room until one. My pediatrician suggested moving my baby at 5M and that’s what we did. My insurance company still covered that visit.
I know several parents who co-sleep. No one has repossessed their babies. Two such parents are themselves physicians and they did not have their licenses revoked.
Formula, both RTF and canned, was sent to my house days after I had my baby, in 2020. Which means hospitals still share data with formula companies and the AAP hasn’t intervened to stop them. We handed it off to a family with new twins and moved on with our day.
Breastfeeding is only being treated as a bigger deal because people are emotionally attached to their side, but that’s just another choice.
It’s amazing you continue to refuse to understand why women are “emotional” about BF. It’s because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it. And this uneccesary stress started in the “baby friendly” hospital that sent them on their “breastfeeding journeys” completely exhausted.
I actually don't think the emotionality necessarily has much to do with the evidence-based (not moral) exhorting of organizations but I think it is more biological than that. I am someone who was totally FED IS BEST pre birth, I'll just breast feed shortly and then stop if I need to resume my medications (all of which i still think are much more rational positions than breastfeeding at any costs) to someone who ended up doing much much much more to try to make breastfeeding work than I EVER thought I would. (I did the whole triple feeding, using an SNS, bodywork, trying to pump all day (total craziness) etc.) It's like my rational brain completely changed in the process of giving birth and trying to breastfeed. Even now that my DC is almost 14 months emotionally the thought of giving up breastfeeding is too difficult even though it would be better for my work productivity to resume my medication. (but maybe not since I suspect I would have a hard time with the hormonal shifts and at risk of depression for stopping before DC and I am ready.) I was talking to my doctor about that yesterday the cost benefit analysis still tilted towards continuing to breastfeed (AAP didn't even come up ) I don't know if its the oxytocin, the preciousness of bonding in this way or what but it's definitely not the AAP that is driving my emotionality.
It is an emotional topic and why I am SO HAPPY that the AAP is supporting women who want to breast feed longer. FINALLY!
I didn't follow the AAP advice re: bedsharing and while there was a little angst there I felt confident in my understanding of the data and the risks and benefits involved. I feel if I were someone who decided not to breastfeed the data can also be interpreted to support that choice. There are so many health organization advices that are impossible to folllow to a T so I take what works and leave the rest.
Unlike some people on this thread, I do believe that women are capable of making the best and rational choices for themselves and putting AAP in context. I see it happening all the time in my mom's groups. Nobody is going to feel guilty about not feeding for 2 years if they planned to stop earlier just because the AAP says that women who want to feed that long should be supported.
Sorry you have such a low opinion of women's agency and don't support supporting them.
There are a lot of reasons why I think the AAP guidelines are terrible, and none of them have anything to do with having a " low opinion of women's agency". I find it ironic that you feel so "supported" by the AAP's statement, but insist that those that don't should not care what they say. Either what the AAP says matters, or it doesn't. I'm sorry you only care about your perspective and think anyone who thinks otherwise is not "supporting" you. You're not "supporting" me either.
DP, but are you not the poster who said:
“because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it”
If so…that’s an example of a very low opinion of women’s agency. As above posters have said, people decide AAP recommendations are not right for them all the time. This one even comes with instructions to only follow it if you want to. I have no idea how much more “support” for not breastfeeding to two you can get than a statement about breastfeeding that says to do it only if you want to.
No, I am not that poster, but I absolutely agree with that statement and I think it is ridiculous and offensive to suggest that women following medical advice somehow means that they don't have agency.
The AAP statement does not once say "to do it only if you want to'". It emphasizes babies should receive absolutely nothing other than breast milk in the first six months of life barring what they characterize as extremely rare problems or contraindications. It also goes on and on exaggerating the benefits of continued breastfeeding. It supports practices in hospitals that are dumb and in some cases harmful. I would love it if it would just once clearly state that breastfeeding initiation or continuation of breastfeeding should be entirely up to the mother, and that it is her choice what she does with her body, but it does not say that, and that is not how medical providers treat women.
So do you room share for a year? Do you follow every single other recommendation?
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
Why is there no recommendation that pediatricians and workplaces support other feeding choices? Other feeding choices can involve a lot of time or be less common, like a vegan diet.
What evidence exists that pediatricians and workplaces routinely impose barriers to a vegan diet?
AAP should give the feeding wars a break and issue workplace recommendations on nap time for new mothers.
Like how they explicitly call for longer, paid, maternity leave as part of these recommendations?
Lots of women want to return to work. It would be more in line with supporting mothers (not “breastfeeding”) by saying: “you could continue to exclusively BF and pump when you return to work. There are significant costs involved and many women find it disruptive to their work. Think about how you want to prioritize your time and energy when they are scarce. Breastfeeding has modest benefits, including …. “
I cannot imagine a more pro-employer, anti-employee stance than this. You could TRY to Breastfeed but make sure you’re prioritizing the bottom line of your workplace over feeding your baby the way you see fit. We’d hate to be disruptive to the shareholders. Doubly so when you’re talking about the low income women least likely to breastfeed. Don’t let that inconvenient biological function of yours make you take a legally protected break at Wal*Mart. Think of the Walton’s, they’ll never make it through the winter!
How about “You have a legal right to express breastmilk for your child in the workplace! The AAP encourages local governments to aggressively pursue violators of the law who prevent women from doing so! Here are a list of employee advocacy organizations who can help you file a complaint with the NLRB if your rights are violated.” And then expand those rights to two years as the recommendation already states.
spare me. I had full access to pumping time, my own office with a refrigerator, and it was STILL hellish. Trying to pump and work was the single most hellish part of the first year, and I got 5 months leave. There’s nothing better employer policies could do to change that. And no, I did not want to take a full year out of the workforce.
I had an office, a fridge, lots of breaks, and nursed my child once a day at the on-site daycare. I found pumping annoying at times but certainly not hellish. My colleagues were conscientious about respecting my calendar blocks and our office manager kept an eye on my door in case anyone new or a visitor might think to just step in. I was promoted when my daughter was still nursing so it didn’t hurt my career in the slightest.
Better employer policies could ensure more people got what I did, and fewer be told to prioritize that TPS report and give the baby formula.
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
More lies. The new guidelines do not say anything about nursing for one year. They say, and I quote:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for approximately 6 months after birth. Furthermore, the AAP supports continued breastfeeding, along with appropriate complementary foods introduced at about 6 months, as long as mutually desired by mother and child for 2 years or beyond."
The old guidelines said:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding as complementary foods are introduced, with continuation of breastfeeding for 1 year or longer as mutually desired by mother and infant."
Where it previously recommended continued breastfeeding "for 1 year or longer", it now "supports" (wtf does that mean, is the AAP paying women for their time? No, they are just trying to use another word for recommending) breastfeeding for two years and beyond. If you are being generous you could say the AAP is reducing its "recommendation" from 1 year to 6 months, but nowhere else in the document does it indicate that, rather they are doubling down on all the previous recommendations including numerous ones that are based on flimsy evidence and/or have been shown to actually harm women and babies.
If you read your own quotes, it will help. If breastfeeding is not something you want, which it clearly isn’t, then these recommendations are not about you.
What a mother "wants" is often defined by what they think is good for their child. Many of us follow recommendations because we want what is best for our children. We power through the exhaustion and discomfort. Too bad the evidence for the recommendations suck.
Ok so now women are not capable of deciding whether they desire to breastfeed? We’re just automatons to Big Lactation? If that’s true why do we so easily disregard other AAP recommendations without starting huge, moderately deranged threads about them? Do I *want* to roomshare with my child for a year? Nope! So I didn’t. And when the AAP suggested I did I did not start a thread about how my sleep was being undervalued due to weak evidence.
In other words, you don't think the AAP should be held accountable for making burdensome recommendations based on flimsy evidence. I do, I don't think that is "deranged" (and I also don't need to call you "deranged" express my opinion).
So far on this board I have seen one poster call people bonkers, psychotic, insane and every permutation whenever they are opposed. That behavior is deranged. The board stopped engaging with them, they were so distressed. If that poster isn’t you, my comment is not in reference to your posts.
How do you propose “holding the AAP accountable” for their opinions other than applying our own common sense and doing what we think is sensible for our families? It’s a group of people. Different pediatricians in this area will give different opinions on all sorts of things, we “hold them accountable” by seeing pediatricians whose practices align with our families needs.
The AAP is not some random mommy blogger that you can ignore. It is the national advocacy and trade group for pediatricians. It’s recommendations have great weight and result in material changes to pediatrician, hospital, and insurance practices. During Covid their opinion swayed some very important public policies. They are a powerful org making public health recommendations. So yeah, I think they need to be accountable. It’s honestly flabbergasting to me that they do not have a transparent control process rating the strength of evidence they base their recommendations on, like eg the US Preventative Task Force. The peanut allergy debacle ought to have triggered organizational reform, but it did not.
It really is though, and on every other subject people ignore it routinely without this degree of agitation.
I know not one single person who sleeps with their baby in their room until one. My pediatrician suggested moving my baby at 5M and that’s what we did. My insurance company still covered that visit.
I know several parents who co-sleep. No one has repossessed their babies. Two such parents are themselves physicians and they did not have their licenses revoked.
Formula, both RTF and canned, was sent to my house days after I had my baby, in 2020. Which means hospitals still share data with formula companies and the AAP hasn’t intervened to stop them. We handed it off to a family with new twins and moved on with our day.
Breastfeeding is only being treated as a bigger deal because people are emotionally attached to their side, but that’s just another choice.
It’s amazing you continue to refuse to understand why women are “emotional” about BF. It’s because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it. And this uneccesary stress started in the “baby friendly” hospital that sent them on their “breastfeeding journeys” completely exhausted.
I actually don't think the emotionality necessarily has much to do with the evidence-based (not moral) exhorting of organizations but I think it is more biological than that. I am someone who was totally FED IS BEST pre birth, I'll just breast feed shortly and then stop if I need to resume my medications (all of which i still think are much more rational positions than breastfeeding at any costs) to someone who ended up doing much much much more to try to make breastfeeding work than I EVER thought I would. (I did the whole triple feeding, using an SNS, bodywork, trying to pump all day (total craziness) etc.) It's like my rational brain completely changed in the process of giving birth and trying to breastfeed. Even now that my DC is almost 14 months emotionally the thought of giving up breastfeeding is too difficult even though it would be better for my work productivity to resume my medication. (but maybe not since I suspect I would have a hard time with the hormonal shifts and at risk of depression for stopping before DC and I am ready.) I was talking to my doctor about that yesterday the cost benefit analysis still tilted towards continuing to breastfeed (AAP didn't even come up ) I don't know if its the oxytocin, the preciousness of bonding in this way or what but it's definitely not the AAP that is driving my emotionality.
It is an emotional topic and why I am SO HAPPY that the AAP is supporting women who want to breast feed longer. FINALLY!
I didn't follow the AAP advice re: bedsharing and while there was a little angst there I felt confident in my understanding of the data and the risks and benefits involved. I feel if I were someone who decided not to breastfeed the data can also be interpreted to support that choice. There are so many health organization advices that are impossible to folllow to a T so I take what works and leave the rest.
Unlike some people on this thread, I do believe that women are capable of making the best and rational choices for themselves and putting AAP in context. I see it happening all the time in my mom's groups. Nobody is going to feel guilty about not feeding for 2 years if they planned to stop earlier just because the AAP says that women who want to feed that long should be supported.
Sorry you have such a low opinion of women's agency and don't support supporting them.
There are a lot of reasons why I think the AAP guidelines are terrible, and none of them have anything to do with having a " low opinion of women's agency". I find it ironic that you feel so "supported" by the AAP's statement, but insist that those that don't should not care what they say. Either what the AAP says matters, or it doesn't. I'm sorry you only care about your perspective and think anyone who thinks otherwise is not "supporting" you. You're not "supporting" me either.
DP, but are you not the poster who said:
“because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it”
If so…that’s an example of a very low opinion of women’s agency. As above posters have said, people decide AAP recommendations are not right for them all the time. This one even comes with instructions to only follow it if you want to. I have no idea how much more “support” for not breastfeeding to two you can get than a statement about breastfeeding that says to do it only if you want to.
No, I am not that poster, but I absolutely agree with that statement and I think it is ridiculous and offensive to suggest that women following medical advice somehow means that they don't have agency.
The AAP statement does not once say "to do it only if you want to'". It emphasizes babies should receive absolutely nothing other than breast milk in the first six months of life barring what they characterize as extremely rare problems or contraindications. It also goes on and on exaggerating the benefits of continued breastfeeding. It supports practices in hospitals that are dumb and in some cases harmful. I would love it if it would just once clearly state that breastfeeding initiation or continuation of breastfeeding should be entirely up to the mother, and that it is her choice what she does with her body, but it does not say that, and that is not how medical providers treat women.
So do you room share for a year? Do you follow every single other recommendation?
This is not the great point you think it is …
Nor is that an answer. If you have the agency to decide not to keep your child in your bedroom for a year, and the agency to decide when to co-sleep, and the agency to decide about earlier introduction of allergens, does your agency just evaporate suddenly where breastfeeding is concerned?
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
More lies. The new guidelines do not say anything about nursing for one year. They say, and I quote:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for approximately 6 months after birth. Furthermore, the AAP supports continued breastfeeding, along with appropriate complementary foods introduced at about 6 months, as long as mutually desired by mother and child for 2 years or beyond."
The old guidelines said:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding as complementary foods are introduced, with continuation of breastfeeding for 1 year or longer as mutually desired by mother and infant."
Where it previously recommended continued breastfeeding "for 1 year or longer", it now "supports" (wtf does that mean, is the AAP paying women for their time? No, they are just trying to use another word for recommending) breastfeeding for two years and beyond. If you are being generous you could say the AAP is reducing its "recommendation" from 1 year to 6 months, but nowhere else in the document does it indicate that, rather they are doubling down on all the previous recommendations including numerous ones that are based on flimsy evidence and/or have been shown to actually harm women and babies.
If you read your own quotes, it will help. If breastfeeding is not something you want, which it clearly isn’t, then these recommendations are not about you.
What a mother "wants" is often defined by what they think is good for their child. Many of us follow recommendations because we want what is best for our children. We power through the exhaustion and discomfort. Too bad the evidence for the recommendations suck.
Ok so now women are not capable of deciding whether they desire to breastfeed? We’re just automatons to Big Lactation? If that’s true why do we so easily disregard other AAP recommendations without starting huge, moderately deranged threads about them? Do I *want* to roomshare with my child for a year? Nope! So I didn’t. And when the AAP suggested I did I did not start a thread about how my sleep was being undervalued due to weak evidence.
In other words, you don't think the AAP should be held accountable for making burdensome recommendations based on flimsy evidence. I do, I don't think that is "deranged" (and I also don't need to call you "deranged" express my opinion).
So far on this board I have seen one poster call people bonkers, psychotic, insane and every permutation whenever they are opposed. That behavior is deranged. The board stopped engaging with them, they were so distressed. If that poster isn’t you, my comment is not in reference to your posts.
How do you propose “holding the AAP accountable” for their opinions other than applying our own common sense and doing what we think is sensible for our families? It’s a group of people. Different pediatricians in this area will give different opinions on all sorts of things, we “hold them accountable” by seeing pediatricians whose practices align with our families needs.
The AAP is not some random mommy blogger that you can ignore. It is the national advocacy and trade group for pediatricians. It’s recommendations have great weight and result in material changes to pediatrician, hospital, and insurance practices. During Covid their opinion swayed some very important public policies. They are a powerful org making public health recommendations. So yeah, I think they need to be accountable. It’s honestly flabbergasting to me that they do not have a transparent control process rating the strength of evidence they base their recommendations on, like eg the US Preventative Task Force. The peanut allergy debacle ought to have triggered organizational reform, but it did not.
It really is though, and on every other subject people ignore it routinely without this degree of agitation.
I know not one single person who sleeps with their baby in their room until one. My pediatrician suggested moving my baby at 5M and that’s what we did. My insurance company still covered that visit.
I know several parents who co-sleep. No one has repossessed their babies. Two such parents are themselves physicians and they did not have their licenses revoked.
Formula, both RTF and canned, was sent to my house days after I had my baby, in 2020. Which means hospitals still share data with formula companies and the AAP hasn’t intervened to stop them. We handed it off to a family with new twins and moved on with our day.
Breastfeeding is only being treated as a bigger deal because people are emotionally attached to their side, but that’s just another choice.
It’s amazing you continue to refuse to understand why women are “emotional” about BF. It’s because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it. And this uneccesary stress started in the “baby friendly” hospital that sent them on their “breastfeeding journeys” completely exhausted.
I actually don't think the emotionality necessarily has much to do with the evidence-based (not moral) exhorting of organizations but I think it is more biological than that. I am someone who was totally FED IS BEST pre birth, I'll just breast feed shortly and then stop if I need to resume my medications (all of which i still think are much more rational positions than breastfeeding at any costs) to someone who ended up doing much much much more to try to make breastfeeding work than I EVER thought I would. (I did the whole triple feeding, using an SNS, bodywork, trying to pump all day (total craziness) etc.) It's like my rational brain completely changed in the process of giving birth and trying to breastfeed. Even now that my DC is almost 14 months emotionally the thought of giving up breastfeeding is too difficult even though it would be better for my work productivity to resume my medication. (but maybe not since I suspect I would have a hard time with the hormonal shifts and at risk of depression for stopping before DC and I am ready.) I was talking to my doctor about that yesterday the cost benefit analysis still tilted towards continuing to breastfeed (AAP didn't even come up ) I don't know if its the oxytocin, the preciousness of bonding in this way or what but it's definitely not the AAP that is driving my emotionality.
It is an emotional topic and why I am SO HAPPY that the AAP is supporting women who want to breast feed longer. FINALLY!
I didn't follow the AAP advice re: bedsharing and while there was a little angst there I felt confident in my understanding of the data and the risks and benefits involved. I feel if I were someone who decided not to breastfeed the data can also be interpreted to support that choice. There are so many health organization advices that are impossible to folllow to a T so I take what works and leave the rest.
Unlike some people on this thread, I do believe that women are capable of making the best and rational choices for themselves and putting AAP in context. I see it happening all the time in my mom's groups. Nobody is going to feel guilty about not feeding for 2 years if they planned to stop earlier just because the AAP says that women who want to feed that long should be supported.
Sorry you have such a low opinion of women's agency and don't support supporting them.
There are a lot of reasons why I think the AAP guidelines are terrible, and none of them have anything to do with having a " low opinion of women's agency". I find it ironic that you feel so "supported" by the AAP's statement, but insist that those that don't should not care what they say. Either what the AAP says matters, or it doesn't. I'm sorry you only care about your perspective and think anyone who thinks otherwise is not "supporting" you. You're not "supporting" me either.
DP, but are you not the poster who said:
“because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it”
If so…that’s an example of a very low opinion of women’s agency. As above posters have said, people decide AAP recommendations are not right for them all the time. This one even comes with instructions to only follow it if you want to. I have no idea how much more “support” for not breastfeeding to two you can get than a statement about breastfeeding that says to do it only if you want to.
Ok then how about AAP stfu about breastfeeding altogether - then women can have full agency.
Not if pediatricians are discouraging breastfeeding beyond a year based on misinformation.
Not if there aren't societal supports for breastfeeding.
Laying out the evidence and making recommendations has policy implications that make it possible for women to CHOOSE to breastfeed.
I get it you are antibreastfeeding and want an environment that makes it even more difficult to do so.
I think that women are capable of saying breatfeeding isn't working for me so I will stop, never start, etc even if there are policies in place that support women who DO want to breastfeed.
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
Why is there no recommendation that pediatricians and workplaces support other feeding choices? Other feeding choices can involve a lot of time or be less common, like a vegan diet.
What evidence exists that pediatricians and workplaces routinely impose barriers to a vegan diet?
AAP should give the feeding wars a break and issue workplace recommendations on nap time for new mothers.
Like how they explicitly call for longer, paid, maternity leave as part of these recommendations?
So much public health advice seems rooted in women not even attempting to hold down a job.
Buying formula should not be a requirement to a woman having a job and a child unless her desire is to feed formula. Professional women and wealthy women are given lactation lounges at work, mandatory breaks, and other supports to breastfeeding. Those should be widely available not replaced by another consumer product.
Oh yes, we must withhold consumer products from women that replace her labor … no dishwashers, dryers, or store bought bread!
My dishwasher hasn’t been recalled for killing babies and my dryer isn’t out of stock in every store right now, so I’m not sure this parallel of convenience holds up.
I didn’t say to withhold anything, I said not to replace women’s legally protected rights to breastfeed and pump with a consumer product, particularly while saying they should prioritize getting back to work. We’re more than the shareholder report..
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
More lies. The new guidelines do not say anything about nursing for one year. They say, and I quote:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for approximately 6 months after birth. Furthermore, the AAP supports continued breastfeeding, along with appropriate complementary foods introduced at about 6 months, as long as mutually desired by mother and child for 2 years or beyond."
The old guidelines said:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding as complementary foods are introduced, with continuation of breastfeeding for 1 year or longer as mutually desired by mother and infant."
Where it previously recommended continued breastfeeding "for 1 year or longer", it now "supports" (wtf does that mean, is the AAP paying women for their time? No, they are just trying to use another word for recommending) breastfeeding for two years and beyond. If you are being generous you could say the AAP is reducing its "recommendation" from 1 year to 6 months, but nowhere else in the document does it indicate that, rather they are doubling down on all the previous recommendations including numerous ones that are based on flimsy evidence and/or have been shown to actually harm women and babies.
If you read your own quotes, it will help. If breastfeeding is not something you want, which it clearly isn’t, then these recommendations are not about you.
What a mother "wants" is often defined by what they think is good for their child. Many of us follow recommendations because we want what is best for our children. We power through the exhaustion and discomfort. Too bad the evidence for the recommendations suck.
Ok so now women are not capable of deciding whether they desire to breastfeed? We’re just automatons to Big Lactation? If that’s true why do we so easily disregard other AAP recommendations without starting huge, moderately deranged threads about them? Do I *want* to roomshare with my child for a year? Nope! So I didn’t. And when the AAP suggested I did I did not start a thread about how my sleep was being undervalued due to weak evidence.
In other words, you don't think the AAP should be held accountable for making burdensome recommendations based on flimsy evidence. I do, I don't think that is "deranged" (and I also don't need to call you "deranged" express my opinion).
So far on this board I have seen one poster call people bonkers, psychotic, insane and every permutation whenever they are opposed. That behavior is deranged. The board stopped engaging with them, they were so distressed. If that poster isn’t you, my comment is not in reference to your posts.
How do you propose “holding the AAP accountable” for their opinions other than applying our own common sense and doing what we think is sensible for our families? It’s a group of people. Different pediatricians in this area will give different opinions on all sorts of things, we “hold them accountable” by seeing pediatricians whose practices align with our families needs.
The AAP is not some random mommy blogger that you can ignore. It is the national advocacy and trade group for pediatricians. It’s recommendations have great weight and result in material changes to pediatrician, hospital, and insurance practices. During Covid their opinion swayed some very important public policies. They are a powerful org making public health recommendations. So yeah, I think they need to be accountable. It’s honestly flabbergasting to me that they do not have a transparent control process rating the strength of evidence they base their recommendations on, like eg the US Preventative Task Force. The peanut allergy debacle ought to have triggered organizational reform, but it did not.
It really is though, and on every other subject people ignore it routinely without this degree of agitation.
I know not one single person who sleeps with their baby in their room until one. My pediatrician suggested moving my baby at 5M and that’s what we did. My insurance company still covered that visit.
I know several parents who co-sleep. No one has repossessed their babies. Two such parents are themselves physicians and they did not have their licenses revoked.
Formula, both RTF and canned, was sent to my house days after I had my baby, in 2020. Which means hospitals still share data with formula companies and the AAP hasn’t intervened to stop them. We handed it off to a family with new twins and moved on with our day.
Breastfeeding is only being treated as a bigger deal because people are emotionally attached to their side, but that’s just another choice.
It’s amazing you continue to refuse to understand why women are “emotional” about BF. It’s because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it. And this uneccesary stress started in the “baby friendly” hospital that sent them on their “breastfeeding journeys” completely exhausted.
I actually don't think the emotionality necessarily has much to do with the evidence-based (not moral) exhorting of organizations but I think it is more biological than that. I am someone who was totally FED IS BEST pre birth, I'll just breast feed shortly and then stop if I need to resume my medications (all of which i still think are much more rational positions than breastfeeding at any costs) to someone who ended up doing much much much more to try to make breastfeeding work than I EVER thought I would. (I did the whole triple feeding, using an SNS, bodywork, trying to pump all day (total craziness) etc.) It's like my rational brain completely changed in the process of giving birth and trying to breastfeed. Even now that my DC is almost 14 months emotionally the thought of giving up breastfeeding is too difficult even though it would be better for my work productivity to resume my medication. (but maybe not since I suspect I would have a hard time with the hormonal shifts and at risk of depression for stopping before DC and I am ready.) I was talking to my doctor about that yesterday the cost benefit analysis still tilted towards continuing to breastfeed (AAP didn't even come up ) I don't know if its the oxytocin, the preciousness of bonding in this way or what but it's definitely not the AAP that is driving my emotionality.
It is an emotional topic and why I am SO HAPPY that the AAP is supporting women who want to breast feed longer. FINALLY!
I didn't follow the AAP advice re: bedsharing and while there was a little angst there I felt confident in my understanding of the data and the risks and benefits involved. I feel if I were someone who decided not to breastfeed the data can also be interpreted to support that choice. There are so many health organization advices that are impossible to folllow to a T so I take what works and leave the rest.
Unlike some people on this thread, I do believe that women are capable of making the best and rational choices for themselves and putting AAP in context. I see it happening all the time in my mom's groups. Nobody is going to feel guilty about not feeding for 2 years if they planned to stop earlier just because the AAP says that women who want to feed that long should be supported.
Sorry you have such a low opinion of women's agency and don't support supporting them.
There are a lot of reasons why I think the AAP guidelines are terrible, and none of them have anything to do with having a " low opinion of women's agency". I find it ironic that you feel so "supported" by the AAP's statement, but insist that those that don't should not care what they say. Either what the AAP says matters, or it doesn't. I'm sorry you only care about your perspective and think anyone who thinks otherwise is not "supporting" you. You're not "supporting" me either.
DP, but are you not the poster who said:
“because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it”
If so…that’s an example of a very low opinion of women’s agency. As above posters have said, people decide AAP recommendations are not right for them all the time. This one even comes with instructions to only follow it if you want to. I have no idea how much more “support” for not breastfeeding to two you can get than a statement about breastfeeding that says to do it only if you want to.
No, I am not that poster, but I absolutely agree with that statement and I think it is ridiculous and offensive to suggest that women following medical advice somehow means that they don't have agency.
The AAP statement does not once say "to do it only if you want to'". It emphasizes babies should receive absolutely nothing other than breast milk in the first six months of life barring what they characterize as extremely rare problems or contraindications. It also goes on and on exaggerating the benefits of continued breastfeeding. It supports practices in hospitals that are dumb and in some cases harmful. I would love it if it would just once clearly state that breastfeeding initiation or continuation of breastfeeding should be entirely up to the mother, and that it is her choice what she does with her body, but it does not say that, and that is not how medical providers treat women.
So do you room share for a year? Do you follow every single other recommendation?
This is not the great point you think it is …
Nor is that an answer. If you have the agency to decide not to keep your child in your bedroom for a year, and the agency to decide when to co-sleep, and the agency to decide about earlier introduction of allergens, does your agency just evaporate suddenly where breastfeeding is concerned?
Do you understand what AAP is and why it makes recommendations?
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
Why is there no recommendation that pediatricians and workplaces support other feeding choices? Other feeding choices can involve a lot of time or be less common, like a vegan diet.
What evidence exists that pediatricians and workplaces routinely impose barriers to a vegan diet?
AAP should give the feeding wars a break and issue workplace recommendations on nap time for new mothers.
Like how they explicitly call for longer, paid, maternity leave as part of these recommendations?
So much public health advice seems rooted in women not even attempting to hold down a job.
Buying formula should not be a requirement to a woman having a job and a child unless her desire is to feed formula. Professional women and wealthy women are given lactation lounges at work, mandatory breaks, and other supports to breastfeeding. Those should be widely available not replaced by another consumer product.
Oh yes, we must withhold consumer products from women that replace her labor … no dishwashers, dryers, or store bought bread!
My dishwasher hasn’t been recalled for killing babies and my dryer isn’t out of stock in every store right now, so I’m not sure this parallel of convenience holds up.
I didn’t say to withhold anything, I said not to replace women’s legally protected rights to breastfeed and pump with a consumer product, particularly while saying they should prioritize getting back to work. We’re more than the shareholder report..
Way to miss the point, again. Just because somebody lobbied to get breastfeeding breaks doesn’t increase the benefits of breastfeeding or reduce the costs. Pumping significantly increases the burdens on mothers and should be promoted only with accurate information and consideration of all the costs.
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
More lies. The new guidelines do not say anything about nursing for one year. They say, and I quote:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for approximately 6 months after birth. Furthermore, the AAP supports continued breastfeeding, along with appropriate complementary foods introduced at about 6 months, as long as mutually desired by mother and child for 2 years or beyond."
The old guidelines said:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding as complementary foods are introduced, with continuation of breastfeeding for 1 year or longer as mutually desired by mother and infant."
Where it previously recommended continued breastfeeding "for 1 year or longer", it now "supports" (wtf does that mean, is the AAP paying women for their time? No, they are just trying to use another word for recommending) breastfeeding for two years and beyond. If you are being generous you could say the AAP is reducing its "recommendation" from 1 year to 6 months, but nowhere else in the document does it indicate that, rather they are doubling down on all the previous recommendations including numerous ones that are based on flimsy evidence and/or have been shown to actually harm women and babies.
If you read your own quotes, it will help. If breastfeeding is not something you want, which it clearly isn’t, then these recommendations are not about you.
What a mother "wants" is often defined by what they think is good for their child. Many of us follow recommendations because we want what is best for our children. We power through the exhaustion and discomfort. Too bad the evidence for the recommendations suck.
Ok so now women are not capable of deciding whether they desire to breastfeed? We’re just automatons to Big Lactation? If that’s true why do we so easily disregard other AAP recommendations without starting huge, moderately deranged threads about them? Do I *want* to roomshare with my child for a year? Nope! So I didn’t. And when the AAP suggested I did I did not start a thread about how my sleep was being undervalued due to weak evidence.
In other words, you don't think the AAP should be held accountable for making burdensome recommendations based on flimsy evidence. I do, I don't think that is "deranged" (and I also don't need to call you "deranged" express my opinion).
So far on this board I have seen one poster call people bonkers, psychotic, insane and every permutation whenever they are opposed. That behavior is deranged. The board stopped engaging with them, they were so distressed. If that poster isn’t you, my comment is not in reference to your posts.
How do you propose “holding the AAP accountable” for their opinions other than applying our own common sense and doing what we think is sensible for our families? It’s a group of people. Different pediatricians in this area will give different opinions on all sorts of things, we “hold them accountable” by seeing pediatricians whose practices align with our families needs.
The AAP is not some random mommy blogger that you can ignore. It is the national advocacy and trade group for pediatricians. It’s recommendations have great weight and result in material changes to pediatrician, hospital, and insurance practices. During Covid their opinion swayed some very important public policies. They are a powerful org making public health recommendations. So yeah, I think they need to be accountable. It’s honestly flabbergasting to me that they do not have a transparent control process rating the strength of evidence they base their recommendations on, like eg the US Preventative Task Force. The peanut allergy debacle ought to have triggered organizational reform, but it did not.
It really is though, and on every other subject people ignore it routinely without this degree of agitation.
I know not one single person who sleeps with their baby in their room until one. My pediatrician suggested moving my baby at 5M and that’s what we did. My insurance company still covered that visit.
I know several parents who co-sleep. No one has repossessed their babies. Two such parents are themselves physicians and they did not have their licenses revoked.
Formula, both RTF and canned, was sent to my house days after I had my baby, in 2020. Which means hospitals still share data with formula companies and the AAP hasn’t intervened to stop them. We handed it off to a family with new twins and moved on with our day.
Breastfeeding is only being treated as a bigger deal because people are emotionally attached to their side, but that’s just another choice.
It’s amazing you continue to refuse to understand why women are “emotional” about BF. It’s because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it. And this uneccesary stress started in the “baby friendly” hospital that sent them on their “breastfeeding journeys” completely exhausted.
I actually don't think the emotionality necessarily has much to do with the evidence-based (not moral) exhorting of organizations but I think it is more biological than that. I am someone who was totally FED IS BEST pre birth, I'll just breast feed shortly and then stop if I need to resume my medications (all of which i still think are much more rational positions than breastfeeding at any costs) to someone who ended up doing much much much more to try to make breastfeeding work than I EVER thought I would. (I did the whole triple feeding, using an SNS, bodywork, trying to pump all day (total craziness) etc.) It's like my rational brain completely changed in the process of giving birth and trying to breastfeed. Even now that my DC is almost 14 months emotionally the thought of giving up breastfeeding is too difficult even though it would be better for my work productivity to resume my medication. (but maybe not since I suspect I would have a hard time with the hormonal shifts and at risk of depression for stopping before DC and I am ready.) I was talking to my doctor about that yesterday the cost benefit analysis still tilted towards continuing to breastfeed (AAP didn't even come up ) I don't know if its the oxytocin, the preciousness of bonding in this way or what but it's definitely not the AAP that is driving my emotionality.
It is an emotional topic and why I am SO HAPPY that the AAP is supporting women who want to breast feed longer. FINALLY!
I didn't follow the AAP advice re: bedsharing and while there was a little angst there I felt confident in my understanding of the data and the risks and benefits involved. I feel if I were someone who decided not to breastfeed the data can also be interpreted to support that choice. There are so many health organization advices that are impossible to folllow to a T so I take what works and leave the rest.
Unlike some people on this thread, I do believe that women are capable of making the best and rational choices for themselves and putting AAP in context. I see it happening all the time in my mom's groups. Nobody is going to feel guilty about not feeding for 2 years if they planned to stop earlier just because the AAP says that women who want to feed that long should be supported.
Sorry you have such a low opinion of women's agency and don't support supporting them.
There are a lot of reasons why I think the AAP guidelines are terrible, and none of them have anything to do with having a " low opinion of women's agency". I find it ironic that you feel so "supported" by the AAP's statement, but insist that those that don't should not care what they say. Either what the AAP says matters, or it doesn't. I'm sorry you only care about your perspective and think anyone who thinks otherwise is not "supporting" you. You're not "supporting" me either.
DP, but are you not the poster who said:
“because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it”
If so…that’s an example of a very low opinion of women’s agency. As above posters have said, people decide AAP recommendations are not right for them all the time. This one even comes with instructions to only follow it if you want to. I have no idea how much more “support” for not breastfeeding to two you can get than a statement about breastfeeding that says to do it only if you want to.
No, I am not that poster, but I absolutely agree with that statement and I think it is ridiculous and offensive to suggest that women following medical advice somehow means that they don't have agency.
The AAP statement does not once say "to do it only if you want to'". It emphasizes babies should receive absolutely nothing other than breast milk in the first six months of life barring what they characterize as extremely rare problems or contraindications. It also goes on and on exaggerating the benefits of continued breastfeeding. It supports practices in hospitals that are dumb and in some cases harmful. I would love it if it would just once clearly state that breastfeeding initiation or continuation of breastfeeding should be entirely up to the mother, and that it is her choice what she does with her body, but it does not say that, and that is not how medical providers treat women.
So do you room share for a year? Do you follow every single other recommendation?
This is not the great point you think it is …
Nor is that an answer. If you have the agency to decide not to keep your child in your bedroom for a year, and the agency to decide when to co-sleep, and the agency to decide about earlier introduction of allergens, does your agency just evaporate suddenly where breastfeeding is concerned?
Do you understand what AAP is and why it makes recommendations?
I do. And, in that full understanding, I have not followed several of their recommendations while closely following others which worked for me. I have not considered their recommendations which have not worked for me to be some sort of attack on my choices or an attempt to control how I raise my baby. I have considered their recommendations to be…recommendations.
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
More lies. The new guidelines do not say anything about nursing for one year. They say, and I quote:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for approximately 6 months after birth. Furthermore, the AAP supports continued breastfeeding, along with appropriate complementary foods introduced at about 6 months, as long as mutually desired by mother and child for 2 years or beyond."
The old guidelines said:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding as complementary foods are introduced, with continuation of breastfeeding for 1 year or longer as mutually desired by mother and infant."
Where it previously recommended continued breastfeeding "for 1 year or longer", it now "supports" (wtf does that mean, is the AAP paying women for their time? No, they are just trying to use another word for recommending) breastfeeding for two years and beyond. If you are being generous you could say the AAP is reducing its "recommendation" from 1 year to 6 months, but nowhere else in the document does it indicate that, rather they are doubling down on all the previous recommendations including numerous ones that are based on flimsy evidence and/or have been shown to actually harm women and babies.
If you read your own quotes, it will help. If breastfeeding is not something you want, which it clearly isn’t, then these recommendations are not about you.
What a mother "wants" is often defined by what they think is good for their child. Many of us follow recommendations because we want what is best for our children. We power through the exhaustion and discomfort. Too bad the evidence for the recommendations suck.
Ok so now women are not capable of deciding whether they desire to breastfeed? We’re just automatons to Big Lactation? If that’s true why do we so easily disregard other AAP recommendations without starting huge, moderately deranged threads about them? Do I *want* to roomshare with my child for a year? Nope! So I didn’t. And when the AAP suggested I did I did not start a thread about how my sleep was being undervalued due to weak evidence.
In other words, you don't think the AAP should be held accountable for making burdensome recommendations based on flimsy evidence. I do, I don't think that is "deranged" (and I also don't need to call you "deranged" express my opinion).
So far on this board I have seen one poster call people bonkers, psychotic, insane and every permutation whenever they are opposed. That behavior is deranged. The board stopped engaging with them, they were so distressed. If that poster isn’t you, my comment is not in reference to your posts.
How do you propose “holding the AAP accountable” for their opinions other than applying our own common sense and doing what we think is sensible for our families? It’s a group of people. Different pediatricians in this area will give different opinions on all sorts of things, we “hold them accountable” by seeing pediatricians whose practices align with our families needs.
The AAP is not some random mommy blogger that you can ignore. It is the national advocacy and trade group for pediatricians. It’s recommendations have great weight and result in material changes to pediatrician, hospital, and insurance practices. During Covid their opinion swayed some very important public policies. They are a powerful org making public health recommendations. So yeah, I think they need to be accountable. It’s honestly flabbergasting to me that they do not have a transparent control process rating the strength of evidence they base their recommendations on, like eg the US Preventative Task Force. The peanut allergy debacle ought to have triggered organizational reform, but it did not.
It really is though, and on every other subject people ignore it routinely without this degree of agitation.
I know not one single person who sleeps with their baby in their room until one. My pediatrician suggested moving my baby at 5M and that’s what we did. My insurance company still covered that visit.
I know several parents who co-sleep. No one has repossessed their babies. Two such parents are themselves physicians and they did not have their licenses revoked.
Formula, both RTF and canned, was sent to my house days after I had my baby, in 2020. Which means hospitals still share data with formula companies and the AAP hasn’t intervened to stop them. We handed it off to a family with new twins and moved on with our day.
Breastfeeding is only being treated as a bigger deal because people are emotionally attached to their side, but that’s just another choice.
It’s amazing you continue to refuse to understand why women are “emotional” about BF. It’s because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it. And this uneccesary stress started in the “baby friendly” hospital that sent them on their “breastfeeding journeys” completely exhausted.
I actually don't think the emotionality necessarily has much to do with the evidence-based (not moral) exhorting of organizations but I think it is more biological than that. I am someone who was totally FED IS BEST pre birth, I'll just breast feed shortly and then stop if I need to resume my medications (all of which i still think are much more rational positions than breastfeeding at any costs) to someone who ended up doing much much much more to try to make breastfeeding work than I EVER thought I would. (I did the whole triple feeding, using an SNS, bodywork, trying to pump all day (total craziness) etc.) It's like my rational brain completely changed in the process of giving birth and trying to breastfeed. Even now that my DC is almost 14 months emotionally the thought of giving up breastfeeding is too difficult even though it would be better for my work productivity to resume my medication. (but maybe not since I suspect I would have a hard time with the hormonal shifts and at risk of depression for stopping before DC and I am ready.) I was talking to my doctor about that yesterday the cost benefit analysis still tilted towards continuing to breastfeed (AAP didn't even come up ) I don't know if its the oxytocin, the preciousness of bonding in this way or what but it's definitely not the AAP that is driving my emotionality.
It is an emotional topic and why I am SO HAPPY that the AAP is supporting women who want to breast feed longer. FINALLY!
I didn't follow the AAP advice re: bedsharing and while there was a little angst there I felt confident in my understanding of the data and the risks and benefits involved. I feel if I were someone who decided not to breastfeed the data can also be interpreted to support that choice. There are so many health organization advices that are impossible to folllow to a T so I take what works and leave the rest.
Unlike some people on this thread, I do believe that women are capable of making the best and rational choices for themselves and putting AAP in context. I see it happening all the time in my mom's groups. Nobody is going to feel guilty about not feeding for 2 years if they planned to stop earlier just because the AAP says that women who want to feed that long should be supported.
Sorry you have such a low opinion of women's agency and don't support supporting them.
There are a lot of reasons why I think the AAP guidelines are terrible, and none of them have anything to do with having a " low opinion of women's agency". I find it ironic that you feel so "supported" by the AAP's statement, but insist that those that don't should not care what they say. Either what the AAP says matters, or it doesn't. I'm sorry you only care about your perspective and think anyone who thinks otherwise is not "supporting" you. You're not "supporting" me either.
DP, but are you not the poster who said:
“because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it”
If so…that’s an example of a very low opinion of women’s agency. As above posters have said, people decide AAP recommendations are not right for them all the time. This one even comes with instructions to only follow it if you want to. I have no idea how much more “support” for not breastfeeding to two you can get than a statement about breastfeeding that says to do it only if you want to.
No, I am not that poster, but I absolutely agree with that statement and I think it is ridiculous and offensive to suggest that women following medical advice somehow means that they don't have agency.
The AAP statement does not once say "to do it only if you want to'". It emphasizes babies should receive absolutely nothing other than breast milk in the first six months of life barring what they characterize as extremely rare problems or contraindications. It also goes on and on exaggerating the benefits of continued breastfeeding. It supports practices in hospitals that are dumb and in some cases harmful. I would love it if it would just once clearly state that breastfeeding initiation or continuation of breastfeeding should be entirely up to the mother, and that it is her choice what she does with her body, but it does not say that, and that is not how medical providers treat women.
No the poster said they were following medical advice that went against their best interest. That implies that women don't have the capacity to evaluate medical advice and appropriately apply it to their situation. I mean there are a TON of medical guidelines out there. NOBODY follows all of them. Women are more than capable of reading AAP guideline, reading emily Oster, reading fed is best and figuring out what actually works best for them. If you think otherwise then you think women are not very intelligent and don't have agency.
Also even women who may not be so literate and working a minimum wage job can quickly ascertain that breastfeeding may not be feasible economically. Ie. not in their best interest regardless of their personal desire.
AAP is an important voice to change these job conditions so women have the option of breastfeeding.
Do you get that working minimum wage jobs is bad in and of itself? Wto make it about breastfeeding is not just dumb, it implies that the economic system is only bad insofar as it prevents women from breastfeeding.
All I can say about your point about medical advice is that you're a hypocrite if you think these guidelines are "supporting" you but think anyone who doesn't like them should just disregard them. Either the guidelines matter, or they don't. Pick one.
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
More lies. The new guidelines do not say anything about nursing for one year. They say, and I quote:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for approximately 6 months after birth. Furthermore, the AAP supports continued breastfeeding, along with appropriate complementary foods introduced at about 6 months, as long as mutually desired by mother and child for 2 years or beyond."
The old guidelines said:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding as complementary foods are introduced, with continuation of breastfeeding for 1 year or longer as mutually desired by mother and infant."
Where it previously recommended continued breastfeeding "for 1 year or longer", it now "supports" (wtf does that mean, is the AAP paying women for their time? No, they are just trying to use another word for recommending) breastfeeding for two years and beyond. If you are being generous you could say the AAP is reducing its "recommendation" from 1 year to 6 months, but nowhere else in the document does it indicate that, rather they are doubling down on all the previous recommendations including numerous ones that are based on flimsy evidence and/or have been shown to actually harm women and babies.
If you read your own quotes, it will help. If breastfeeding is not something you want, which it clearly isn’t, then these recommendations are not about you.
What a mother "wants" is often defined by what they think is good for their child. Many of us follow recommendations because we want what is best for our children. We power through the exhaustion and discomfort. Too bad the evidence for the recommendations suck.
Ok so now women are not capable of deciding whether they desire to breastfeed? We’re just automatons to Big Lactation? If that’s true why do we so easily disregard other AAP recommendations without starting huge, moderately deranged threads about them? Do I *want* to roomshare with my child for a year? Nope! So I didn’t. And when the AAP suggested I did I did not start a thread about how my sleep was being undervalued due to weak evidence.
In other words, you don't think the AAP should be held accountable for making burdensome recommendations based on flimsy evidence. I do, I don't think that is "deranged" (and I also don't need to call you "deranged" express my opinion).
So far on this board I have seen one poster call people bonkers, psychotic, insane and every permutation whenever they are opposed. That behavior is deranged. The board stopped engaging with them, they were so distressed. If that poster isn’t you, my comment is not in reference to your posts.
How do you propose “holding the AAP accountable” for their opinions other than applying our own common sense and doing what we think is sensible for our families? It’s a group of people. Different pediatricians in this area will give different opinions on all sorts of things, we “hold them accountable” by seeing pediatricians whose practices align with our families needs.
The AAP is not some random mommy blogger that you can ignore. It is the national advocacy and trade group for pediatricians. It’s recommendations have great weight and result in material changes to pediatrician, hospital, and insurance practices. During Covid their opinion swayed some very important public policies. They are a powerful org making public health recommendations. So yeah, I think they need to be accountable. It’s honestly flabbergasting to me that they do not have a transparent control process rating the strength of evidence they base their recommendations on, like eg the US Preventative Task Force. The peanut allergy debacle ought to have triggered organizational reform, but it did not.
It really is though, and on every other subject people ignore it routinely without this degree of agitation.
I know not one single person who sleeps with their baby in their room until one. My pediatrician suggested moving my baby at 5M and that’s what we did. My insurance company still covered that visit.
I know several parents who co-sleep. No one has repossessed their babies. Two such parents are themselves physicians and they did not have their licenses revoked.
Formula, both RTF and canned, was sent to my house days after I had my baby, in 2020. Which means hospitals still share data with formula companies and the AAP hasn’t intervened to stop them. We handed it off to a family with new twins and moved on with our day.
Breastfeeding is only being treated as a bigger deal because people are emotionally attached to their side, but that’s just another choice.
It’s amazing you continue to refuse to understand why women are “emotional” about BF. It’s because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it. And this uneccesary stress started in the “baby friendly” hospital that sent them on their “breastfeeding journeys” completely exhausted.
I actually don't think the emotionality necessarily has much to do with the evidence-based (not moral) exhorting of organizations but I think it is more biological than that. I am someone who was totally FED IS BEST pre birth, I'll just breast feed shortly and then stop if I need to resume my medications (all of which i still think are much more rational positions than breastfeeding at any costs) to someone who ended up doing much much much more to try to make breastfeeding work than I EVER thought I would. (I did the whole triple feeding, using an SNS, bodywork, trying to pump all day (total craziness) etc.) It's like my rational brain completely changed in the process of giving birth and trying to breastfeed. Even now that my DC is almost 14 months emotionally the thought of giving up breastfeeding is too difficult even though it would be better for my work productivity to resume my medication. (but maybe not since I suspect I would have a hard time with the hormonal shifts and at risk of depression for stopping before DC and I am ready.) I was talking to my doctor about that yesterday the cost benefit analysis still tilted towards continuing to breastfeed (AAP didn't even come up ) I don't know if its the oxytocin, the preciousness of bonding in this way or what but it's definitely not the AAP that is driving my emotionality.
It is an emotional topic and why I am SO HAPPY that the AAP is supporting women who want to breast feed longer. FINALLY!
I didn't follow the AAP advice re: bedsharing and while there was a little angst there I felt confident in my understanding of the data and the risks and benefits involved. I feel if I were someone who decided not to breastfeed the data can also be interpreted to support that choice. There are so many health organization advices that are impossible to folllow to a T so I take what works and leave the rest.
Unlike some people on this thread, I do believe that women are capable of making the best and rational choices for themselves and putting AAP in context. I see it happening all the time in my mom's groups. Nobody is going to feel guilty about not feeding for 2 years if they planned to stop earlier just because the AAP says that women who want to feed that long should be supported.
Sorry you have such a low opinion of women's agency and don't support supporting them.
There are a lot of reasons why I think the AAP guidelines are terrible, and none of them have anything to do with having a " low opinion of women's agency". I find it ironic that you feel so "supported" by the AAP's statement, but insist that those that don't should not care what they say. Either what the AAP says matters, or it doesn't. I'm sorry you only care about your perspective and think anyone who thinks otherwise is not "supporting" you. You're not "supporting" me either.
DP, but are you not the poster who said:
“because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it”
If so…that’s an example of a very low opinion of women’s agency. As above posters have said, people decide AAP recommendations are not right for them all the time. This one even comes with instructions to only follow it if you want to. I have no idea how much more “support” for not breastfeeding to two you can get than a statement about breastfeeding that says to do it only if you want to.
No, I am not that poster, but I absolutely agree with that statement and I think it is ridiculous and offensive to suggest that women following medical advice somehow means that they don't have agency.
The AAP statement does not once say "to do it only if you want to'". It emphasizes babies should receive absolutely nothing other than breast milk in the first six months of life barring what they characterize as extremely rare problems or contraindications. It also goes on and on exaggerating the benefits of continued breastfeeding. It supports practices in hospitals that are dumb and in some cases harmful. I would love it if it would just once clearly state that breastfeeding initiation or continuation of breastfeeding should be entirely up to the mother, and that it is her choice what she does with her body, but it does not say that, and that is not how medical providers treat women.
So do you room share for a year? Do you follow every single other recommendation?
This is not the great point you think it is …
Nor is that an answer. If you have the agency to decide not to keep your child in your bedroom for a year, and the agency to decide when to co-sleep, and the agency to decide about earlier introduction of allergens, does your agency just evaporate suddenly where breastfeeding is concerned?
Do you understand what AAP is and why it makes recommendations?
I do. And, in that full understanding, I have not followed several of their recommendations while closely following others which worked for me. I have not considered their recommendations which have not worked for me to be some sort of attack on my choices or an attempt to control how I raise my baby. I have considered their recommendations to be…recommendations.
So you see no problem with public health recommendations being made by a professional association with policy influence being based on bad evidence?
This isn’t about the AAP’s other recommendations- although they also tend to be bad. You’re creating a weird strawman here with the claim that unless women feel equally pressured or impacted by all AAP recommendations, therefore they are not pressured or impacted by breastfeeding recommendations.
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
Why is there no recommendation that pediatricians and workplaces support other feeding choices? Other feeding choices can involve a lot of time or be less common, like a vegan diet.
What evidence exists that pediatricians and workplaces routinely impose barriers to a vegan diet?
AAP should give the feeding wars a break and issue workplace recommendations on nap time for new mothers.
Like how they explicitly call for longer, paid, maternity leave as part of these recommendations?
So much public health advice seems rooted in women not even attempting to hold down a job.
Buying formula should not be a requirement to a woman having a job and a child unless her desire is to feed formula. Professional women and wealthy women are given lactation lounges at work, mandatory breaks, and other supports to breastfeeding. Those should be widely available not replaced by another consumer product.
Oh yes, we must withhold consumer products from women that replace her labor … no dishwashers, dryers, or store bought bread!
My dishwasher hasn’t been recalled for killing babies and my dryer isn’t out of stock in every store right now, so I’m not sure this parallel of convenience holds up.
I didn’t say to withhold anything, I said not to replace women’s legally protected rights to breastfeed and pump with a consumer product, particularly while saying they should prioritize getting back to work. We’re more than the shareholder report..
Way to miss the point, again. Just because somebody lobbied to get breastfeeding breaks doesn’t increase the benefits of breastfeeding or reduce the costs. Pumping significantly increases the burdens on mothers and should be promoted only with accurate information and consideration of all the costs.
Do we also fully consider all the costs of formula before we recommend it? Or do we assume women are intelligent enough to understand those trade offs, but insufficiently intelligent to do the same for breastfeeding?
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
More lies. The new guidelines do not say anything about nursing for one year. They say, and I quote:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for approximately 6 months after birth. Furthermore, the AAP supports continued breastfeeding, along with appropriate complementary foods introduced at about 6 months, as long as mutually desired by mother and child for 2 years or beyond."
The old guidelines said:
"The American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirms its recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for about 6 months, followed by continued breastfeeding as complementary foods are introduced, with continuation of breastfeeding for 1 year or longer as mutually desired by mother and infant."
Where it previously recommended continued breastfeeding "for 1 year or longer", it now "supports" (wtf does that mean, is the AAP paying women for their time? No, they are just trying to use another word for recommending) breastfeeding for two years and beyond. If you are being generous you could say the AAP is reducing its "recommendation" from 1 year to 6 months, but nowhere else in the document does it indicate that, rather they are doubling down on all the previous recommendations including numerous ones that are based on flimsy evidence and/or have been shown to actually harm women and babies.
If you read your own quotes, it will help. If breastfeeding is not something you want, which it clearly isn’t, then these recommendations are not about you.
What a mother "wants" is often defined by what they think is good for their child. Many of us follow recommendations because we want what is best for our children. We power through the exhaustion and discomfort. Too bad the evidence for the recommendations suck.
Ok so now women are not capable of deciding whether they desire to breastfeed? We’re just automatons to Big Lactation? If that’s true why do we so easily disregard other AAP recommendations without starting huge, moderately deranged threads about them? Do I *want* to roomshare with my child for a year? Nope! So I didn’t. And when the AAP suggested I did I did not start a thread about how my sleep was being undervalued due to weak evidence.
In other words, you don't think the AAP should be held accountable for making burdensome recommendations based on flimsy evidence. I do, I don't think that is "deranged" (and I also don't need to call you "deranged" express my opinion).
So far on this board I have seen one poster call people bonkers, psychotic, insane and every permutation whenever they are opposed. That behavior is deranged. The board stopped engaging with them, they were so distressed. If that poster isn’t you, my comment is not in reference to your posts.
How do you propose “holding the AAP accountable” for their opinions other than applying our own common sense and doing what we think is sensible for our families? It’s a group of people. Different pediatricians in this area will give different opinions on all sorts of things, we “hold them accountable” by seeing pediatricians whose practices align with our families needs.
The AAP is not some random mommy blogger that you can ignore. It is the national advocacy and trade group for pediatricians. It’s recommendations have great weight and result in material changes to pediatrician, hospital, and insurance practices. During Covid their opinion swayed some very important public policies. They are a powerful org making public health recommendations. So yeah, I think they need to be accountable. It’s honestly flabbergasting to me that they do not have a transparent control process rating the strength of evidence they base their recommendations on, like eg the US Preventative Task Force. The peanut allergy debacle ought to have triggered organizational reform, but it did not.
It really is though, and on every other subject people ignore it routinely without this degree of agitation.
I know not one single person who sleeps with their baby in their room until one. My pediatrician suggested moving my baby at 5M and that’s what we did. My insurance company still covered that visit.
I know several parents who co-sleep. No one has repossessed their babies. Two such parents are themselves physicians and they did not have their licenses revoked.
Formula, both RTF and canned, was sent to my house days after I had my baby, in 2020. Which means hospitals still share data with formula companies and the AAP hasn’t intervened to stop them. We handed it off to a family with new twins and moved on with our day.
Breastfeeding is only being treated as a bigger deal because people are emotionally attached to their side, but that’s just another choice.
It’s amazing you continue to refuse to understand why women are “emotional” about BF. It’s because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it. And this uneccesary stress started in the “baby friendly” hospital that sent them on their “breastfeeding journeys” completely exhausted.
I actually don't think the emotionality necessarily has much to do with the evidence-based (not moral) exhorting of organizations but I think it is more biological than that. I am someone who was totally FED IS BEST pre birth, I'll just breast feed shortly and then stop if I need to resume my medications (all of which i still think are much more rational positions than breastfeeding at any costs) to someone who ended up doing much much much more to try to make breastfeeding work than I EVER thought I would. (I did the whole triple feeding, using an SNS, bodywork, trying to pump all day (total craziness) etc.) It's like my rational brain completely changed in the process of giving birth and trying to breastfeed. Even now that my DC is almost 14 months emotionally the thought of giving up breastfeeding is too difficult even though it would be better for my work productivity to resume my medication. (but maybe not since I suspect I would have a hard time with the hormonal shifts and at risk of depression for stopping before DC and I am ready.) I was talking to my doctor about that yesterday the cost benefit analysis still tilted towards continuing to breastfeed (AAP didn't even come up ) I don't know if its the oxytocin, the preciousness of bonding in this way or what but it's definitely not the AAP that is driving my emotionality.
It is an emotional topic and why I am SO HAPPY that the AAP is supporting women who want to breast feed longer. FINALLY!
I didn't follow the AAP advice re: bedsharing and while there was a little angst there I felt confident in my understanding of the data and the risks and benefits involved. I feel if I were someone who decided not to breastfeed the data can also be interpreted to support that choice. There are so many health organization advices that are impossible to folllow to a T so I take what works and leave the rest.
Unlike some people on this thread, I do believe that women are capable of making the best and rational choices for themselves and putting AAP in context. I see it happening all the time in my mom's groups. Nobody is going to feel guilty about not feeding for 2 years if they planned to stop earlier just because the AAP says that women who want to feed that long should be supported.
Sorry you have such a low opinion of women's agency and don't support supporting them.
There are a lot of reasons why I think the AAP guidelines are terrible, and none of them have anything to do with having a " low opinion of women's agency". I find it ironic that you feel so "supported" by the AAP's statement, but insist that those that don't should not care what they say. Either what the AAP says matters, or it doesn't. I'm sorry you only care about your perspective and think anyone who thinks otherwise is not "supporting" you. You're not "supporting" me either.
DP, but are you not the poster who said:
“because many, many women suffered pushing themselves to do it based on the moral exhorting of organizations like the AAP, only to realize later it was not worth it”
If so…that’s an example of a very low opinion of women’s agency. As above posters have said, people decide AAP recommendations are not right for them all the time. This one even comes with instructions to only follow it if you want to. I have no idea how much more “support” for not breastfeeding to two you can get than a statement about breastfeeding that says to do it only if you want to.
No, I am not that poster, but I absolutely agree with that statement and I think it is ridiculous and offensive to suggest that women following medical advice somehow means that they don't have agency.
The AAP statement does not once say "to do it only if you want to'". It emphasizes babies should receive absolutely nothing other than breast milk in the first six months of life barring what they characterize as extremely rare problems or contraindications. It also goes on and on exaggerating the benefits of continued breastfeeding. It supports practices in hospitals that are dumb and in some cases harmful. I would love it if it would just once clearly state that breastfeeding initiation or continuation of breastfeeding should be entirely up to the mother, and that it is her choice what she does with her body, but it does not say that, and that is not how medical providers treat women.
So do you room share for a year? Do you follow every single other recommendation?
This is not the great point you think it is …
Nor is that an answer. If you have the agency to decide not to keep your child in your bedroom for a year, and the agency to decide when to co-sleep, and the agency to decide about earlier introduction of allergens, does your agency just evaporate suddenly where breastfeeding is concerned?
Do you understand what AAP is and why it makes recommendations?
I do. And, in that full understanding, I have not followed several of their recommendations while closely following others which worked for me. I have not considered their recommendations which have not worked for me to be some sort of attack on my choices or an attempt to control how I raise my baby. I have considered their recommendations to be…recommendations.
Good for you. Some of us do not like them. It sounds like that is a problem for you. Maybe you need to reflect on why you care so much about what other people think about the AAP guidelines. Why don't you just read the comments that work for you and disregard the other ones? Can you just consider this thread to be...a thread on a message board?
Anonymous wrote:It’s really all about the culture of safety-ism for children. Because we live in a society with a lacking social safety net, lawsuits are typically how damages are handled. The AAP is just recommending doctors to say the safest thing so they can’t be sued. In reality, this is not what it looks like on the ground.
I had a baby in 2017 and in 2020. Both times. I brought my own formula to the hospital just in case. With my youngest, I offered some because his latch was a little funky. The nurse was like “you didn’t need to bring that.” Also, both babies went to the nursery for a few hours. It was offered to me. On the website, it says that they room in. But in reality they don’t want you falling asleep holding the baby.
My pediatrician recommended supplementing with no hesitation. When the pediatrician asks where the baby slept, I just didn’t mention that it was mostly in my arms. No doctor is going to recommend cosleeping but moms do what works.
I wish there was some way to reach out to pregnant women and urge them to ignore the culture of safetyism from their first child. It would save so many women from immense mental suffering. I went through it with my first. He wanted nothing to do with the bassinet, so I just didn’t sleep. Raging postpartum anxiety that lasted for years impacted us both.
Parents do drop babies more often in baby-friendly hospitals. It is a thing that happens. Babies get injured because of this.
yes but it isnt solely dropped from breastfeeding. Also if they would make sidecar cribs to the bed, it would be easier. If there was more nursing staff so the ratio was 1:4, meaning if its 1 baby plus 1 mother then they only have two rooms. Or having a separate nurse for mom and baby, with mother ratio being 1:4 mothers and infants being 1:2.
The nursery option wasnt great either. In 2008 ratios of nurses to infants in the nursery was 1:8. 8 infants....newborns who need feeding, burping, rocking, diaper changes, temp checks, bilirubin checks, etc. No thank you.
It does not matter if the specific mother was breastfeeding. The policies are justified based on increasing breastfeeding. In reality it is a cost cutting measure and the victims are new mothers and babies. The AAP should get seriously slammed for this. Sorry you don't like the nursery but to me it is worth babies not getting skull fractures and developing seizures. Our country really, really hates women and babies, JFC.
Just because a hospital cuts costs and blames breastfeeding support doesn’t make actual breastfeeding support the problem. They could increase nursing staff, upgrade the equipment, add home-visits and “blame” breastfeeding support for that.
It's a breastfeeding support initiative. Make all the excuses you want, lactivism has become a cultist, misogynist religion. I think breastfeeding is a great choice when it is a choice, not when women are harangued into doing it for benefits that continue to be exaggerated by organizations like the AAP.
I am super pro breastfeeding for those who want to, but if the AAP would focus on the really important things PP suggested (more nurses per mother/infant, more nurses in the nursery, shorter hours for medical staff, etc.) instead of making all the outcomes about whether people breastfeed or not it would be better for breastfeeding moms AND formula feeding moms. I bet you'd get more people willing to try breastfeeding if they weren't so miserably stressed anyway.
Heyo, all those things cost money. Much better to act like changing the mothers' behavior is the start and end of early childhood wellbeing. After all, women's labor is free to the system! I also have long believed that public health focuses on breastfeeding because they KNOW that new mothers are a susceptible audience. Nothing to do with the actual costs and benefits of interventions; they just know that women can be pressured.
I just don’t understand WHY, I guess. What is the super important health benefit that EVERYONE has to breastfeed for 2+ years, in a developed country where we have clean water and baby formula? The last I looked into this (years ago), the only benefit that was outside of controlling for factors like family income, day care/non day care, education, etc. was a small reduction on a population - not even individual - level basis in ear infections and diarrhea. And that pumped and stored milk loses even those small benefits. Is that really worth all the hand wringing that new moms do about BFing?
The reccomendation isn’t that everyone has to nurse for two years. It’s that people who want to nurse past one, whose babies want to nurse last one, should be supported in doing so.
Also the benefits after one year primarily are a reduced cancer risk for the mother. I feel like that should matter.
Being pregnant and giving birth also reduces your risk of breast and ovarian cancer, but you don’t see these organizations telling women to get pregnant and have kids if they don’t want to. Birth control use also reduces BC risk and is a lot less invasive on your life.
They’re not saying to nurse if you don’t want to either— they’re saying if you and your infant want to nurse past one year, you should be supported in that choice by your pediatrician and your workplace. That’s what “mutually desired” means in the recommendation.
Why is there no recommendation that pediatricians and workplaces support other feeding choices? Other feeding choices can involve a lot of time or be less common, like a vegan diet.
What evidence exists that pediatricians and workplaces routinely impose barriers to a vegan diet?
AAP should give the feeding wars a break and issue workplace recommendations on nap time for new mothers.
Like how they explicitly call for longer, paid, maternity leave as part of these recommendations?
So much public health advice seems rooted in women not even attempting to hold down a job.
Buying formula should not be a requirement to a woman having a job and a child unless her desire is to feed formula. Professional women and wealthy women are given lactation lounges at work, mandatory breaks, and other supports to breastfeeding. Those should be widely available not replaced by another consumer product.
Oh yes, we must withhold consumer products from women that replace her labor … no dishwashers, dryers, or store bought bread!
My dishwasher hasn’t been recalled for killing babies and my dryer isn’t out of stock in every store right now, so I’m not sure this parallel of convenience holds up.
I didn’t say to withhold anything, I said not to replace women’s legally protected rights to breastfeed and pump with a consumer product, particularly while saying they should prioritize getting back to work. We’re more than the shareholder report..
Way to miss the point, again. Just because somebody lobbied to get breastfeeding breaks doesn’t increase the benefits of breastfeeding or reduce the costs. Pumping significantly increases the burdens on mothers and should be promoted only with accurate information and consideration of all the costs.
Do we also fully consider all the costs of formula before we recommend it? Or do we assume women are intelligent enough to understand those trade offs, but insufficiently intelligent to do the same for breastfeeding?
You mean the monetary costs? Yes, that should be part of a full cost-benefit analysis.
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
) I don't know if its the oxytocin, the preciousness of bonding in this way or what but it's definitely not the AAP that is driving my emotionality.