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Attachment Parenting
KateLouise
member
Elizabeth 5yrs old Jane 3yrs old
Did you hear about the Sydney Dr suggesting that formula only be available on prescription?
KateLouise
member
I saw it on the news last night, a Dr in Australia was suggesting that formula should not just be available at will, and that instead women who are having difficulties should be getting help and support, and if those difficulties can't be resolved then formula should be made available to them, through prescription.
I guess I'm in two minds about this.
Yes there should be plenty of support available to Mums who want to breastfeed.
How you feed your child is a personal choice for the parent to make and no one else.
What about Mum's who return to work and for whom pumping through the day is difficult and exhausting.
You're in the hands of a Dr who may have their own agenda in regards to BF. Who may make it even more difficult for a Mum to have access to formula.
I think if this did happen (and I don't think it ever would) that the forumla should then be subsidised and made to be super cheap for families who need it.
She also suggested that advertising for formula for infants should be banned. I quite like this idea.
Elizabeth 5yrs old Jane 3yrs old
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Did you hear about the Sydney Dr suggesting that formula only be available on prescription?
Further stigmatizing women who can not BF for a variety of reasons. Or who simply choose not to.
Formula is not a medication and I do not think doctors need to be in the business of prescribing non-medications and making non-medical decisions for people because some a$$hole makes a political decision.
Elizabeth 5yrs old Jane 3yrs old
Don't like the idea at all. What doctor writes this prescription- the moms doctor or the babies doctor? Whose insurance pays for it? what if mom needs to go on a medication that makes it unsafe to BF? What if mom WANTS to go on a medicine that is unsafe to BF- is some doctor going to judge her right to take that medication (be it an antidepressant, sleeping pills, acne medication, migraine medication, whatever- who decides when it's bad enough?) and who makes that choice? I really don't like the idea. What if the mom just doesn't want to BF because of past sexual abuse? That's a perfectly valid reason, and she shouldn't have to explain it to any doctor.
I think that we should do a lot to encourage breastfeeding but this is going about it the wrong way. This seems to imply that women are incapable of making the right choice about nutrition for their infants, and I find that offensive.
How about better education for pediatricians and OBs, more access to breastfeeding support, a successful campaign normalizing public breastfeeding, etc.?
Terrible idea. It's bad enough that birth control is only offered with a prescription (and while I understand why about bc, it still makes things extraordinarily complicated when insurance denies one brand but not another, etc.)
As far as the advertising, it doesn't bother me to see formula advertising itself telling you what one brand has vs. another, but it annoys the heck out of me to see formula that's advertised as guaranteeing a good night's sleep, etc. Claims like that should seriously be regulated.
I think that new moms would be so stressed out from worry... that she wouldn't be able to BF, she would never be able to produce the milk her child needs! I know that stress has played a HUGE factor in my low supply issues! This is a ridiculous idea!!!!!!
It's a horrible horrible idea although this isn't the first I've heard of it. I've read it before from over the top lactivists who are willing to steamroll over individual mothers just to further their agenda.
As I see it, it's a human rights issue on several levels. First, a baby has a right to food and no other people require a prescription to be given food. Second, a mother should have the right not to breastfeed.
I don't understand how this would work. Say mom come home from the hospital with my baby on thursday. By friday night it's clear something is wrong. The baby's screaming because he's hungry. Maybe he's not latching right or maybe mom has a supply issue. If she can't send her DH down to the local Target to pick up a can of formula is the baby supposed to scream all weekend in hunger because mom can't see a doctor to get her prescription for formula?
See this blog post for an idea of how these supposedly "baby friendly" things can be very 'unfriendly' to moms who exercise their right to formula feed their children. The Bottlefeeder in Room 1 (or why I think extreme baby-friendly policies aren't very friendly at all)
I sympathise with the woman in the article referenced above, but not all of her experiences are the domain of the bottle feeder.
I'm in NZ. The health professionals here are very gung-ho about breastfeeding.
Every single midwife had conflicting advice for me when I was having difficulties breastfeeding, and all of them conflicted with the written literature and dvd, on breastfeeding, in my room.
So I don't think it's that the nurses/midwives here don't know about making up bottle or about breastfeeding. It's that all of them have been taught or experienced something different and there is no one "rule" on the advice they give new mums.
Elizabeth 5yrs old Jane 3yrs old
I saw an interview with her on tv here (I'm in Australia) and she actually sounded pretty reasonable. I'm not saying I agree with her, but her ideas were not so far fetched IMO. She said that nurses would be able to write the prescription, not just doctors. An extremely high number of women here want to BF and initiate BFing in the hospital (something like 96%) and that number declines over the months. She said that maybe if women were to get help they need, they wouldn't give up unnecessarily. Also, we have national health care here, so the insurance issues that someone brought up wouldn't matter.
That being said, I agree with what the OP said somewhere in this thread that the nurses here all give extremely conflicting advice and it is very confusing, so I don't think it would even work. It would just stress women out IMO.
I think this is a terrbile idea. I'm pro feed the baby. I cannot imagine the kind of stress this could cause on a new mom having trouble that has decided BFing isn't for her. Being forced to go to consults on breastfeeding before you would be allowed to formula feed. I would have gone over the edge if that had happened to me. When I was done BF'ing, I was DONE and if I had to go be given advice at that time in my life I would have freaking lost my dam* mind.
This is just as bad as some doctors and pharmacists who don't believe in birth control and refuse to write prescriptions or fill them for people.
While I see the point of the blog (and don't consider myself a lactivist... at all) I think the nurses did try to help the woman several times she just didn't want their help. She complained that the baby was rooming in and she couldn't tend to the baby fast enough, then that they offered to take the baby to the nurses station... sort of a double standard. I do understand her point, just that post partum hormones are also strong
I agree that there should be some changes with the advertising of formula. I still get formula checks in the mail, sometimes for $20 total each time, and I have never bought any. Do they send even more checks to women who do use them? I don't know.
But I think that part of my reasoning for which formula to choose for my child would have to do with the incentives, and there are probably others who think the same way. In a way, that is like anything else we buy, because everything has a value proposition. But for such an important choice, I don't think the money issue should be pushed so strongly.
RX only wouldn't have the desired effect. It would increase costs (hello, prescription = expensive), clog up pediatrician's offices (most pedi's aren't LC's), and might make people who NEED to use formula even less likely to use it. Case in point, read my story. Some people shouldn't breastfeed, and further stimatizing formula won't make things any better.
If you want to increase breastfeeding rates, support nursing in public, make sure LC visits are covered by insurance, mandate nursing rooms in all workplaces and shopping centers, and educate mothers in populations that typically FF from the get-go. Remove the stigma from cosleeping. Fight against "STTN @ 5 weeks" baloney thinking. Show nursing moms on television.
The answer to increased breastfeeding is to SUPPORT BREASTFEEDING, not slam formula feeding moms and make their lives more difficult.
I fail to see what's reasonable about having to ask someone's permission to FF. I shouldn't have to go a nurse or a doctor for the magic piece of paper that will ALLOW me to feed my child. And who decides when you've "given up unnecessarily." You should not be forced into bf'ing if you don't want to do it.
This. The "formula should require a prescription" idea, IMHO, is the dividing line between positive lactivism and obnoxious lactivism. The former is about encouraging women to initiate breastfeeding and to stick with it. It's about removing barriers to nursing in public and encouraging policies that will make it easier for women to continue breastfeeding, e.g. longer maternity leaves, etc. Positive lactivism acknowledges that women have a choice to breastfeed or not and limits itself to encouraging women to make the choice to breastfeed.
Obnoxious negative lactivism (often seen in the more hardcore lactivist on-line world) doesn't respect women and their choices. If you don't breastfeed, you're either stupid, uneducated or a bad mother. It's about coercing women into breastfeeding. Requiring a prescription for formula is coercive. It assumes that women need to be forced to BF. That someone other than the mother gets to decide whether her reason to use formula is "good enough." IMHO, obnoxious lactivism doesn't help the lactivist cause and is really more about the obnoxious on-line lactivist (tweeting away in her battle against formula!) than it is about the formula feed babies.
Parents have the right to decide how to raise their children, as long as they make reasonable choices. Formula is an acceptable choice. Therefore mothers should have the right to choose to use it without asking for approval from anyone.
totally agree! It is not helpful to make formula available by prescription.
However, I do feel that insurance/medicaid should be billed for formula in the hospital (they are not in almost all hospitals- the formula companies have a contract with the hospital at no charge), It should be accounted for just as other baby supplies are, and I'm very against the "free diaper bags".