[charleen2008]

Readers Respond:

Promotion of breast feeding goes too far

Once again the official promotion of breast feeding as the only choice is being touted by my friend Fran Phillips at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene ("Maryland seeks to improve support for mothers to breast-feed," Feb. 11).

No one disputes some of the advantages of breast feeding, but many claims for benefits in health care cost savings are way off. No one has looked at the cost of the number of extra visits to my office to reassure distraught parents with children who are doing poorly with the nursing process. No one adds the cost of post-partum depression on the rise due to the pressure on mothers to succeed in nursing promoted by some of the fanatics involved in lactation promotion.

Nursing is simply a good method of feeding your newborn, but it is not the only safe or best way for all. The word is choice, and it is a big mistake to force one method for everyone. When some children fail to thrive on breast milk, there is, and should always be, an alternative feeding method, and it does not include the guilt be placed on these equally caring parents. Formula, despite the claims of some, is not poison and is in fact life-saving at times.

Dr. Kenneth Hoffman, Annapolis

Source: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-breastfeeding-article-20120214,0,33859...

[hollyelizabeth2007]

"I wanted what you had with your C Section:  ... Your doctors and midwives would have weighed natural birth vs C Section and offered what was most suitable for your needs.      They wouldn't have pushed an option which was unsuitable for you and your babies.     This is what I want from a LC."

Well, actually, that isn't how it played out. With my son, it was hardly that simple. The morning he was born, I woke up in the hospital to the nurse saying she was getting ready to induce me. I had stayed overnight in the hospital on magnesium sulfate to prevent me from having seizures due to the really high blood pressure readings I had. Just to make things even more fun, I was still in the thick of influenza A, so I was coughing really hard all the time, really congested and generally pretty weak. The doctors didn't consult me on this, just passed the directive down the nurse who told me. I told her that if they wanted to induce me at 35w while I was on a drug that is also used to stop labor, they could have the attending obstetrician trot her butt on down to my room to talk to me. This woman had been directing my care for about a month and I'd never met her before. She came down and said they wanted to induce me because two c-sections isn't as safe, generally, especially if I was planning to have more children. I had her check my cervix, which was closed tight and long. Because I had had a prior c-section, there were many limitations on their ability to induce me. And I was a bad candidate for VBAC. I had wanted one during my pregnancy, but at the point I needed to deliver it was not practical.

The point is that it is wrong to assume that my doctors weighed those options and made the decision for me. I had to argue pretty hard for that c-section, even though inducing me would almost certainly have ended in torturing me for 24 hours, then giving me a c-section anyway. So once we were all in agreement, I signed the paperwork for a c-section and he was born about six hours later.

It is a rare day indeed when a medical professional is going to get it exactly right the first time and not give you any useless advice. As I said in another post, I had a single doctor misdiagnose gallstones (which are easy to identify via ultrasound) for FIVE YEARS. For 2.5 of those years, I was having gallbladder attacks that eventually became blackouts. Until then, I was told I had IBS, anxiety, and at some points that I just wanted attention. I'm serious. This is not to say that everyone should be willing to suffer for that long with a doctor who isn't getting it right. Rather, that you have to become your own advocate or the advocate for your children. I had a hard time advocating for myself in the case of my gallstones because I was a teenager, and the doctor did not take me seriously. But as an adult I am more than capable of doing so.

Do I get frustrated when medical professionals give useless advice to me for myself or my family? Sure. But I recognize that what may be useless to me will be perfectly useful to another person. Not just because they may know different things than I do, but because their problems may be different. I have counseled, informally, probably a couple hundred women on the subject of breastfeeding. So much of it is just throwing ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks. But I'd hate to think I'm not welcome to offer any advice at all just because one person found some of my advice not particularly helpful.

"I see no sense in extolling the virtues of BF to a mother who's baby simply cannot attach and a mother who's hanging on by a thread."

If that's all your LC's did (simply told you why you should bf instead of giving you tips on improving latch), then they were not helpful. It would make me wonder about their certifications.