February 11, 2007
Mayor Mike to City Moms: Suckle This
The man who doesn't want you to smoke in City bars or clog your coronaries with sweet, sweet trans fats now wants to do something healthy for the tiniest and newest New Yorkers. Mayor Mike Bloomberg is dropping more than $2 million on a campaign to get City run hospitals to encourage new moms to breast feed. City health commissioner, Thomas Frieden, wants babies to dine on nothing but their mothers' breast milk for the first six months of life. Right now, about 75% of New York mommies breast feed their babies but nearly 40% stop before the six month mark.
The benefits of breast feeding have been known for a while. Some include decreasing a baby's risk of obesity, asthma, diabetes, leukemia, or lymphoma. Breast milk also protects against infection with maternal antibodies and helps build a stronger mommy-baby bond. Breast fed babies may also grow up to have higher IQs.
But despite the great perks (no pun intended) of breast feeding, not all new moms may want to breast feed and some simply are unable to do so (although maybe they could farm the job out to a friend).
City hospitals recognize that they can't force women to breast feed. One tactic they may use instead includes the cessation of providing mothers with free baby bottle and formula samples. Instead, they may provide ice packs that would be used to chill pumped milk. Now if only there were more places around where women could breasfeed in peace.
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A recent study showed that nearly all the alleged benefits from breastfeeding came not from the milk but from the healthier household habits of the relatively wealthier mothers who breast feed versus their bottle-fed, poorer counterparts.
Yet another pointless and unscientific health initative from the city government...
#1: What study? Could you please provide a citation or URL?
How about using that $2 million to fix the city's school bus routes, so that mothers have time to breast feed instead of worrying about how long it will take their child to get to school today? Or using it to get the fee back from that awful consulting company?
MC, I've been looking for the story, but I can't find it. If I manage to dig it up, I'll post it here. I know I saw it the past two weeks or so.
This is just another example of the tyranny of breastfeeding. The city's program is ill focused and completely ineffective. Rather than shaming and bullying new mothers who may not be able to remain teethered to their baby for 6 months to the exclusion of their career, why don't we try to introduce legislature that would guaranttee women 6 months of paid maternity leave. I bet that kind of law would have more of an impact on breastfeeding rates than a bully campaign.
Bloomy's such a nerd doofus ! What's the point in this study ? That fact that breast feeding is a natural thing& babies that were breast feed tend to have higher IQ's . Keep working on getting the guns & drugs off the streets . That & that alone is what most people care about . We all know the benefits of breast feeding newborns .
Where is the citation for the study that concluded that healthier household habits rather than human milk confer health benefits? This is an absurd statement given the countless studies that support the health benefits of human milk.
Mayor Bloomberg's campaing is motivated by the fact that numerous studies citing the advantages of human milk, show that while 'some' is better than 'none', 'more'is better than 'less', which is the foundation for the recommendation that babies be exclusively breastfed for six months.
Breastfeeding is an evidence-based standard. We achieve optimal health be acknowledging those evidence-based standards, and doing all that we can to achieve those standards.
At babygooroo.com, through our conversations with parents, we have found that a desire to breastfeed is not what is lacking, what is lacking is a support structure that enables mothers and fathers to achieve their breastfeeding goals.
Sadly, many of the comments issued in response to Desai's post are a reflection of that lack of support.
Kudos to Mayor Bloomberg for seeing beyond adequate and supporting what is optimal!
do you think that people who do scientific studies on the benefits of breastmilk are morons? do you think that they have never in their life taken a statistics course or a class on how to do a controlled study? These studies that come out HAVE been corrected for socioeconomic status, ethnicity, etc. this IS possible. and yes even with corrections for all the reasons people want to believe that breastfed babies are healthier emotionally, physically, and cognitively the bottom line is that BREASTMILK makes a difference.. a SIGNIFICANT difference. Educate yourself.
This is "PR" (domestic PRopaganda). The article is supposed to be about Michael Bloomberg's policy, but it sounds more like the author playing the role of Mr. Bloomberg's spokesman.
The impetus is probably to reduce the costs of welfare formula programs, while encouraging women to breastfeed longer increases the time between babies, which probably feeds into some socio-economic engineering policy, perhaps to get women back to work more quickly.
There certainly are benefits to breast-feeding to the mother and child, and whether Mr. Bloomberg approves or not is not particularly relevent. For one thing, human milk is relatively high in carbohydrates, to feed the relatively large human brain. For another, it contains antibodies as a result of which breast-fed babies don't get sick as often as formula-fed.
I don't see anything "tyranical" about it at all. If the problem is that it interferes with uptight corporate social values--rethink your values and your lifestyle.