Monday, April 21, 2008

brick wall


Ok, a serious one.

This is why we can't 'all just get along'. This is why we still have to fight for breastfeeding, and breast feeding education. The midwives, who are women's first port of call in establishing good, problem free breastfeeding, are not doing their job. Up til very recently, a midwife's job was to place a bottle of formula and two pills for drying up a mother's milk on a bedside locker.

Now the HSE is pushing breastfeeding, apparently in such a way as to put women off before they start, never mind open their eyes to it.

The irony is, that the same women who are pushing it on mothers who don't want to breast feed, are sabotaging it for all the women who do. This thread is so sad.

If someone in hospital gave my child a bottle of formula against my will, I would sue.

What harm does one bottle do? Well, it stretches the baby's tiny stomach and gives it an artificial feeling of fullness so breast milk never fills it up again.
And it alters the stomach flora of the baby, taking weeks to repair.
The hypocrisy of the HSE is overwhelming. The stories in the thread above are ones that the mothers will carry with them their whole lives. It's not good enough.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is that Vanessa Feltz ?

Jo said...

No, you gobshite :)

You could do worse though. She'd be lovely!

Anonymous said...

Not the one doing the feeding - is that you ? - the one with the specs ?

Jo said...

amggot, it's just a photo of a nice lady getting help breast feeding courtesy of google image.

I made a decision to keep anonymous and not to put images of my kids up when I started and while I'd like to sometimes, I think I'm more comfortable with it this way.

And now that I think about it, that girl doesn't look bet down enough to be a new mother!

Anonymous said...

Well written article.

Jo said...

Thank you Lona :)