Posts by Deborah
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"I'll be in my bunk." Money shot at about 32 seconds.
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to Samuel Scott,
Ta. I don't think we're all that far apart on this issue.
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to Samuel Scott,
It's not an argument in favour of bottle feeding. It's just pointing out that cost is not necessarily a good argument in favour of breastfeeding. A bit like the convenience argument. People are fond of saying that breastfeeding is much more convenient than bottle feeding. Well, yes, if the mother is always in the same place as the baby. But sometimes that's wildly inconvenient, such as when the mother has to go to work. Like cost, convenience is probably not a great argument either way. I suspect that on both counts, breastfeeding is probably better, but they're not slam dunk arguments.
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Repeat after me: Women are not cows. Women are not cows. Women are not cows.
Some women can breastfeed easily, produce more than enough milk, and are able to just carry on. Some women find producing enough milk very hard indeed, especially if they have other children to care for. Cows have nothing to do all day except eat, shit, and produce milk. Most women have to do far more every day than just eat and produce milk, because that's the way our modern society works. Then they get blamed and shamed and chided for not breastfeeding (for example, see some of the comments above), when what militates against it is not their feeble minds, but the structures of our society.
If we're going to get anecdotal about breast feeding and asthma, I breastfed my elder daughter, and bottle fed my younger daughters. My elder daughter doesn't have asthma, and neither do my younger daughters.
But encouraging someone to [breastfeed] is just totally freakin’ great.
Not when it comes with a huge dose of judginess about being a bad mother if you find that you can't breastfeed. And having been on the receiving end of it, I can tell you that I was made to feel hugely judged, and guilty, about not being able to breastfeed my younger daughters. And whaddayaknow, there's a couple of fabulous instances of judginess in this very thread.
Also, breast feeding doesn't necessarily cost less, because most mothers need to eat more higher protein food in order to be able to breastfeed. And plenty of mothers who would like to breastfeed can't, because they have to work, and their workplaces are not family friendly, at all.
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
In amongst all the patronising and snark. I suspect that was why comments were closed, not because of a simple claim about there being nothing wrong with formula.
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I’m spluttering with rage here…. so I’m telling myself to breathe, just breathe, calmly, calmly…..
I have friends with new twins who didn’t get to see a lactation consultant for FOUR DAYS. That can be the difference between success or failure with breastfeeding.
That is EXACTLY what happened to me, even though I had on my fcking birth plan that I wanted to see a lactation consultant as soon as the babies were born. The only other thing on my birthplan was, “I will do whatever is needed to get these babies out alive.” And the fcking allegedly baby-friendly hospital couldn’t even come up with a lactation consultant until the day I was leaving. And by that stage, the critical point had passed for me, due to the complication of having had breast lumps removed in the past that compromised my chances of feeding twins successfully. I might just have been able to do it if the lactation consultant had bothered to come and see me when I asked, or maybe even the next day.
I proffer that those with that attitude are more likely to not have problems with “the latch” and other issues.
I very rarely think that you have to have actual experience to offer an opinion. For example, I really value Jackie’s contributions on parenting, because I know her to be a woman of great knowledge and warm heart and stout character. But really, until you have tried to breastfeed yourself, perhaps you might just hold off on opinions that the only thing going wrong is something in the poor wee dear’s lady brane.
Damn straight, all other things being equal, formula is second best. But it’s second best, not bloody poison. In a first world country, where our parents are literate, and our access to potable water excellent, there is NOTHING WRONG WITH FORMULA.
Actually, I’m getting all angry again now… so I’m going to hit ‘post’ on this before I say something I really regret.
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to Jackie Clark,
The old to and fro between the two disciplines, or approaches to childbirth, which oft leaves Mummy and Baby in the middle.
When I was pregnant with our eldest daughter, my brother, who is an anaesthetist, commented to me that the politics around giving birth were incredible, and during his time in medicine (starting from when he started med school in the mid 1980s), he had seen power pass from doctors, to midwives, but that still the women giving birth had no power. I guess many midwives would dispute that, except that my own experience was of midwives telling me how I ought to feel about childbirth. That kind of pissed me off. Moving from the orders of doctors, to the 'ought' of midwives, is no gain.
Having said that, I am still grateful for the amazing competence of the third midwife I dealt with while in labour with my eldest, who got rid of the really rather silly one who was annoying the hell out of me.
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Hard News: Complaint and culture, in reply to Alice Ronald,
I wrote it off too, Alice, based on the cover, and much the same reaction as you to recent North and South content. I bought and read the manly men issue, and was... bemused by it. I've not really noticed any lack of celebrating men in NZ, so it was kind of bizarre, and it made me feel that North and South isn't really worth bothering with. Hence my disinterest in the midwifery article, which didn't look as though it was going to anything other than the usual harrumphing.
But I am boggling over this.
Q: What are the outcomes of the changes to maternity care in the 1990s, allowing midwives to act as independent lead carers, for mothers and babies?
A: We have no idea. We don’t track those outcomes.
WTF?!!! A major change to the way we do childbirth in this country, and no one keeps stats?
W.r.t. the safety of home births and the like, Isis the Domestic and Laboratory Goddess (this is her blog name, which she uses so as not to have her blog come up first when someone searches on her professional name, because she holds a tenured science job at a major US university) has a post up about home birth, and this came out in the comments.
That study shows that homebirth with a Dutch midwife has the same mortality rate as hospital birth with a Dutch midwife. That sounds great until you learn that another study, “Perinatal mortality and severe morbidity in low and high risk term pregnancies in the Netherlands: prospective cohort study,” also in the British Medical Journal shows that the perinatal mortality rate for LOW risk women cared for by Dutch midwives is HIGHER than the perinatal mortality rate for HIGH risk women cared for by Dutch obstetricians!
The comment was from Amy Tuteur, who writes The Skeptical OB, so she perhaps has an agenda. Even so, the stats she reports are alarming. Which is why it would be bloody useful to have some decent stats tracking the experience in NZ.
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The Haywood / Hay family are front page news on Stuff today.
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Greville Whittle,
The gender balance of the staff might vary significantly between single sex and co-ed schools. I recall mostly women staff at my single sex high school (the local convent school), and as far as I know, it was much the same at the local state girls' high school too. My eldest daughter is off to a single sex high school next year, and it seems to have a higher proportion of women on the staff.
But I know nothing other than anecdotes here, and someone actually working in the sector will have much better knowledge about gender ratios in secondary school staff.