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Strollerderby
The FDA has issued a warning letter to Medela about a slew of customer complaints related to their breast pumps. Perhaps the freakiest: “Fourteen Pump in Style Advanced (PNSA) electric breast pump complaints document motors and transformers smoking or catching fire.”
That’s right: catching fire. Fire is not what you’re looking for in a breast pump.
Here are some other things to watch out for: problems with the manufacturing may lead to the pumps losing suction, having too weak a suction or failing to switch on. They were also cited by the FDA for failing to properly track and respond to customer complaints, and for failing to document their own safety procedures properly.
Breastfeeding is best for babies.
Meredith just reported on a British study that says breastmilk may not be enough nutrition for babies.
While that study is grabbing headlines, it can’t change history. Humans evolved to nourish their young from the breast. Breastmilk is the perfect food for babies. People were nourished on it for millenia before there was a baby formula industry, and they will be nourished on it in the future when the idea that breastmilk is somehow not right for babes is as antiquated and perverse a notion as using leeches to suck bad blood from the sick.
The real argument of the study isn’t that breastmilk itself is somehow insufficient, but that supplementation with solids should ideally begin at around four months instead of six. They claim waiting to introduce solids leads to a higher incidence of food allergies, iron deficiency and not liking vegetables.
I am not even joking.
Donor milk for babies is hard to come by.
Breast is best. We all know this. Our doctors tell us, we see ads on the subway to remind us. Babies thrive on breastmilk.
Not everyone can breastfeed, though. Adoptive parents, couples parents who rely on a surrogate, and many moms whose health prevents them from breastfeeding their babies all need other options. For most of these parents, formula is the only alternative. And for most babies, it’s a perfectly good one.
For some babies, though, formula can cause digestive problems. Neil Patrick Harris’ new daughter is one of these babes. He and his partner, David Burtka, have infant twins. Their daughter struggled with formula, but finding donor breastmilk for her has been a challenge.
So many women have an oversupply of milk. It’s amazing that even those with the most resources have a challenging time getting donor milk for their babies.
Today, my colleague John Cave Osborne discovered a British story about a woman who nursed her newborn and her six-year-old at the same time. That sounds freaky to a lot of people, but to me it just sounded familiar.
I nursed my first child until her fifth birthday. When I finally called it quits, it wasn’t because she was too old to breastfeed. It was because I got tired of being awakened to a fist fight across my chest each morning between her and her two-year-old sister over who got my left breast. That must be the one with the chocolate milk in it.
To breastfeeding advocates and some attachment parents, this kind of long-term breastfeeding is a normal part of family life. To most of my colleagues here at Babble (and I imagine most of our readers), it’s pretty weird.
When it comes to maintaining a healthy weight, well all know that how much you eat is just as important as what you eat. But when we are talking about babies, researchers now believe that how food is consumed might also matter.
A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compared the eating habits of babies who were bottle fed for the first six months of life against those who were breast fed. What they found was that those who took most of their meals via bottle were less able to self-regulate how much they ate. The bottle fed babies simply ate more, a fact that researchers suspect may increase their risk of developing a weight problem later in life. Continue reading »
In 2001, a government study found that if only half of all mothers breastfed their babies for the first six months of their lives, $3.6 billion could be saved each year. The savings weren’t calculated based on how much infant formula would not be needed, but on health care costs related to illnesses breast milk may help prevent.
Today, an updated study takes those calculations a step further and reveals not only how much money could be saved by breastfeeding, but how many lives as well. Continue reading »
A New York city chef is hoping you’ll flip for his cheesy recipes, but you’ll have to do it all at home. That’s because Daniel Angerer is using breastmilk to make his cheese.
Named “Mommy’s Milk Cheese,” the recipes sound like your basic cheese making process. Throw in some rennet, keep the curds from clumping. But even the chef at New York’s Klee admits he was hesitant to use his wife’s breastmilk in the process. Continue reading »
Lori Garcia 
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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