It’s amazing, that some mums feel pressured into breastfeeding their babies but not feel pressured by the way the media promotes formula milk. I would like to think the whole world knows that breast milk is the best milk for our babies, as it’s natural/organic. Do you know? With UK formula manufacturers spending around £20 per baby promoting this ‘baby junk food’, compared to the paltry 14 pence per baby the government spends promoting breastfeeding
THEY SAY- “My mum fed me on formula and I’m alive”.
Do you know the health consequences – babies have twice the risk of dying in the first six weeks of life, five times the risk of gastroenteritis, twice the risk of developing eczema and diabetes and up to eight times the risk of developing lymphatic cancer.
Below I have copied in some pointers from Breast milk vs ‘formula’food article By Pat Thomas
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Women do not fail to breastfeed. Health professionals, health agencies and governments fail to educate and support women who want to breastfeed.
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Nearly all women – around 99 per cent – can breastfeed successfully and make enough milk for their babies to not simply grow, but to thrive. With encouragement, support and help, almost all women are willing to initiate breastfeeding, but the drop-off rates are alarming: 90 per cent of women who give up in the first six weeks say that they would like to have continued. And it seems likely that long-term exclusive breastfeeding rates could be improved if consistent support were available, and if approval within the family and the wider community for breastfeeding, both at home and in public, were more obvious and widespread.
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Taking birth out of the community and relocating it into hospitals gave rise to the medicalisation of women’s reproductive lives. Life events were transformed into medical problems, and traditional knowledge was replaced with scientific and technological solutions. This medicalisation resulted in a cascade of interventions that deeply undermined women’s confidence in their abilities to conceive and grow a healthy baby, give birth to it and then feed it.
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Infant formulas were never intended to be consumed on the widespread basis that they are today. They were conceived in the late 1800s as a means of providing necessary sustenance for foundlings and orphans who would otherwise have starved. In this narrow context – where no other food was available – formula was a lifesaver.
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Continued inappropriate advice from medical professionals is one reason why, in 1991, UNICEF started the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) – a certification system for hospitals meeting certain criteria known to promote successful breastfeeding. These criteria include: training all healthcare staff on how to facilitate breastfeeding; helping mothers start breastfeeding within one hour of birth; giving newborn infants no food or drink other than breast milk, unless medically indicated; and the hospital not accepting free or heavily discounted formula and supplies. In principle, it is an important step in the promotion of breastfeeding, and studies show that women who give birth in Baby Friendly hospitals do breastfeed for longer.
Read the full artical: http://www.theecologist.org/trial_investigations/268337/breastmilk_vs_formula_food.html