The mommy war over breast and bottle

What's up with the articles lately against breast feeding and breast pumps? Don't you just love these media-generated mommy wars?

If Judith Warner found her breast pump so painful, perhaps she should have bought a different one. I have heard many mothers say that breast feeding is painful, but I never heard anyone else complain about painful breast pumps.

I also do not understand why she found pumping so onerous. I didn't, except when I flew cross-country for a conference and had a difficult time finding a place to pump. Otherwise, I didn't have any major problems. After all, desk jockeys like myself and JW should be able to work and pump at the same time.

I agree with Hanna Rosin that women should not be put on the defensive for their choices. She does a credible job explaining the science. The differences are smaller than breast milk advocates claim. (This is a prime example of "correlation does not imply causality".)

In addition, just because breast fed babies have, on average, one fewer bout of diarrhea than bottle fed babies, doesn't mean your baby will have one more/less bout if you chose differently. After all, who has an average baby?

I was breast fed. My mom, a nurse in a developing country at the time, saw the dangers of bottle feeding first hand. My aunt brought me to the hospital during my mom's breaks for feeding. By all accounts, I was a fat and happy baby that slept a lot. Breast milk had a narcotic effect upon me; mom says it never failed to put me to sleep. Iris inherited this trait.

My mother in law, a stay at home mother of three with full time help (her mother), bottle fed all three of her children. She said that doctors discouraged breast feeding in the 1950s and 1960s. Her kids, especially the middle one (Bad Dad), suffered from frequent bouts of diarrhea. No matter how much she boiled and sterilized the bottles, they got sick. All babies did. That was just an accepted fact of life. Her friends' children were no more or less sick than hers.

All of my MIL's grandchildren were breastfed (one for only a short period, 3 for a year or more). She was surprised to observe that none of her grandchildren ever had bouts of infant diarrhea. None.

Susceptibility to diarrhea is influenced by both environmental and genetic factors. We were worried about Iris because Bad Dad certainly has genetic susceptibility. Iris avoided that problem. What made the difference? We can't say for certain but my MIL thinks it was breast feeding. YMMV

Now the new mommy scare is perchlorate (perc) in baby formula. Combine the low, but detectable, levels of perc found in baby formula, add perc from tap water, and babies in some parts of the country can get hazardous amounts of perc in their diet. Though perc was detected in many formulas, ones made from cow's milk had higher levels than those made from soy. (I supplemented my milk with soy formula after the first 6 months because I couldn't keep up with her calorie demands.)

Curiously, no one measured the levels of perc excreted in mothers' milk. I wouldn't be surprised if humans, as well as cows, excreted perc. After all, there are more dry cleaning establishments in residential neighborhoods than on farms. (And, unless you live on or near a place that spills jet and rocket fuel, the perc contamination in your water comes mainly from dry cleaning.)

Don't you just love the headlines that refer to perc as "a chemical found in rocket fuel"? It is also a common solvent and industrial cleaner. Until recently, it was the most common dry cleaning fluid. That's why they tell you to take the plastic cover off your dry cleaning and leave it outside to off-gas. You wouldn't want to breath more of that stuff than you have to. Though it is kind of hard not to breath in whatever is off-gassing from the clothes you are wearing. And does your baby chew on your clothes? I digress.

Did you know that hydrazine is also a chemical found in rocket fuel? And that rocket scientists test if a hydrazine detector is working by putting shitake mushrooms up next to it? Seriously, they buy the mushrooms at the supermarket, put them in a plastic bag in the sun, and then open up the plastic bag right up next to the hydrazine detector. Through trial and error, they discovered that shitake mushrooms give the strongest signal. I know one rocket scientist that refuses to eat mushrooms.

I take the middle road with Andrew Weil. He acknowledges the dangers of hydrazine in mushrooms. But they are also delicious and contain beneficial compounds as well. He points out that hydrazine is a volatile compound and most of it evaporates in cooking. He eats cooked mushrooms. Unless you have one hell of a range hood, it would be best to cook them outside. Call me overprotective, but I wouldn't feed mashed mushrooms to babies, either.