April 18, 2005
Monday

"For example, if a woman wants to pursue an active career outside the home, breast-feeding is often impractical. Infant formula provides the freedom that many women want, and deserve. Trying to make formula anathema is to thrust such women back to the Dark Ages."
 
Does this guy even KNOW anyone who breastfeeds?  I have exclusively breastfed two children while working fulltime outside the home.  Sure, it may not have been the most convenient way to nurture my children, but I felt it was the BEST nutrition available and I wouldn't change a thing.  Why pay more money to give my baby inferior nutrition.  I wholeheartedly agree with the WHOs policy.  Why give an inferior product to poor children?  They are the ones who REALLY need the benefits of breastfeeding.
 
Breastfeeding provided me with the freedom that I wanted.  I didn't have to get up in the middle of the night to prepare 2 am feedings, so I was able to get a full night's rest and be 100% prepared for work the next day.  I didn't have to worry about choosing the right formula for my baby; I know that my body produced exactly what my baby needed.  Then there's the financial freedom.  I don't have to pay for formula.  I pay a LOT less for doctor visits.  My daughter is 14 months and has never had to go to the doctor for a sick visit!!!
 
"Nestle sells more infant formula in a healthy nation like Belgium than it does in all of Africa, which has 60 times Belgium's population. The best way to boost good health in Africa is to boost African economies. And time-saving technologies like infant formula can help."
 
So, we should improve the health of African children by promoting a less healthful feeding alternative?  Need I say more?
 
"This means that Africans should be able to choose, and not to be scared or shamed into breast-feeding. Radicals and their supporters at the WHO, however, want to keep African women, in effect, barefoot, denying them the choice, as they modernize, of a healthy, convenient product."
 
I agree that women should be able to choose how to feed their children.  I just also believe that they should be given complete information from an impartial third party, preferably, someone with medical education, not Nestlé, Carnation, Enfamil and their ilk.
 

Desireé B. Watkins
Woodstock, GA - USA 

Related Commentary:

Time for Congress to get serious about WHO's excesses by James Glassman

 

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