I confess I’m a fan of the Harry Potter books. So I enjoyed seeing the title of a working paper published by Australian Centre for Economic Research on Health: ‘Voldemort’ and Health Professional Knowledge of Breastfeeding — Do Journal Titles and Abstracts Accurately Convey Findings on Differential Health Outcomes for Formula Fed Infants? For a…
Author: AdriaC
Our mammal connection
Babies are born wanting to drink mother’s milk at the breast. Even if mothers don’t know how to breastfeed or don’t want to breastfeed, the babies know they need to suck and try to get to the breast. In this way, we’re just like other mammals — and we can learn a lot about feeding…
Sleep Survey Results
You may remember a post a while ago where I linked to a sleep survey for mothers of new babies. Kathleen Kendall-Tackett and Thomas Hale (authors of The Hidden Feelings of Motherhood and Medications and Mothers’ Milk respectively) have been collecting data about how new mothers sleep, where new babies sleep, how the babies are…
Nursing IS Normal
One of my parenting regrets is that I only have two pictures of me nursing one of my babies. I breastfed four children for a total of over a decade. We nursed everywhere, all the time. It was a normal, happy part of my life for many years. But the only photos I have are…
What are the stats?
When I first started breastfeeding, the only people that collected large scale information on breastfeeding rates were formula companies. Of course there’s a conflict of interest here. Now we’ve got data collected by the USA Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The quick summary for Wisconsin is: Breastfeeding initiation: 67.9% Any breastfeeding at 6 months:…
Nursing in public – the ad (or one of the ads)
Public health departments really really want to promote breastfeeding. While the health risks of articial feeding may seem small for one baby, the overall risks and costs of artificial feeding for the whole population are big. There have been lots of different public health ad campaigns (see our local bus poster ads below!). Some of…
Another reason to ride the bus
The Madison and Dane County public health and WIC programs have got some great breastfeeding promotion posters on the Madison Metro buses. If you aren’t going to be on the bus soon, you can see them here:
Nursing In Public — the legislation
While breastfeeding is (of course) legal all over the United States, mothers are still sometimes harassed for nursing in public. There are lots of things we can do to try to change this. One approach is to protect mothers with laws. In Madison and Dane county we have ordinances that do this. Senate Bill 16…
Some new research (and an old joke)
Here’s the joke: “A blonde is walking down the street with her blouse open and her right breast hanging out. A policeman approaches her and says,”Ma’am, are you aware that I could cite you for indecent exposure?” She says, “Why officer?” “Because your breast is hanging out.” he says. She looks down and says, “OH…
Each baby is special
This post deals with an aspect of breastfeeding that I think is important but is hard to articulate well. Please be patient with me. It starts with someone that I admire: Mr. Rogers. Here is a goodbye video that he did: Mr. Rogers is so kind. He talks about how each person is special —…
Madison Breastfeeding Help 