Organic Baby - Bottle or Breast
You know it has been almost a decade since I’ve read up on the whole breastfeeding scene. What amazes me is that with all the time that has passed the lack of understanding that is still out there.
With as big as the Organic craze has gotten you have people who will shop at the natural foods store while pregnant, so baby has the best, but still have no qualms about giving their baby a bottle of formula. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
Not only does it show a lack of understanding of the supply and demand nature of breastfeeding, but if organics are good enough for your unborn baby and yourself why isn’t it good enough once the baby is born? After all what is more organic than breastmilk? Human milk for human babies.
Yes, yes… “babies do just fine on formula,” but breastfed babies do so much better. It’s the optimum best you can give your baby. Who actually does the optimum and best these days? They say formula is good enough. No it’s not! Saying breastfed babies do better is saying Formula is the norm and breastfeeding is better. (See my rant: Breast is Norm - Bottle is inferior for list of reasons.)
We need to reset our meters as to what is normal. What is organic? What is the God given and natural way to feed a baby? How were babies fed before formula? Why Breast of course. Which means that Formula fed babies aren’t as healthy as breastfed ones. Formula fed babies have more problems than breastfed babies. Formula fed babies aren’t as smart as breastfed babies.
What if you can’t? From what I’ve seen over the past 10 years is that only a very small amount of women can’t breastfeed given the proper knowledge and support. I’ve seen women overcome amazing obstacles to breastfeed.
If you really are in that minority of those truly unable to breastfeed, then that is what Formula should be for. To feed babies who aren’t able to get breastmilk who would otherwise starve. It should be a substitute for when the natural process doesn’t work. It should NOT be the default choice.
My Pregnancy and Early Parenting page has some more links for Breastfeeding info.