hiddencatRN

I love it about as much as I love the pretense of "Articles" on allnurses. Seriously, this feature is ridiculous on an anonymous internet forum. All that separates articles from regular posts is the citation which is I guess supposed to lend a sense of legitimacy and credibility to them? I just don't get it.

And re #5... it's not a reason not to but it's a reason why some women give up or don't try. If support for breastfeeding wasn't important, we wouldn't need lactation consultants. I think it's important to take some of the responsibility and blame for low breastfeeding rates away from mothers as individuals and place it on a society that isn't really organized in a way that promotes breastfeeding.

This is what I did. Logistically, it's the work of breast feeding and bottle feeding and the benefits of neither. I made it work and I know a lot of women do but there were weeks where I was fueled in this task exclusively by guilt and sadness at not being able to breastfeed. So yes, there is always that. But I think there's a reason it's not a more common choice and why it's almost always (ime) a second choice and not a first choice.

On another board I post on, we call this HIPPOing: Happily Ignoring Previous Posters' Opinions.

...two years ago.

I'd have mentioned something to the doctor but I don't think it's a patient's place to remove things from the walls. That's a boundary overstep, IMO.

My waistline IS fuller. Thin mints mmmmm

I was able to pump at work for a year. Initially I pumped 3 times a shift but was quickly able to drop down to 2 pumps a shift. My unit was slow enough that it wasn't a problem although there was some resentment about all my breaks. Apparently I was complained about in the same breath people complained about the excessive breaks smokers take. It was more of a challenge when I was pulled to busier units but I made it work. And I went back to work pretty early too. If pumping at work doesn't work out for you there is still the option of breastfeeding until you go back to work and switching to formula when you need to. You may only need to supplement too- I work with a breastfeeding mom who stopped pumping at work but continued to breastfeed at home when she was with her baby. Her baby got formula when she was at work and she nursed enough when they were together to maintain her supply. There are a lot of options available to you and you never know what is going to happen after you have your baby. I planned to breastfeed and to breastfeed for a couple years at least. My daughter was born with a soft palate cleft and was not only unable to latch and suck effectively, but couldn't get milk from a regular bottle either and needed special bottles to drink. I suppose the natural thing to do would have been to let her starve to death, but instead I pumped for her for a year, only needing to supplement with formula for the last couple of months. That experience put me in touch with many other mothers who had problems with breastfeeding for various reasons and made me much more sensitive and compassionate about the decisions women make regarding breastfeeding. I'd encourage you to keep an open mind about your plans about breastfeeding. You might be one of those women for whom it is magically easy. You might find you enjoy it, and that it fits in your life better than you thought it would. Or not, and that's OK. I've really only ever encountered judgment about feeding babies online.

Not all formulas use corn syrup. Do you find your communication tactics are effective in encouraging breastfeeding? Because I find your language especially judgmental and inflammatory as well.

I didn't select any of those answers. I don't mind a catalogue out I can browse and buy or not buy from but any active selling really irritates me. I might be more inclined to buy something if it's a fundraiser. I think recruiting is inappropriate. Active selling or high pressure marketing is bad too.

There are a lot of things that frustrate me about nursing as a profession. But...fees? For licensure? That wouldn't even *make* my list let alone top it. I think the bickering over education makes nursing "a mess." Not having PhD nurses. I think care plans are as useful/useless as you make them. What would make my list is the push to turn nursing and healthcare in general in to customer service professions. I don't work in a spa and the red button is not the waitress button. Hospitals that expect us to fill out surveys about how much say we have in the running of the hospital and how happy we are so that they can get a certification and then give us as little real power as possible. Nursing colleagues who will complain about the poor benefits, poor working conditions, poor treatment by administration and management but then can't see how unionizing just might give us power to address some of those issues.

I've figured out people I know in the real world WITHOUT names and pics (and been discovered as well). I think people really underestimate how much their sentence structure and wording can give away, not to mention sharing their nursing school plus the type of nursing they do. But without the real name and a picture at least there's some basis for denial when someone figures you out.

With respect, ratlady called the pacifier birth plan mom an "ignorant weirdo." She explained away the "ignorant" portion in a later post as being a totally non-judgmental thing to say, but....c'mon. It's a sensitive and vulnerable time for moms and is a topic best handled with kindness in addition to evidence. I would put money on paci mom having had a bad experience with an "LLL nurse" as she put it.

If there's a body of proof supporting breastfeeding instead of just assumptions, it can be useful in drafting policies that affect women and support breastfeeding. Laws requiring employers to support lactation at work would be an example of that. So I don't find it to be an odd topic. One of the things I really appreciated about the study I started this thread to talk about is that the author does discuss the challenges that women face breastfeeding when there's not a ton of formal, societal support for parenting infants and that programs that ease the financial burden of taking an extended maternity leave would be supportive of breastfeeding.

Thanks for your thoughts on it, klone. That definitely helps me place it in a better perspective. When I first read it I wondered why I was exclusive pumping like a chump if the benefits were only short term ones. As a nurse the population I see that is at a point where lactation education is pertinent is a NICU population, and there's actually a pretty respectable population that does pump at my hospital especiallu considering my state's breastfeeding rates. I wasn't ready to start telling families to not bother and just give formula, but it did make me wonder a lot about patient education. But I hadn't looked at it much more closely than the article about it.