Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 107 posts

Re: Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

#31

Post by johnloeber »

paulfr wrote: post #22

Just 2 weeks ago, I won a machine learning contest with a $20,000 prize pool where the goal was to predict the IQ of a child at age 7, based on various biological measurements and demographic indicators. The data includes whether a child was breastfed. After reading the article I did some very quick computations and my finding based on the model I developed is that children who were not breastfed have an IQ impairmen…

Wow, that's very interesting work. I'd love to see a write-up -- not just with respect to breastfeeding, but generally on your findings.

Re: Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

#32

Post by jwdunne »

codebeaker wrote: post #27
dagw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The results of additional, external, pressure could do more harm than good. Yup. My wife, for reasons no one could really explain, hardly produced any milk. Fortunately it only took us a few days or so to realize this and start bottle feeding, but a lot of the nurses and midwives we met along the way felt no compunction in making my wife feel like a failure as a mother and human being because of this.

Came here to write the same thing, my son was born 6 weeks early, hormonally my wife was not ready to breast feed at all, and we had a hugely painful, and for my wife embarrassing experience sitting hour after hour in the hospital with breast pumps and formula bottles trying to get enough, and the right balance of breast milk and formula into my son. The hospital were adamant that we kept at it, and now some four mon…

Yes, having a child changes you fundamentally. The difference in me has been dramatic. Despite all the stress, I am overall far more emotionally stable. I'm more industrious. There's no stress like having next to no sleep and having a screaming baby who needs you. Most things that work throw at you are nothing.

The most important thing is that it teaches you what is and isn't important in life, or at least it did for me. I used to panic when a server or website died at work. For me, now, it's nothing. Of course, it's still urgent and I fix but it actually gets done faster as I'm not stressing about it. The most important thing for me is having healthy and happy children. Work is now a means to that end.

I consider myself successful at this moment in time because my baby is happy, nothing else. Even doctors, whilst she was unwell, noted how happy she was. Her nursery notes how incredibly fast she is developmentally, both mentally and physically. That's all in spite of being bottle fed the majority of her life.

Skin on skin is beautiful. If you want to feel less stressed and find an unexpected inner peace, do skin-on-skin. It's known oxytocin is realised with skin contact, regardless. Doing so with your baby, knowing he or she is so totally dependent on you to live, makes for a profound experience.

Re: Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

#33

Post by BenDaglish »

It interests me that the conclusion of these studies is almost always presented as breastfeeding increasing IQ (or conveying health benefits or whatever). Surely, breastfeeding is the norm, and this headline should be "Bottle feeding linked to lower IQ"?

Re: Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

#34

Post by jwdunne »

deepGem wrote: post #30
jwdunne wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases, the pressure to breastfeed can do more harm than good. If the parent is feeling stressed, as it can be an extremely intense and also painful experience, the bonding process can suffer. More importantly, some mothers just cannot produce enough milk. The father of my adopted son forced my wife to breastfeed. Over a 3 month period, the poor boy lost a dangerous amount of weight and needed a stay in hospit…

"More importantly, some mothers just cannot produce enough milk" - Is there any anecdotal evidence to prove this. One lactation consultant told us that this claim is totally false. According to her, all women who give birth can and will produce enough breast milk and she had the evidence to prove that.

My wife's mother was unable to leave hospital until my wife put on weight. My adopted son lost tonnes of weight and only gained after bottle feeding. My daughter simply could not be taken away from the breast.

That was enough for me to make a decision that breastfeeding my second daughter was impractical.

EDIT: I do say "produce" but it may not be as simple as that, again it's complicated. Production may not be impaired, but perhaps the ability to dispense might be. There may be some matrilineal genetic factor present that prevents a baby from latching properly or taking enough milk. I'm not an expert but there are a few stages in the process where things can and do go wrong.

Re: Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

#35

Post by DanBC »

BenDaglish wrote: post #33

It interests me that the conclusion of these studies is almost always presented as breastfeeding increasing IQ (or conveying health benefits or whatever). Surely, breastfeeding is the norm , and this headline should be "Bottle feeding linked to lower IQ"?

Reframing it like that makes it seem like parents who formula-feed (because you can pump breast milk into a bottle) are harming their children.

There's already enough pressure on women to breast feed and I'm not sure it's useful to put more on. It'd be better to make sure women can get rapid access to breast feeding consultants.

Re: Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

#36

Post by paulfr »

paulfr wrote: post #22

Just 2 weeks ago, I won a machine learning contest with a $20,000 prize pool where the goal was to predict the IQ of a child at age 7, based on various biological measurements and demographic indicators. The data includes whether a child was breastfed. After reading the article I did some very quick computations and my finding based on the model I developed is that children who were not breastfed have an IQ impairmen…

I can't edit any more, so I'm posting as a reply.

I compared my dataset and their data, and it turns out that even in Brazil there is significant correlation between mother education and breastfeeding, barely less so than on the dataset I have. So you should probably disregard my edit in the above post: accounting for confounders could be important in both cases.

Re: Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

#37

Post by EliRivers »

deepGem wrote: post #30
jwdunne wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases, the pressure to breastfeed can do more harm than good. If the parent is feeling stressed, as it can be an extremely intense and also painful experience, the bonding process can suffer. More importantly, some mothers just cannot produce enough milk. The father of my adopted son forced my wife to breastfeed. Over a 3 month period, the poor boy lost a dangerous amount of weight and needed a stay in hospit…

"More importantly, some mothers just cannot produce enough milk" - Is there any anecdotal evidence to prove this. One lactation consultant told us that this claim is totally false. According to her, all women who give birth can and will produce enough breast milk and she had the evidence to prove that.

According to her, all women who give birth can and will produce enough breast milk and she had the evidence to prove that.

Bullshit (not you; her). The only way to prove that, given that humans are messy biologicals and not a mathematical equation, is to line up every woman who ever gave birth and demonstrate that each of them produces enough milk to feed said child. A single counter-example (of which there are many) demonstrates that she's talking rot.

Re: Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

#38

Post by dagw »

deepGem wrote: post #30
jwdunne wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases, the pressure to breastfeed can do more harm than good. If the parent is feeling stressed, as it can be an extremely intense and also painful experience, the bonding process can suffer. More importantly, some mothers just cannot produce enough milk. The father of my adopted son forced my wife to breastfeed. Over a 3 month period, the poor boy lost a dangerous amount of weight and needed a stay in hospit…

"More importantly, some mothers just cannot produce enough milk" - Is there any anecdotal evidence to prove this. One lactation consultant told us that this claim is totally false. According to her, all women who give birth can and will produce enough breast milk and she had the evidence to prove that.

I would love to see that evidence, since I have plenty of anecdotal evidence that it is bullshit.

And what's even worse, all the people pushing this nonsense do a lot of damage to all the women who cannot produce enough milk, since all it does is make them feel like failures as mothers. Which is not a good state of mind to be in when someone just dumped a new born baby in your lap and basically says "here you go, this human being lives or dies based solely on your actions".

Re: Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

#39

Post by aduitsis »

jwdunne wrote: post #32
codebeaker wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to write the same thing, my son was born 6 weeks early, hormonally my wife was not ready to breast feed at all, and we had a hugely painful, and for my wife embarrassing experience sitting hour after hour in the hospital with breast pumps and formula bottles trying to get enough, and the right balance of breast milk and formula into my son. The hospital were adamant that we kept at it, and now some four mon…

Yes, having a child changes you fundamentally. The difference in me has been dramatic. Despite all the stress, I am overall far more emotionally stable. I'm more industrious. There's no stress like having next to no sleep and having a screaming baby who needs you. Most things that work throw at you are nothing. The most important thing is that it teaches you what is and isn't important in life, or at least it did for…

The most important thing is that it teaches you what is and isn't important in life, or at least it did for me. I used to panic when a server or website died at work. For me, now, it's nothing. Of course, it's still urgent and I fix but it actually gets done faster as I'm not stressing about it. The most important thing for me is having healthy and happy children. Work is now a means to that end.

A big thank you for sharing that insight here.

Re: Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

#40

Post by up_and_up »

dagw wrote: post #24
jwdunne wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases, the pressure to breastfeed can do more harm than good. If the parent is feeling stressed, as it can be an extremely intense and also painful experience, the bonding process can suffer. More importantly, some mothers just cannot produce enough milk. The father of my adopted son forced my wife to breastfeed. Over a 3 month period, the poor boy lost a dangerous amount of weight and needed a stay in hospit…

The results of additional, external, pressure could do more harm than good. Yup. My wife, for reasons no one could really explain, hardly produced any milk. Fortunately it only took us a few days or so to realize this and start bottle feeding, but a lot of the nurses and midwives we met along the way felt no compunction in making my wife feel like a failure as a mother and human being because of this.

> but a lot of the nurses and midwives we met along the way felt no compunction in making my wife feel like a failure as a mother and human being because of this

That is absolutely horrible, sorry you had that experience.

My wife was in the same situation with our first, basically she anatomically did not have enough tissue to generate the volume of milk required. Luckily we were able to get donor milk and rely on this technology: http://www.lact-aid.com/. Amazingly she was able to build enough tissue so that by our 3rd kid we have not used any donor milk at all.

Post reply on HN