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Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#151

Post by NoRagrets »

Dove wrote: post #87
my_usernam3 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spread some of that tribal knowledge, what worked for her?

Two of my sons had problems with nasal congestion. They wanted to eat, but they needed to breathe even more. A baby who tries, screams, and tries again is the tell. Or who just can't seem to make up his mind as to whether he wants to or not. Or who just can't seem to form any sort of a secure latch. It's easy to blame a bad latch, but babies are good at sucking on things. I didn't find latching was any sort of proble…

Playing support staff for a 6 month old now..daily massages for the baby in steamy bathrooms is helpful. I have been doing this with my grandmother in our large joint family from back when..one thing I have noticed that is diff now than it was over many years ago are the eczema rashes and esp after vaccinations. I guess that’s the immune system kicking in…treating the eczema gently rather than directly and immediately resorting to steroidal creams is better. The nasal congestions are also on the rise..usually post vaccination. The steamy room massages do help alleviate the distress a bit.

Nursing mothers need capable nutritionists as well as lactation consultants. The advantage of crone women in the family assisting is that they usually have a history of all related women and the various births in their heads. Women usually went back to their mothers’ home after seventh month of pregnancy and stayed there for at least 6-12 months post birth.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#152

Post by valarauko »

xupybd wrote: post #147
valarauko wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why would growing up on bottled water lead to terrible dental outcomes? I grew up in India, where the water supply isn't fluoridated, and I didn't see dental health that was significantly worse than the US. We probably got most of our fluoride from ingesting bits of fluoridated toothpaste.

Yeah it's possible that I'm conflating correlation with causation. But her dentist seems to think it's a factor. They coat her teeth with a fluoride paste and it seems to be working. On the flip side her late 90s grandmother still has some teeth and walks around unassisted. I don't think any of my grandparents made it to their 80s.

Tangential anecdote: I had a co-worker in India who grew up in a region with excessive naturally occurring fluoride in the groundwater. As a result, he had blotchy dark brown teeth - not stained, the substructure of the teeth were brown all the way through. The side effect was that the teeth were substantially stronger than regular teeth, as were presumably his bones. My understanding is that extremely high fluoride can mess with bone and tooth development in the embryo, with lower levels only showing up as the cosmetic blotches but no developmental issues.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#153

Post by Someone1234 »

nerdponx wrote: post #108
Someone1234 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different poster: But what worked for my wife was "Medela Nipple Shield" in the appropriate size. What I find interesting is that our first didn't eat for TWO DAYS until we got that piece of silicone. It was recommended by the lactation consultant, but the hospital didn't stock them because they had a policy against assistive devices. It took two days because the lactation consultant didn't work weekends. The hospita…

What's the purpose of such a policy? Something related to insurance?

You'll find hospitals have a lot of "current thinking" policies around babies that seemingly have no real concrete reason. For example, they swung wildly from little to no skin-to-skin (it was "dangerous"), to skin-to-skin being of absolute priority. Co-sleeping has also swung wildly, and is currently in the "you'll kill your baby!!!" side of the swing. Little or low quality science, it is very cargo-cult run.

Most current bad policies in the US originate from wanting to be "Baby-Friendly Certified"[0]. For example MANY (most?) US hospitals have closed overnight nurseries in Labor & Delivery, so post-operative mothers cannot get better sleep which improved their recovery times and reduced risks of post-operative issues, this is from a bad reading of "Baby-Friendly" key clinical practices No.7. The problem is that third party certifying organizations have taken WHO's fairly commonsense ideas and run wild with them in order to make certifying a time-consuming and expensive process (and done tons of harm in the process).

The specific reason Nipple Shields are the current evil is Key clinical practices No.9 even though it directly contradicts Key clinical practices No.5, and worse No.9 doesn't actually forbid assistive devices, it is the intermediate organizations that have interpreted it that way.

Here's a quote from the below Wikipedia article:

> It questioned whether full compliance with the ten steps of the initiative might inadvertently lead to the promotion of potentially hazardous practices and/or counterproductive outcomes. Specific concerns described in this paper included increased risk of sudden unexpected postnatal collapse, rigidly-enforced rooming-in practices leading to exhausted or heavily medicated mothers caring for newborns, and an unnecessary ban on pacifier use.

Keep in mind this isn't some government initiative nor is the WHO really responsible for many of the US specific problems. This is for-profit US hospitals competing against one another to appear superior, while actually creating situations where both mothers and babies get worse care in the process (and the financial savings of not having on-site nurseries, is likely a huge bonus).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Friendly_Hospital_Initiat...

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#154

Post by yonaguska »

MandieD wrote: post #68
roland35 wrote: post #30

Breastfeeding isn't easy! Some babies just never really get it, and if you don't start right away it's hard to produce enough breast milk.

I was about to be the third generation of women who relied on formula (grandmother tried and failed at age 20 around 1940 despite plenty of help from her mother, mother didn’t bother at 35 in 1980), but for a modern miracle: portable, configurable milk pumps, good accessories, and something of a data-driven mindset. If one takes this “exclusive pumping” route, or something close (we supplemented with formula as neede…

Breastmilk is still better than formula, even today's standards of formula. One of the very cool things about breastmilk is that it becomes more nutrient dense as the baby gets older, whereas with formula, you need to give the baby more and more of it. Another thing about the weight, all of the expected weight charts are based on formula feeding. You need to use separate weight charts for breastmilk only weight gain. If you are breastfeeding, it's common for doctors to incorrectly suggest you supplement the breastmilk with formula because your baby is "underweight", when they actually aren't. Supplementing with complex carbs like rice cereal is also probably not very good for your baby, with no real upside. Strategy that we are going with is no complex carbs at all, just supplementing with steamed veggies and fruits now that we're onto solids.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#155

Post by antisthenes »

Spivak wrote: post #118
snapcaster wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why everyone just accepts uncritically the water fluoridation stuff. It seems like as a culture we're re-examining so many things we incorrectly thought was "safe" but water fluoridation seems to still be a "sacred cow". I'm guessing it's hangover from Birch Society people being against it, but seems weird to just assume it's fine (especially when looking into the somewhat shady origins of the program)

What shady origins? It was done because because of the horrible state of dental health in the US. "To join the armed services, men had to have six opposing teeth in their upper and lower jaws; in 1941, almost 10% of recruits were rejected for this reason alone" Like it doesn't even matter if army recruits is a skewed sample, young men not having 6 pairs of teeth that touch is insane. "In the early 1950s, two public h…

> "In the early 1950s, two public health researchers stated that on average young men between the ages of 20 and 35 years had already lost an average of 4.2 teeth and that 90% of them were in need of bridges or full or partial dentures."

Do wisdom teeth count? Because if they do, I am already missing 4 teeth, in addition to 4 more that were taken out to help make space for the rest of my teeth to prevent crowding.

So missing 4.2 teeth on average doesn't actually sound as bad as you make it out.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#156

Post by sudobash1 »

sybercecurity wrote: post #52
abfan1127 wrote: post #6

anecdotally, my wife struggled to breastfeed our first born. The hospital lactation consultant wasn't very helpful. Ultimately, we found another who's knowledge and bedside manner was very good. I'd hypothesize the lack of generational homes leads to lack of information for new moms. Add on stress about things like jobs, careers, family expectations, and it becomes very difficult.

> "...who's knowledge and bedside manner was very good." Had a similar experience and I came to believe part of the dad's* jobs is to act as a circuit breaker if you end up with a militant lactation consultant. Some seem to think guilt and browbeating new mothers will somehow get things to work. Then it's time to step in and suggest some one else or some other solution. *Dad, partner, whoever. Just someone who isn't…

> *Dad, partner, whoever. Just someone who isn't on a hormone induced emotional rollercoaster.

Not to disagree with your point, but to note: Fathers' hormones also change during pregnancy and postpartum. Most commonly known is that there is a slight decrease in testosterone. This is often suspected as being something to make the man a better caregiver.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/parenting/baby/fatherhood...

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#157

Post by etrautmann »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #119
etrautmann wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you until the fluoride bit. Do you have any medical evidence to suggest there's any issue with fluoride? Also why Berkey? They're extraordinarily expensive relative to alternatives, primarily for aesthetic gain.

What alternatives to Berkey do you suggest?

I use a Pur and it’s generally fine.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#158

Post by LesZedCB »

rcme wrote: post #5
LesZedCB wrote: post #2

i was expecting to find something about society-wide chronic stress, lo and behold > And chronic stress has been found to deplete the body of the energy it needs to make milk. lets just say our profit and growth driven society is not structured to nurture humans, neither grown nor newborn.

Chronic stress is one of many, many reasons listed. It's confirmation bias to go into something looking for a particular answer. In the article, the mention of chronic stress is more of a passing remark and isn't discussed other than that one quote. But it sounds like your takeaway is that chronic stress is definitely one of the main contributing factors. The article doesn't support that.

more the inverse. my hypothesis is stress is high in society and there are many unknown effects. this is potentially one of the many effects.

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#159

Post by klondike_klive »

dsr_ wrote: post #83
moeris wrote: post #33

Most of the comments here are implying that there is some environmental change which has caused breastfeeding to become harder or less efficient. The article doesn't seem to say that, though. I didn't see any implication that breastfeeding was better back in prehistory. It's possible that it's always been hard. Being in a social group large enough that there are other mothers would solve the issue, largely.

There's definitely one issue not mentioned here, and it even has a tie-in to software development. You may recall the famous dictum "The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned." -- possibly Bruce Ediger. That turns out to be wrong. While human infants have an instinct to suckle on a nipple rubbed against their lower lip, human adults have no instincts about presenting the nipple, holding…

If you can get hold of one. The one at our hospital was on holiday. We got so much different conflicting advice and brusque indifferent visits. We wanted to breastfeed to help the baby's microbiome because raised infection markers sparked a precautionary round of antibiotics for his first seven days. I was also on antibiotics as a baby in the seventies and have suffered awfully all my life with eczema, asthma and allergies. The doctor was very dismissive about our concerns. But the baby wouldn't latch, the doctors kept coming round saying they wanted to raise the baby's weight and would have to give him formula if we couldn't get him to feed. Horrible environment, hot as hell in a crowded and loud ward. Very dispiriting. Not surprised babies don't feed, not surprised many women give up. And to cap it all off it was "breastfeeding awareness week" in the hospital!

Re: Many women struggle to breastfeed. Scientists are starting to ask why

#160

Post by klondike_klive »

my_usernam3 wrote: post #43
abfan1127 wrote: post #6

anecdotally, my wife struggled to breastfeed our first born. The hospital lactation consultant wasn't very helpful. Ultimately, we found another who's knowledge and bedside manner was very good. I'd hypothesize the lack of generational homes leads to lack of information for new moms. Add on stress about things like jobs, careers, family expectations, and it becomes very difficult.

Spread some of that tribal knowledge, what worked for her?

Different position worked for my partner - the sidelying position. Otherwise she found she was having to lift him up higher than was comfortable for any length of time.
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