Having way too much fun...

Over at Sisterhood Six, after the homebirth shenanigans, I have posted a pretty relaxed (for me anyway) opinion piece about the NY Hospital decision to quit distributing formula samples. I expected my colleagues (or at least a couple of them) to bite as it were at the conclusions I drew. Sure enough, one of them did, just nicely.

"And be careful equating the "breast is best" message with using car seats, helmets, and seat belts. Those are completely different situations where children were dying and being severely injured. Last time I checked, children who were formula fed didn't fall into those categories."

My response I thought was decent enough to post here too:

"Sadly formula fed babies do die, In the developing world these babies die because of poor water sanitation (mixing formula with dirty water), in our country its usually babies born to poor, illiterate families (who would have breastfed their babies in their own country) who receive no instruction on how to mix the formula. In these sad cases they either dilute it too much, resulting in babies who starve slowly or they don't add enough water and they die from vitamin or dire electrolyte imbalance. I could also note the cases of contaminated formula (glass or metal fragments or a manufacturing error which included many times the safe levels of iron in the formulation).

Breastfeeding is safer and healthier for baby than formula feeding. I applaud your informed choice to formula feed your second. I made the same choice with my first. But I would respectfully point out that we are among the fortunate privileged who are well educated, literate, have access to decent health care for your children, and a clean water supply. Sadly this is not the case for a great many young families in this country, for whom formula is a very poor substitute for mother's milk."

I shouldn't be enjoying this as much as I am.

I was going to launch into a spiel about the NICU preemies with NEC (necrotizing enterocolitis) and how breastmilk may be all that stands between those babies and death, but I decided to cut her a break... :)

Anyone else care to engage?