I don’t blog a ton about breastfeeding because after breastfeeding 7 children, over the course of over 18 years, and being a La Leche League Leader for 13 years, breastfeeding is just part of the background. It’s not something that I even think much about anymore. It’s something that’s always cool and always there, like chocolate (I wish), my husband’s gorgeous curly hair, freedom, God, and the Internet. 

i know a lot about breastfeeding, I’ve read a lot about it and I smile at every breastfeeding mom I can, especially if she’s nursing in public. Mother’s milk is the wonder substance of the whole of earth’s existence. It kills cancer cells! A pediatric gastroenterologist I once heard said that it has the widest germ-killing spectrum of anything on the planet.  To top it off, it is made effortlessly by ordinary moms like you and me. When I do stop to think about breastfeeding, I continue to marvel that God made women so they can feed their babies. Not just feed them, to give babies calories, but nurture them with soul food that is every bit of satisfying to them as a candlelight dinner of your favorite meal with your favorite people would be for you. And our lucky breastfeeding babies get that combo of physical and emotional satisfaction for every nursing! But when I was a brand new mother, I didn’t know so much about it. I discovered a book on my mom’s shelf when young that said breastfeeding was best for babies and why. When I was pregnant with my first baby I read Bestfeeding and that confirmed it for me. But I wasn’t confident enough to nurse in public yet. (Now I do it all the time…LOL, that’ s another post.)

If I were a brand-new mom I might be tempted by the following email I got from Jean Brown Reasearch, a company I looked into for a different research study. That’s how I got on their mailing list.

So why is this a bad idea? Because it doesn’t do anything to encourage women to breastfeed. It more than likely will appeal to poor moms who feel like they can’t afford artificial baby milk, who also feel like they can’t breastfeed. The reality is that most women can breastfeed, they just need the right information and encouragement from their family and friends. These poor women who opt in to this study will lose their milk supply by not nursing and then after 16 weeks, what do they do when they aren’t getting the free ABM? Hopefully, they would learn they could relactate but that’s not likely.They will be stuck having to pay for a vastly inferior product that their body can make superiorly, perfectly suited for their baby. A lot of people think “formula” is benign. I choose to use the phrase artificial baby milk, because that calls it like it is. It is artificial, and who would want artificial when they can have real? Would you rather have artificial blood or real blood? Artificial legs or real legs? Would you be OK with having artificial blood or legs for 16 weeks if you didn’t have to pay for it? What if it would be hard to get the use of your real legs or blood back after the 16 weeks were up? Why choose to use artificial in the first place? If you can’t have the real thing, get some help because you probably can have the real thing.

As Dr Sears says, (he’s a wise man who has a La Leche League Leader for a wife) the use of ABM is one big experiment on babies. Now here is an experiment of an experiment. A baby’s health is nothing to experiment with. We already know the perfect “formula.” And it’s free. If anybody you know is considering this study, please talk them out of it and point them to their nearest La Leche League meeting or web site http://llli.org