Especially in light, I think, of the Andy Gray sexism thing. Of course it’s bad what he did, of course he should be sacked (and of COURSE he was going to be sacked the minute he took his boss to court). But what is it about the world that means that part of his colleague’s job description includes stripping down to a silver metallic bikini and stilettoes and posing like a hooker?
Have a look at this…
and yet, somehow it looks very, very familiar…
Must be Other People’s Sites I am thinking of.
PS no mention of Nazis.
PPS <excuses self on grounds of having invoked Godwin’s Law>
Great insight from a lady who doesn’t have any kids (and who NEVER takes her rings off while cooking – bleee!).
This, the opening paragraph of her Children’s section on her website. “Children can be fussy eaters but if you gradually introduce them to a wide range of foods they should become gourmets in the making. Here are some good options to start with..”
Delia’s good options? Five pages of cakes, pretty much.
I bet she’s a brilliant auntie.
She’s looking for the BMJ to put out another press release to the effect that the article from Mary Fewtrell et al was merely opinion, not fact.
here she is, do click, (despite the peculiar surname)
Now… let’s face it, it won’t get picked up in the same headline-busting way that the first piece did – if it even gets picked up at all – however it is a worthy effort I think insofar as when it comes up in the future we will all be able to link to it and say ‘look, here, worried breastfeeding lady, you are doing great, really, keep up the good work until the WHO tells us differently…’
Good luck.
and of course we all looked like that in those early days of breastfeeding. Much applause to Miranda Kerr (an Australian moggle apparently and the better half of former pixie heartthrob Orlando Bloom) for releasing this shot of her breastfeeding.
Just to keep everything up-to-date… there was once this paper, which was a small review published in the BMJ and basically just said ‘mmmm-kay we should have a look at this 6 months thing as it may not be right for everyone’. (Preach it to the choir, ladies and gentlemen).
And as we all know by now, this nothing-y paper from UCL has been distorted in the most extraordinary manner by the press. So let us return to the BMJ once more, on whose site there are now a number of replies from credible-sounding (bearing in mind this is emphatically not my field) scientific, medical and public health bods that call for, amongst other things, looking at other methods of retaining or increasing iron levels in our babies.
I like this woman. She seems clever, just look at the alphabetti spaghetti of letters after her name. Go Miriam! For the rest of what she wrote, and comments from other irritated academics, please press here.
“Rather than calling for truncation of exclusive breastfeeding, limiting its myriad of positive immediate health, child spacing and long- term health effects, let us instead call for 1) delayed cord clamping for iron stores, with iron supplements as needed in later infancy, 2) research on the impact of exclusive breastfeeding vs. expressed milk feeding on the health of both mothers and their children, and, most of all, 3) unbiased, informed, and mother-centered support – clinical, social and economic – so that women may make an unbiased, informed infant feeding choice, and succeed in six months of exclusive breastfeeding.
Sincerely,
Miriam H. Labbok, MD, MPH, FACPM, IBCLC, FABM
The Carolina Breastfeeding Institute (CGBI) Professor, and Director, CGBI Department of Maternal and Child Health Gillings School of Global Public Health The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7445”
AMEN, sister.
I remember back in the heady days of thinking about weaning my daughter no.1 I was utterly convinced by the six month line in the sand, in the way that only an idiot a first-timer can be. I had read it in a book, had I not?
My actual human child, however, had other ideas and a couple of weeks before this magic date she grabbed some soft fruit and started eating it. Immediately, I knew she was ready. Well, durrr. She was eating a peach, after all, what further proof did I need?
And so began the BLW journey/voyage/odyssey/thingybob that got us all here at this ludicrous hour on a Friday night.
Since then, my view on weaning has become more relaxed than ever, and it started off pretty flexy in the first place to be honest. A preemie second child who started noshing at 5 months corrected, also helped.
You can lead a child to food, but you cannot make them eat. It seems to me perfectly obvious that if they can do it, you should let them. (Unless they are strikingly precocious and trying to unwrap a packet of Jammy Dodgers at 16 weeks. Do intervene in that instance.)
This study seems to me eminently sensible on the subject. It looked at when 602 babies reached for food, found that 56% had done so before 6 months but 6% still hadn’t done so by 8 months (with the rest inbetween) and concluded that BLW is ‘is probably feasible for a majority of infants, but could lead to nutritional problems for infants who are relatively developmentally delayed’.
So look, if they’re not eating, and you are stressing, for god’s sake try them with a loaded spoon. Further more if they won’t self-feed at all and you are tearing your hair out, just feed ’em, if they like it. Honestly. Don’t over-think this stuff. It’s just food.There is no BLW heresy.
As the mother of two daughters there is a chance, God willing, that I will one day be a grandmother and let’s face it by then all my hard-won Noughties knowledge will have been thrown out of the window. My kids will probably feed their kids blue pills at four weeks old, because that will be the most up-to-date thinking.
And I will just have to suck that up and smile through what teeth I have left .
In the meantime, all we can do is ignore the weird media/academia politics, examine the evidence and be grateful that for BLWers, the decision as to when to wean is taken out of our hands by the chubby fists of our babies.
Well here goes, this is the stuff I know about with regards to this extraordinary news story about ‘breastfeeding not being bestfeeding‘. Snooooooort. I work in the media and have a gazillion friends in academia, and viewed from this perspective this story is rather fascinating.
1. Newspapers are having a tough time at the moment. Like, super-tough. It’s all these big-mouthed bloggers spouting off for free, they’re killing the industry, the bastards. ;-D
Soooo, you have a print media that is making people redundant left, right and centre and is utterly desperate for a headline.
2. With all of these lay-offs, there is unfortunately a good chance that yer old-fashioned highly-qualified Science Correspondent is gone, replaced by a pleasant enough daftie who has the numbers of a few favourite boffins in their mobile phone, does most of their journalistic work by ringaround and gets most of their stories from press releases.
3. Universities are having a tough time at the moment. Like, super-tough. It’s all these budget cuts, they’re killing our institutes.
Sooooo, you have academics whose jobs (mortgages, families and yes, goddammit, their passion for their chosen field) utterly rely on getting funding from somewhere, anywhere… this is awkward because it lays them open to claims that their conclusions are polluted by their backers. But what to do?
4. Also, ethically pristine or otherwise, they know that the bigger stink they cause more press attention they get, the better placed their employer, the university, is to attract further monies. The uni Press Officer knows this too.
SO.
Does anyone think that point 1 might have influenced newspapers to make a story about some academics saying ‘hmm you know maybe we should look into this 6 month thing again?’ into a BREAST NOT BEST feeding frenzy? Or that factor 2 might render the journalists incapable of producing copy that Ben Goldacre couldn’t tear apart with his two pinkie fingers?
More to the point, does anyone think that factors 1 and 2, 3 and 4 might have influenced the writers of this small, speculative review about the best age to introduce solids into a babies diet to instead title it: “Six months of exclusive breast feeding: how good is the evidence?” What with breastfeeding being the loaded gun to the head of most of your newspaper-reading classes nowadays?
Certainly one of the people who wrote the paper said on BBC Radio today “We’re not naive, we knew this would set the cat among the pigeons.” Ya think? That’ll be music to the UCL press officer’s ears. And yet the final paras of their BMJ piece only say what we already know.
“At one extreme, it has been suggested that there is insufficient scientific evidence for any lower age for weaning and that “infants should be weaned on demand, which is what most infants and their parents actually do in practice.” It can be argued that, from a biological perspective, the point when breast milk ceases to be an adequate sole source of nutrition would not be expected to be fixed, but to vary according to the infant’s size, activity, growth rate, and sex, and the quality and volume of the breast milk supply. Signalling of hunger by the infant is probably an evolved mechanism that individualises timing of weaning for a mother-infant pair.” Sounds like BLW to me.
It goes on. “However, others would adopt a more cautious approach, based on data suggesting that the introduction of solid foods before 3 to 4 months may be associated with increased fatness and wheeze later in childhood, with an increased risk of allergy, and with higher rates of coeliac disease and type 1 diabetes in infants at risk.
“Recently, after a detailed review commissioned by the European Commission, the European Food Safety Authority’s panel on dietetic products, nutrition, and allergies concluded that for infants across the EU, complementary foods may be introduced safely between four to six months, and six months of exclusive breast feeding may not always provide sufficient nutrition for optimal growth and development.” (That last line is a bit woolly, don’t you think? Surely what someone needs to do is look at whether the kids who are reaching out for food earlier than 6 months are the same ones who need a bit more than breast milk? If so, no problemo.)
Regarding the media coverage, it’s All Very Silly. The allergy stuff is hooey, as the report says that only 1% of Brits BF exclusively anyway, the bitter tastes stuff is hooey as BM changes flavour while formula doesn’t and anyway WE KNOW it’s rot because we feed our children spinach (at least until they get a bit older and decide it’s the devil incarnate in vegetable form, as they are perfectly entitled to do. But then I am nearly forty and not particularly fussed for bitter food either.)
All these academics are talking about is the time to introduce other foods, whatever the newspapers and the press officers are saying, and if they reckon that it’s something that someone might need to take another peek at, who am I to quibble?
And if things do change, it might have some bearing on Baby Led Weaning, which would be great, thanks. For my thoughts on this (lord, what an ego) do please press that hyperlink. <points>
Well happy days, I’ve been out at a funeral eating curled-up gammon sandwiches and unusually firm chicken goujons with my now TWO-year-old daughter – the other one, a certain Babybear of these pages, is now FIVE <faints> – and meanwhile I see the world has gone to hell in a handcart. Breastfeeding, it seems, is rubbish. Honestly, I leave for one day… (might have been nearer two years actually, but that’s what having a couple of kids does to you).
So ya know, an international news story with weaning at the core… what better day than to launch the newer, purtier BLW blog? Let’s do it. Expect further communication on this matter. I bet you cannot WAIT.