'Myths' stop women breastfeeding
I was amazed when I went to my post-natal class, three months after our babies had been born: out of about 20 mothers, only I seemed to have carried on breast-feeding. However looking beyond this, some mothers for some reason or other, cannot breastfeed. My friend for example, had to stop, because she needed to take steroids for a conditon she had. Others had to start formula milk because the baby was losing too much weight. You do get some well meaning friends and relatives that can really create doubts to a new mother about her chosen way of feeding. Its really easy for someone to come along and make comments, but they aren't the ones going through it, and its not easy! What's really annoying is hearing someone who's not even a mother saying "Oh my gosh, you're not breastfeeding?" or older aunties expressing their disgust that you are breastfeeding. SubhanAllah, just shows you cannot please everyone.
"Myths" stop women breastfeeding
2 comments:
Heh, well you wouldn't believe (or maybe you would) some of the "myths" about breastfeeding that come out of DOCTORS' mouths, in fact many doctors perpetuate some of the most ridiculous myths themselves.
Examples I've personally encountered: "your milk dries up after 6 months", "your milk has no nutritional value after 8 months", "pump and give it in a bottle for two weeks until your bleeding nipples heal", "your baby is allergic to your milk, wean to soy formula immediately", "you can't breastfeed and take tricyclin antibiotics", "your milk is deficient" (said after seeing the mom's milk in a bottle and deciding it was the wrong color), "you must not feed your baby more often than every 4 hours", "you have sore nipples? here, have a nipple shield", "your baby will never learn to chew if you don't introduce solids at 4 months of age" and ON AND ON.
Steroids are NOT incompatible with breastfeeding! A mother who has to take steroid medication does NOT have to wean! Do doctors even BOTHER to check the American Academy of Pediatrics list or Dr. Hale's biannual reference book? (I have the brand new 2004 edition on my desk right now.) I have heard doctors say that just about every medication is supposedly cause for weaning. The last one I heard was Claritin (allergy medication). HA!
It's truly unbelievable and I personally believe that for doctors to give advice on breastfeeding having never had studied it in their lives is borderline malpractice. The fact that pediatricians can go through medical school having studied nothing about breastfeeding management or the normal course of breastfeeding is also a crime. All pediatricians should take the example of Dr. Jay Gordon and become IBCLCs.
This is not aimed at you sisters, but a vent on physicians in general.
Thank you for your comments. Perhaps it would be more fruitful for you to speak directly to the particular physicians you have encountered to clarify what was said. Unfortunately some times you do get bad advice from doctors...they too are only human. Sometimes patients mishear too...it is notoriously difficult to get patients to recall exactly what went on in a consultation. Post graduate exams now force us to deal with these communication problems head on - we still have a long way to go.
In response to breastfeeding and drugs - most physicians are erring on the side of caution regarding this. Accepting our limitations in knowledge most of us feel it is better to advise a mother to stop breast feeding if she requires a drug that is excreted into breast milk. It is because we don’t know whether these drugs will harm such a delicate physiology. That said most of my colleagues do try hard not to prescribe drugs during lactation but sometimes it cannot be avoided. InshaAllah we try to do the best we can in imperfect situations. I assume that you are referring to tetracycline antibiotics which cause quite bad discoloration of secondary teeth if given to a child. This mistake was made when these drugs first came out and now we are a lot more careful about a lot of drugs.
As regard to having actual experience of a situation before treating a patient it is not always practical - I am grateful to Allah swt that He has not trialed me with disease. InshaAllah He has given me a listening and empathising approach.
Just to clarify, it was not stated in the post above that mothers taking steroids must start weaning. Rather what was implied was that the particular mother started to use formula milk due to the high dose of steroid used (in the UK, if using a corticosteroid over 40mg, it is recommended to check the baby’s adrenal function. In the situation that was mentioned the sister preferred to start bottle feeding, nobody said she had to). In fact I personally have never recommended the practice you speak of, re: starting weaning because of a medication. The recommendation in the UK is to try to use milk exclusively for the first four to six months of life. Perhaps it is different where you live. The reverse of what you report is often the case in the UK, in that many practitioners of alternative medicine have not studied the human body and the diseases which can affect it. Yet I have come across them trying to treat diseases such as cancers and severe anaemias with unproven methods, and not alerting the patient to the fact that something serious is going on, which may be because they don’t know themselves. Often this is just to make money. I feel this is so wrong. The example is the case of a local practitioner who uses crystal powers to diagnose what is wrong with her patients.
wa as salaam
Your sisters in Islam.
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