Hiding the formula

I'm a little late to this, but check out this story about Mayor Bloomberg asking hospitals in NYC to lock up their formula, so that women can't get access to it without listening to a "mandatory speech about why breast is best."  This reminds me of those crazy pro-life enforced ultrasounds.  "Perhaps you don't know what's best for you my dear.  Let me explain how exactly you're doing it wrong."

This is a voluntary initiative that starts in September, but virtually all the hospitals in the city are participating, including the one where I delivered both girls.

I'm no anti-breastfeeding zealot, I nursed Penny for 12 months and Mabel for 6 months.  Both times I decided to wean after making informed decisions about what was best for my family.  Which I, as a functioning human being, am totally capable of doing.  

In the hospital after Mabel was born, however, she spent the second night there crying inconsolably for hours.  I knew she was hungry, I knew my milk had not yet come in.  She was miserable.  I was exhausted, in considerable amounts of pain, already sleep-deprived and worried that I wouldn't be able to take care of both Penny and Mabel if I didn't get at least a little sleep my last night in the hospital.  So I asked the nurse for a bottle of formula.  It was given to me without a lecture.  Mabel drank it.  She slept for 5 hours and so did I.  The next morning, my milk had come in and we were on our way forward with many months of exclusive breastfeeding.

Whatever its good intentions, this policy means that a sleep-deprived, physically exhausted woman in pain has to undergo additional guilt and judgement from the people she should be able to trust the most (her medical caregivers), simply because we don't trust women to be informed about the costs and benefits of a bottle of formula for a very hungry baby.  

I'm totally on board with prohibiting those gift bags and advertisements and the like.  That stuff does seem a little much.  But hiding the formula and forcing a lecture on those who ask for it?  Come on.  Give the moms a break.  They're, amazingly, usually not idiots.