The Skeptical OB

A new paper in The Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine, Predictability of prognosis of infantile hypernatremic dehydration: a prospective cohort study sheds light on the outcome of newborn dehydration due to insufficient breastmilk. It highlights the severity of the problem, the risk factors and the prognostic signs. I find it particularly interesting because it […]

A new paper succinctly lays out the academic critique of contemporary breastfeeding promotion, and basically recapitulates most of the arguments I have been making for years. The paper is Discourses and critiques of breastfeeding and their implications for midwives and health professionals by midwives Smyth and Hyde. While the slogan ‘breast is best’ has historically […]

Breastfeeding is a signifier of social status. In every society the privileged attempt to distance themselves from those less fortunate. Privileged women adopt status displays that are costly, and therefore difficult for less privileged women to emulate. For example, when poor people were thin because they didn’t have enough to eat, being overweight was a […]

The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine is now on record as supporting the deadly practice of bedsharing. The ABM just published a revision of its sleep protocol and it amounts to little more than special pleading for a practice that kills tens of thousands of infants a year (SIDS and suffocation). It is a stunning violation […]

The benefits of breastfeeding for term babies in industrialized countries are trivial. So why is there is panic around breastfeeding rates? Because breastfeeding functions as a class signifier. It’s not about what a baby needs; it’s about a mother and how she wishes to present herself to other women. I’m not the only person who […]

The principle is called Occam’s Razor. It is sometimes paraphrased by a statement like “the simplest solution is most likely the right one” … The Wikipedia article notes that possible explanations can become needlessly complex. It might be coherent, for instance, to add the involvement of leprechauns to any explanation … Those complex explanations are […]

Lactivists seem to have a lot of difficulty with basic reading comprehension. No matter how firmly I write — no matter how blunt I am, no matter how small and simple the words I use: “I believe X.” lactivists routinely respond with: “So what you’re saying is Y.” No, if I wanted to say Y, […]

Earlier this week I wrote about a baby suffering from breastfeeding starvation for 9 weeks. The poor baby — living in a country where copious infant formula and the clean water to prepare it are easily available — nonetheless looks like a famine victim. His arms are stick thin and his ribs are showing. The […]

I came across an extraordinary Facebook post yesterday. It is extraordinary for four reasons: 1. A baby has been starved nearly to death in an effort to promote breastfeeding. According to MilkMattersUk, the organization run by lactation consultant Charlotte Young (the Analytical Armadillo): Meet H, a nearly 9 week old baby we met this weekend. […]

One of the biggest ironies of contemporary breastfeeding promotion is how UNnatural it it. Sure, breastmilk is promoted as best because its natural, but the elaborate demands and restrictions that characterize the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) are based not on what happens in nature, but on the contemporary philosophy of neoliberalism. Indeed the entire […]