Breast milk has long been touted as the gold standard for infant nutritional intake. This is more true today than ever before. However, is there a point where this is taken too far (and I’m not even talking about the cooking thing)? It’s entirely possible that we’ve reached it.
From Salon:
“Women are starting to get the message that mother’s milk is really important,” Nancy Mohrbacher, the author of “Breastfeeding Made Simple: Seven Natural Laws,” tells Newsweek reporter Maria Dolan, an understatement of vast magnitudes. With studies that credit breast-feeding for virtually every good — it will make your child smarter! — and an inoculation against every ill — prevents cancer, ear infections and obesity! — it may be more accurate to say that women are “getting the message” that offering one’s child anything less is tantamount to Parents like McNeil are fueling a boom in demand for the milk of others. Over the past decade, demand at milk banks — which accept human milk and screen for diseases, including HIV — has quadrupled. And those who can’t afford the milk bank’s prices — up to $3 an ounce, keeping in mind a baby can need up to 30 ounces each day — are turning to new, unregulated programs like the Milk Share website, which connects those who’ve got milk with those who need it, thanks to the miracles of ice and Fed Ex. just begging for an unhealthy kid with crappy SAT scores. But what about adoptive parents, gay male parents, and others who have trouble producing milk in house? “Just because he was adopted, my little one should not have to miss out on the antibodies and heath breast milk provides,” mother Sarah McNeil tells Dolan.
Okay, I know breastfeeding is important. I nursed both of my daughters, and I’m very glad I did. That said, though, it really pisses me off when I hear horror stories from other women (and I have … many of them) about the pressure they feel to breastfeed by both their Ob-Gyns and pediatricians. Perhaps that’s part of why the concept of digital wet-nursing was born … and has grown exponentially.
Parents like McNeil are fueling a boom in demand for the milk of others. Over the past decade, demand at milk banks — which accept human milk and screen for diseases, including HIV — has quadrupled. And those who can’t afford the milk bank’s prices — up to $3 an ounce, keeping in mind a baby can need up to 30 ounces each day — are turning to new, unregulated programs like the Milk Share website, which connects those who’ve got milk with those who need it, thanks to the miracles of ice and Fed Ex.
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