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news bulletins  december
2005 |
- Massachusetts Leads the Way with Unprecedented Formula Restrictions in Hospitals
- Jeannine Parvati Baker
- Circumcision Leads to Breastfeeding Complications
- Thomas H. Brewer, M.D., Dies Before Receiving Mothering Honor
Massachusetts Leads the Way with Unprecedented Formula Restrictions in Hospitals
While the ban doesn't completely forbid hospitals from giving out free formula, it does stop them from providing new parents with promotional gift bags provided by formula companies. Massachusetts's Department of Public Health has adopted increasingly stringent rules designed to support breastfeeding since the late 1980's. The new move to eliminate corporate promotions of infant formula is part of this broad and ongoing state initiative to increase breastfeeding awareness, support and education in hospitals, in the spirit of campaigns by the World Health Organization and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). According to the US Center for Disease Control, about 70 percent of women initiate breastfeeding. By the time their babies reach the age of six months, only 14 percent are exclusively nursing. Lack of societal support for breastfeeding is cited by the AAP as a leading obstacle to breastfeeding success.
Mothering joins other breastfeeding advocates in celebrating the strong pro-breastfeeding stance Massachusetts exhibits by enacting this ban.
Jeannine Parvati Baker died on December 1, 2005, in Joseph, Utah. One of America's most beloved midwives, Jeannine was also the author of Prenatal Yoga & Natural Childbirth and Hygieia: A Woman's Herbal, co-author of Conscious Conception, and founder of Hygieia College (a distance learning program on herbalism, midwifery and optimal parenting which has over 1000 students enrolled worldwide). She was also an Ashtanga yogini, astrologer, and herbal medicine woman. Jeannine taught thousands of parents and student midwives during the past 35 years, and was a popular speaker at childbirth conferences. She was a champion of water birth, unassisted birth, the intact male foreskin, Lotus birth, and traditional medicine. Jeannine thought of herself as an intactivist, neologist, and birthkeeper. She was celebrated as a Mothering magazine Living Treasure (May/June 2005).In 2004 the genital integrity group NOCIRC honored her with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her activism in support of [the] normal, and natural, especially the bodily integrity of infants and children." After the water births of her last two babies, Jeannine's work became focused on freebirth birth unassisted by a paid professional. Jeannine has spoken at conferences around the world; been interviewed for numerous periodicals, broadcasts, and films; and written extensively on the topic of freebirth for more than a generation. Most recently, she was featured in the film A Clear Road to Birth.
Jeannine was born in Los Angeles, California, on June first, 1949. She and her family moved to Joseph, Utah, in 1982 and two of her children, Quinn and Halley Baker, were born there, at home. Locally, Jeannine has been active for the cause of family health, opposing the proposed asbestos dump site near Monroe, the aerial spraying of malathion in the county, and most recently against the coal-fired power plant in Sigurd.
During her prolonged effort to overcome hepatitis, she has had excellent helpers come forward from around the world and locally. Her family is extremely grateful for all the loving support they have received.
Jeannine was preceded in death by her father, Frank O'Brien of Los Angeles and survived by her mother Vicki O'Brien, and sister Francine O'Brien of Los Angeles. Her husband Rico Baker, and all of her six children are living: Loi Medvin, Oceana Medvin and Cheyenne Medvin of Santa Rosa, California, Gannon Baker of Moab, Utah, Quinn Baker and Halley Baker of Joseph.
Jeannine's wishes were to be cremated and the ashes buried in the Joseph cemetery.
Michael Mendizza, executive director of Touch the Future, had this memory to share: "Never in my life have I met a woman who spoke abut being a woman the way Jeannine spoke. She lived what she said in words. To be in her presence was to experience directly the fertile creativity she embodied and wished for all women, and for all men to be related to such powerful, present women. The universe is creation, pulsing, manifesting anew moment by moment. Jeannine felt this awaken most profoundly through conscious conception, pregnancy, birth and the timeless gift of mentoring new human beings. Her gift was simple, deep. Discover creation exploding inside you every day of your life and share this ecstatic explosion with every one that comes near."
Circumcision Leads to Breastfeeding Complications
Need another reason to skip routine circumcision? For over twenty years, studies conducted by medical doctors and researchers have documented a connection between circumcision and breastfeeding complications. According to findings, the newly circumcised infant expresses noticeably decreased responses to a mother's attempts at engaging their attention. This "subdued" behavior has been linked by several researchers in separate studies to a subsequent struggle in the achievement of successful breastfeeding. Research has also demonstrated that following circumcision, infants suffer from prolonged periods of non-REM sleep, a symptom that would further contribute to inactive and unreceptive tendencies.
Some of the infants observed in one study were supplemented with formula after circumcision due either to frustration on the part of the mother from failed breastfeeding attempts or because doctors felt the infant was incapable of postoperative breastfeeding. Because infants usually leave the hospital seven to ten hours after the operation (many leave as early as three to six hours post-op) the long-term negative effects of circumcision on breastfeeding is more difficult to determine; however, the observed deterioration in ability to breastfeed may potentially contribute to breastfeeding failure.
Despite the fact that "circumcision is a painful, stressful, exhausting, and traumatic experience for many infants," as many as 45% of doctors ignore the recommendation by medical authorities to use an anesthetic during the procedure. Because conclusive benefits of infant circumcision are not evident, there is no danger in refusing or delaying the procedure. The Work Group on Breastfeeding of the American Academy of Pediatrics officially discourages "stressful procedures" such as circumcision and promotes breastfeeding as "primary in achieving optimal infant and child health, growth, and development."
Source: Journal of Human Lactation 19(1), 2003.
Thomas H. Brewer, M. D., Dies Before Receiving Mothering Honor
Thomas Harrington Brewer, M.D. had been slated to receive Mothering magazine's next Living Treasure award, presented to outstanding elders who have contributed positively to the lives of families. He died on November 22, at age 80, in Middlebury, VT. As an obstetrician, Brewer created the famous Brewer Diet for pregnancy. He was also a researcher who devoted his career to promoting better understanding and prevention of toxemia of pregnancy (pre-eclampsia/ eclampsia).
Dr. Brewer spent more than 50 years researching and studying the relationships between an adequate maternal diet and improved pregnancy outcomes and was an outspoken advocate for the establishment of practice protocols for nutritional guidance, surveillance, and intervention as mandated, reportable components of routine prenatal care. Dr. Brewer took the position that failure to maintain a diet adequate for pregnancy is a matter of clinical significance which should be addressed by the prenatal caregiver at every visit. His work helped further the understanding that inadequate prenatal nutrition has predictable obstetrical and neonatal consequences for both mother and baby. He championed the idea that thorough and purposeful consideration of the mother's nutrition, visit-by-visit, should be an essential feature of routine prenatal care.
From contact with thousands of pregnant women each year via his hotline service and through his website, Dr. Brewer concluded that the effective standard of care he championed is still not being met in the vast majority of prenatal encounters today, regardless of the mother's race, socioeconomic status, or pregnancy risk status.
Dr. Brewer's work is to be continued by The Brewer Institute, a privately funded organization that will begin operations in 2006. A series of appreciations for Dr. Brewer's life and work will be held in 2006 in conjunction with the annual national conferences of the many maternal and child health organizations to which he consulted and served as an advisor.
Resources:
http://home.mindspring.com/~djsnjones/
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