Morgan Spurlock pimps formula

yeah, what wende said.

when i first had my son, we had very little to live on and there was NO way to get enough $$ for cloth diapers. and, being a young mama w/ no NFL / AP friends and no breastfeeding support, i ff'ed my son, because 1. WIC provided it, 2. i had NO SUPPORT and 3. i lacked enough knowledge + resources to keep with it through all the hard crap. the majority of parenting advice i got was through American Baby and Nestle's parenting "magazine" because both were free. i read them because i wanted to be the best parent i could be (and because they were free). there were no Mothering mags laying around for me to stumble on, no slinging mamas offering help. just me, my partner, and our babe.

what i'm getting at is the fact that...

1. a ton of people just don't know any better, not to mention
2. it is damned hard to find a minimum wage job that will allow a mother time, space, and privacy to pump,
3. breastpumps (and breastpads, and storage things for milk) cost a LOT and WIC won't cover that nearly as readily as they'll cover formula,
4. cloth diapers are a HUGE expense, and while we're on the subject of cloth diapers,
5. many daycare providers will not accept babies in cloth ~ they require sposies,
6. a lot of low-income mamas don't have their own washers and driers, and washing dipes at a coin-op is costly and people might hassle someone with That Kind of laundry...

one more thought: did he even specify disposables?? because cloth costs money too, obviously.

i didn't see it but honestly i have to say ~ chill out. instead of writing angry letters to Spurlock, why not work to change the underlying system that prompted such a comment in the first place?

why not start a support network for low-wage mamas who want to breastfeed? why not start donating cloth dipes and detergent to low-income families?

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i get that feeling about them too.

Edited cause I'm in the wrong place. lol

from what i know of the man it would seem to be a kind thing to do to bring his knowledge gap to his attention. some people tend to shed facts like water off a duck's back, but i believe that he would be interested. (and in that particular context, it IS a grave error.)

ps klothos, i disagree. no internet almost 20 yrs ago, & i was as poor as a church mouse, what with my alkie husband earning about $1000 a month & living in socal- poor, abused, stressed out, i would be a good candidate for formula, no? no.

there *were* mothering mags lying around (even poor moms who can read fast can browse in the bookstore, lol), there were dr sears' books just coming out, there was LLL. sometimes i do grind my teeth a little at the notion that poor women are generally ignorant & unable to process information. i'm sorry you didn't stumble across any bfing info that was a help to you, but it was out there. your story is helpful because it lets lactivists know how much more we still have to do, and again, i'm sorry. but letting mr spurlock 'slide' on this because we like him :LOL is not showing enough faith in him. let's educate him, & he can help educate the rest (after all, someone had to put a flea in penn jillette's ear for the first time about circing, eh? ) don't underestimate the power of the media.

suse

If you have a minimum-wage job and a baby in daycare, you are probably ffing, at least some of the time. You will need to buy formula. Maybe even if you have a white-collar job that provides pumping time and privacy, you still might have to supplement a little bit.

Also, if you have a lower-paying job and have had that job since before you were pregnant, you probably did not get a maternity leave. You probably went back to work ASAP after giving birth.

Some of the internet cloth diaper businesses offer layaway service, but they are not well-known enough. And if I had to go to the laundromat, no way would I be cding. Some people have several young children and no car; I don't think they should be expected to use a laundromat either.

When I was in middle school, we were a drive-across-town-to-the-laundromat family. It was a huge deal. We'd make one large trip every two weeks. The rest of the time we just wore slightly dirty clothes.

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Yeah, when I had my first, I was a single college student (with NO family support. I was going on all loans and grants.) I only made about $500/month and that had to cover rent (my share w/ roommates was $300/month, but they kicked me out when they found out I was pg cuz they didn't want a baby living with them, so then I had to get my own place--$525/month), food and everything else. I was on WIC, which didn't do much for me since I'm allergic to milk and eggs (I've never had allergy testing cuz I've never had insurance other than pregnancy Medicaid, but it's pretty obvious! LOL!) I got food stamps and cash assistance after the baby was born. I still didn't have enough money for anything but rent and utilities. I had food stamps coming out the kazoo, though and would somethimes buy my friend's groceries in exchange for a tank of gas in my (free from my lil bro's friend) car. I breastfed. Formula never ocurred to me. My family has always been dirt poor and I don't see that changing, for the ones that stayed in PA anyway. My dad was a coal miner in an area where the mines were it and now they're all closed. My mom and aunts bf. Probably b/c it's free. I know WIC was available when I was a kid, but my mom said she'd never heard of it. So bf was just normal to me. FF always seemed weird and unnatural to me.

I also cd'd b/c I figured it would be cheaper than sposies. My daycare used cd's. Ds wasn't even the only cd'd baby there. I used prefolds and Bummis wraps. I had 3 or 4 dozen prefolds. Can't remember exactly, but it was the amount that would make a full load so I didn't have to spend as much at the laundromat. Prefolds were only $15/dozen. My grandma got me 2 dz when I was pg and I got the other 2 used, can't remember where. Someone at LLL gave me a Bummis cover when I was pg and told me where to go online to get more. I had internet access on campus, though, so I will admit that was an advantage. But Target sold wraps back then. We didn't have a Target in our area, though.

I pumped w/ a manual Avent Isis that I bought used (cheap). Then when ds was about 6 mos old, I borrowed money ($240. I remember it like it was yesterday. I couldn't believe how much money that was. That's almost nothing now. Funny how things change, isn't it?) from someone (I think my gram) to buy a PIS b/c I needed to work more hours on top of classes and I couldn't bring ds to my new job.

Oh yeah, and a friend at my one job (I had 3 usually) gave me some old Mothering mags. I would browse thru the new ones at the local magazine shop/Ben & Jerry's.

Unmarried guys without kids say all sorts of stupid things about babies, because they do not know anything about it. I'm sure that once he and his vegan chef fiancee are married and have kids, he will do a little reading and become a cloth-diapering, slinging, co-sleeping lactivist! Seriously. He's got AP written all over him.

I would have been bothered by his statement too, had I seen the show, but...

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I agree!

Along with a PP, I take issue with people always assuming that, just because you're poor, you're either unable or unwilling to educate yourself on better choices for your baby. Breastfeeding was NOT the norm in my family, but my sister was the first one to do it and she had NO support. She was a dirt poor college drop out living in dirty trailer with a guy who treated her like crap. She lived 3 hours from our family, who were totally unsupportive because she got pregnant out of wedlock and the guy she lived with wasn't even the baby's father. Everyone told her to get an abortion, she didn't know how she would survive on her income, etc. And YET....she STILL breastfed her baby. Not for a year or anything, but she did breastfeed for several months - even after returning to work at her near minimum wage job. She had a crappy pump and couldn't afford a better one and no one would lend her money to get a better one, so she pumped what she could and supplemented w/formula for the rest of the time she was working. Poor, uneducated women can also make good choices.

bummis with pfs

thanks, wendy, for bringing up that memory (my two bummis, & my one aristocrat i ordered out of the back pages of mothering!!! it was those two or nothing, pretty much. boy, was cding a simpler world then.)

nonconformmom, i agree it's not something to bite his head off (a la 'baba wawa') about, but it's the assumption that formula IS NECESSARY that needs to be corrected. it may not have been necessary in context to come up with a bfing endorsement at that moment; but he could have refrained from what amounted to an endorsement FOR AIM & DISPOSABLE DIAPERS. *that* is my issue.

we need to change how people think; 'bottles' & 'sposies' & 'aim', oh my! need to become 'possible adjuncts if medically necessary or for long car trip convenience', NOT, 'oh, we're having a baby, we NEED this stuff.'

suse