38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
More like a chat room resource than an informational guide, April 18, 2001
This review is from: When Breastfeeding Is Not an Option : A Reassuring Guide for Loving Parents (Paperback)
Review of When Breastfeeding is Not an Option
If you are a woman who is otherwise healthy and has had serious logistical problems that made breastfeeding difficult or impossible to continue, this book is a good source of validation and emotional support. The author describes the anti-bottlefeeding climate, the lack of resources for parents who must bottlefeed, and the backlash and pervasive, persecutorial attitude towards those who choose to bottlefeed in our society today.
Unfortunately, she doesn't provide much in the way of specific bottlefeeding resources and information, she spends most of the book merely complaining about the lack of them.
If you are in the category of women who CANNOT breastfeed because of maternal illness, etc., and are looking for very detailed information about bottlefeeding and possibly emotional support for the specific grief and guilt under the circumstances, this is not a particularly good resource. If you, like me, want concrete information with solid medical references, you will find this book almost useless.
The first half of the book is entirely devoted to describing the anti-bottlefeeding climate, and the difficulties of women who found bottlefeeding logistically difficult or impossible. The author primarily demonstrates her points with quotes from individual interviews and online chat sources.
The author does make an effort to list the reasons that women cannot bottlefeed, but she doesn't address their specific concerns. A basic question for a woman who knows she will not be able to breastfeed, for instance, is what to feed the newborn in the first few days. For breastfeeders, the colostrum produced in the first few days is different than the breastmilk that follows - what is the best bottlefeeding equivalent? Some hospitals give newborns sugar water - is this because of the similarity to syrupy colostrum, or because it's easier to get the baby to take sugary water than plain water? How advisable and safe is the sugar, and how does the option of sterilized water stack up against sugar water or even formula from day one? What are the baby's nutritional and hydration needs in the first few days? Should a mother who has researched her options be prepared with her own bottles and supplies when she goes to the hospital to deliver? This book doesn't even touch on basic questions like these.
What to Expect When You're Expecting, for example, devotes some space to discussing the emotional and medical concerns of women with the most common chronic illnesses impacting pregnancy; I had hoped this book might pick up with specific information about bottlefeeding for such women, but it doesn't.
For example, the author points out that for some women with certain diseases - e.g., viruses -illness impacts the quality of their milk, and that these women cannot breastfeed and are largely ignored in La Leche League literature. The author then fails to provide any practical advice for these women herself: she could have (but didn't) discuss the pros, cons, availability and safety of using banked breast milk for children who may have been exposed to their mother's illnesses in utero, or who may otherwise have special need for the immune factors provided in breastmilk. Is formula a good option, because, (to name a possible reason) it can be made under sterile conditions and provided reliably to the infant? No such discussion in this book. The author points out that women who have to take certain medications may not be able to breastfeed; but then the book never touches on solutions as simple as why and how to use acidophilus with formula if the mother has had to have antibiotics during pregnancy or breastfeeding, for example.
When I bought When Breastfeeding is Not an Option, I was expecting solid information, a review of reassuring studies to counter the negative, scary messages about formula and bottlefeeding found in so many otherwise good publications, like the Sears' Baby Book, sources that don't seem to consider that some women CANNOT breastfeed and still want to do their level best for their babies. Unfortunately, the author of this book does little more than provide hypothetical arguments against certain conclusions about breastfeeding versus bottlefeeding (to studies she admits she hasn't even read herself). As much as I want to believe the author, I personally needed good, convincing information and solid references rather than speculation and hearsay to buy her reassurances.
The author does give some advice about bottle and nipple types, and a few accessories, but the information wasn't too specific; I found product books like Baby Bargains more helpful in that regard. For bottlefeeding logistical advice without the formula guilt trip, I personally preferred the bottlefeeding information in Penelope Leach's book, Your Infant and Child.
When Breastfeeding is Not an Option does not provide any information on the safety of various materials in bottlefeeding equipment, such as plasticizers, nor does it examine any specific topics such as the quality of the ingredients in popular formulas (do manufacturers forswear genetically modified ingredients, for example, or what is the prevalence of livestock-fed antibiotic residues in cows milk formulas). I mention this because it is this kind of detailed information that I had hoped to find in a resource billed as a bottlefeeding guide. If that's what you are looking for too, it isn't here.
Lastly, the author devotes an entire chapter at the end of her book to a quiz: Breast or Bottle: Which is Best for You? I found this a ridiculous waste of paper in a book entitled When Breastfeeding Is Not an Option - for anyone who would truly need a book with such a title, your decision is already made for you when you find the book, and you are looking to get information to help in your situation.
Buy the book if you are healthy, finding breastfeeding impossible, and tired of feeling isolated and invalidated because you don't know anyone else in your situation. This is otherwise not a very useful resource for bottlefeeding information.
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Unfortunate experience leads to sterotyping attack, February 22, 1999
This review is from: When Breastfeeding Is Not an Option : A Reassuring Guide for Loving Parents (Paperback)
I have a lot of sympathy for the author and understand why she wrote the book. It's truly unfortunate that she encountered inadequate breastfeeding help and overbearing breastfeeding advocates who criticized her for bottlefeeding. However... although I felt the information in the book on how to bottlefeed was useful, it could be found elsewhere without spending your money for a book that is half diatribe against the breastfeeding community. The author unfortunately lashed out at not only LLL, but many other groups as well, including but not limited to natural birth advocates, attachment parenting advocates, and the VBAC movement! This is extremely unfortunate as these groups have nothing to do with breastfeeding, and the author has trashed all of these other groups in one fell swoop by claiming they are a cult. She has done a real disservice here to many different advocates. For example, she criticizes what she calls the "anti-cesarean" movement, without even stopping to ask what the many benefits of VBAC are, or to collect any information about cesarean prevention, or without any awareness that this subject is not even related to breastfeeding. I would caution moms to avoid the book; you can get good info about bottlefeeding elsewhere and avoid the propaganda.
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