Ozy—sibling studies have a major problem—they don’t take into account the reasons why a mother would breast-feed one child but not the other. If you ask moms about this, they always have an answer, and it is usually something like, ‘Josh was very sleepy and just wouldn’t suck. We had to give him a bottle to get him to eat at all.’ My mother basically gives this exact story for why I was breast-fed and my brother was not. And my brother had developmental problems and I did not. I don’t think this is because he was fed formula. Remember, weaker/sicker babies are more likely to get formula, and sicker/older/tireder/more depressed mothers are more likely to formula feed. In order to breastfeed, everything has to go right. One thing goes wrong, and it’s on to formula.
I think the point here is that there are many circumstances that can influence the choice to use formula, and these might have a stronger effect than the choice itself.
But population-level differences in populations that were encouraged to breastfeed vs. not encouraged to breastfeed, as in the Belarusian study, should circumvent that.
“Sites were randomly assigned to receive an experimental intervention (n = 16) modeled on the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative of the World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund, which emphasizes health care worker assistance with initiating and maintaining breastfeeding and lactation and postnatal breastfeeding support, or a control intervention (n = 15) of continuing usual infant feeding practices and policies.”
Ozy—sibling studies have a major problem—they don’t take into account the reasons why a mother would breast-feed one child but not the other. If you ask moms about this, they always have an answer, and it is usually something like, ‘Josh was very sleepy and just wouldn’t suck. We had to give him a bottle to get him to eat at all.’ My mother basically gives this exact story for why I was breast-fed and my brother was not.
And my brother had developmental problems and I did not. I don’t think this is because he was fed formula.
Remember, weaker/sicker babies are more likely to get formula, and sicker/older/tireder/more depressed mothers are more likely to formula feed. In order to breastfeed, everything has to go right. One thing goes wrong, and it’s on to formula.
I’m confused—the Belarusian study Ozy is talking about wasn’t a sibling study, right?
I think the point here is that there are many circumstances that can influence the choice to use formula, and these might have a stronger effect than the choice itself.
But population-level differences in populations that were encouraged to breastfeed vs. not encouraged to breastfeed, as in the Belarusian study, should circumvent that.
Correct. I guess I’d rather have an appropriate quantification of the “encouragment” though; but I could be wrong, I will read the study design...
“Sites were randomly assigned to receive an experimental intervention (n = 16) modeled on the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative of the World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund, which emphasizes health care worker assistance with initiating and maintaining breastfeeding and lactation and postnatal breastfeeding support, or a control intervention (n = 15) of continuing usual infant feeding practices and policies.”