The natural option is also the healthiest, for baby and for mother, writes Ronan McGreevy
IT'S 51 years since Marian Tompson attended a church picnic with her friend Mary White in her home state of Illinois. At 26, with five children and a sixth on the way, she spoke of the difficulties of breastfeeding and the lack of information and support.
They found their experiences were similar, so they joined with five other women to form La Leche League (LLL), named after the Spanish word for milk - the word "breast" being too controversial for 1950s America.
Now, aged 78, with seven children, 15 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, Tompson is the grande dame of LLL.
The first and only La Leche president, she still tours the world promoting breastfeeding, and will give the key address at the LLL Ireland annual conference this weekend in the West County Hotel in Ennis, Co Clare.
Ireland is one of 65 countries with a La Leche presence. There are more than 80 LLL leaders in 40 groups across the country.
As its founder, Tompson is proud of all of the league's achievements, but most notably reversing the seemingly inexorable dominance of formula feeding.
When LLL was formed, less than 30 per cent of American women breastfed. Formula feeding became the norm during the second World War; the men went to war and the women went to work. In the 1950s, formula was seen as new, progressive and healthy; breastfeeding the preserve of poverty and ignorance. Ironically, today that has reversed - the likelihood of a woman breastfeeding increases as her income does.
Now three quarters of American women breastfeed, a figure in excess of Ireland, where just half of all women leave hospital breastfeeding.
Tompson says in the 1950s, research into the relative merits of breastfeeding and infant formula was scant. Now, there have been thousands of studies that have been unequivocal in their findings: breastfeeding is best. The job of LLL is to make that known.
"When we started, formula had affected the culture so profoundly that many people didn't consider breastfeeding. Women would get pregnant and go to the doctors and the doctors wouldn't even ask whether they would breast- or bottle-feed.
"In the United States the formula was advertised directly to doctors. The companies knew that, if the suggestion to give formula came from a doctor, it would carry a lot more weight."
As the evidence has accumulated, so has her conviction that she must stay involved. The difference between breastfeeding and formula is not insubstantial, she believes.
"Formula-fed babies are at risk of impaired heart and cholesterol health, and at higher risk of coeliac and Crohn's disease. Replacing human milk with formula is a serious decision with far-reaching implications," she says.
"We need people growing up who are well-balanced, giving, able to answer the questions of the world as to how to go forward. They need the best start in life. Breastfeeding is a noble calling, and takes commitment. It doesn't take money, just love.
"We stayed involved because we realised how important that early start was for the health of both baby and mother. What we know now is that when a woman makes the choice to breastfeed, we all benefit from it.
"Mothers are going to be healthier, babies are going to be healthier, the environment will be healthier, the cost of healthcare will be less.
"If everybody was breastfed, we would have a healthier population. What we take as normal levels of allergies and childhood disease, and even diseases that adults sometimes have wouldn't be there - babies are being given food that is inappropriate."
Tompson once compared giving a baby formula to giving cat milk to a puppy. "Human babies need human milk, they don't need milk that's made for a cow that puts on 2,000lbs of weight in its first year," she says.
Tompson is a regular visitor to Ireland, and is pleased with progress made in recent years. "The Government seems to be a lot more involved, as are the hospitals," she says.
In January, the Government triggered a new EU directive restricting the advertising of formula. The ban on advertising formula for newborns remains.
Advertising for follow-on formulas must state that it is for babies who are at least six months old. Previously it was four months. There is also a ban on phrases such as "closest to breast milk". The ban is currently being challenged in the British courts.
Tompson was on the original World Health Organisation panel that recommended the ban.
"Advertising can be lethal, because if a mother has not read anything about feeding and all she sees or hears are formula advertisements and they make it sound so natural and safe, she can't make an informed choice.
"Anything a government can do to protect mothers is to be commended. The fact that they can do this in the face of industry that is so powerful is also commendable. The formula companies have a lot of money and they will always have a new trick up their sleeves."
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