I was forty weeks pregnant, and I felt like something was wrong. Not necessarily wrong with the baby, but my body didn’t feel right. My normally petite, dainty feet looked like they belonged to the Michelin Man’s wife, my normally low blood pressure (90/60) was 145/104, and I had an excruciating, sharp pain on my right side which I later found out was my liver dying. Also, all the air felt like it was being squeezed out of my lungs, so I was having trouble breathing. I hadn’t slept well in weeks because of heartburn which would wake me up every night at random intervals, choking me on my own searing bile and gasping for breath. I tried using an incline pillow, but I’d still wake up sputtering with burned, acid-washed lungs and no sleep. So, for the last month or two of my pregnancy, I “slept” sitting up in a recliner. I’m sure that did wonders for my circulation.

Needless to say, I wanted to give birth right away, so I asked to be induced. It turned out later that I’d made the right call because, unbeknownst to anyone, I had developed HELLP syndrome, a serious and sometimes fatal condition (to both mother and child) which is only curable by giving birth. We didn’t find out about the HELLP until later, though. It pays to trust your instincts.

So my hospital birth adventure began.

At 5:30 pm or so, my OB inserted a quarter tablet of Cytotec into my cervix to help it ripen, because apparently it wasn’t ripening on its own quickly enough, though I was 1 cm dilated already. Cytotec also helps initiate contractions. I felt some mild contractions after a while, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.

After about three hours of this, I had dilated to 3 cm. I thought this was great because it hadn’t been that long, and if it kept up being this relatively pain-free with such progress, well, the baby would be out in no time.

It actually was a little more work than that.

By 6:30 am the following morning, I’d only progressed to 6 cm and I was in considerable pain. I still had all the discomforts I had before, but now I was also in full-blown labor.

For those of you who have not experienced full-blown labor, allow me to illustrate it for you with an analogy: You’re running on a treadmill. The treadmill is set to a speed that is faster than you are comfortable running. You weigh 30-50 pounds more than usual, so this running thing is even harder on you than it would normally be. You haven’t had a full-night’s rest in weeks, so you’re already very tired, and you have no choice about the speed of the treadmill. While you’re running and thinking you’re going to pass out or die from exhaustion alone, someone electrocutes you in the stomach at fairly regular intervals with an electric cattle prod. The more you get cattle-prodded, the stronger the electric shock gets. You don’t have time to recover from one electric shock before another one is administered to you.

(You do have a choice about whether or not to be on the treadmill at all. Here’s your alternative if you choose not to do the treadmill: You will be stabbed in the spine with a large scary needle that paralyzes you from the waist down, hopefully not permanently. Your belly will be sliced open in order to remove your baby from your body. This surgery will require you to be separated from your sweet baby — the same sweet baby you’ve been dying to meet for nine months as he/she gestated inside you — for several hours starting immediately after he/she is born. After your baby is out and you’re stitched (or stapled) up, you’ll have to endure painful recovery from major abdominal surgery for weeks, perhaps months, possibly incapacitating you as you re-learn how to move the lower half of your body and assimilate the delicate art of keeping your precious newborn alive.

Knowing all this, you choose the treadmill and fervently hope it all works out without ever having to go the alternate route.)

I’ve read a lot of birth stories, and before going through the experience myself, I always wondered what labor and delivery would feel like. Most stories say that labor hurts or feels like “really bad menstrual cramps.” Some describe it as an “all-consuming pain.” I told myself that if/when I’d experience it, that I’d try to put it into words as it was happening in a way that anyone, female or male, would understand. The treadmill/electrocution analogy does this fairly well. It also describes pretty much exactly what it felt like for me.

To continue with the story:

There was some indignant yelling. And moaning. And some throwing of various things, like pillows and blankets and one sweaty hospital gown. And some grabbing and impotent shaking of bedside rails. Also, some cussing, which I will not repeat here.

To try to speed things along, my OB decided to break my waters. I think she used a needle, but I’ve heard it’s more like a crochet hook. I didn’t really get a good look at what instrument she used — I had other concerns at the time — but I can tell you it was very small and thin, like a sewing needle. She broke my waters after I’d gotten checked at 6:30 am and was determined to only be at 6 centimeters.

Incidentally, “getting checked” to see how dilated you are is no walk in the park. It’s not like someone shines a flashlight up your hooch, takes a quick gander and goes, “Yup, 6 centimeters dilated.” For some reason, that’s what I used to think it was like.

It’s not. In fact, to check you, OBs and nurses don’t use their eyes at all. They use their fingers and they estimate how dilated the cervix is based on their sense of touch.

Or in my case, they use their entire arm. At least, that’s what I could discern from what it felt like and from what I could see of the (small) amount of arm that was still outside my body whenever I’d get checked. Also, I should note that “getting checked” involved a fair amount of time commitment, as well as pain and discomfort. Using one’s sense of touch isn’t nearly as fast as, say, looking at something. So each time I got checked it took maybe 2-3 minutes, which at the time felt more like 20-30. (Time perception gets pretty distorted when you’re being electrocuted in the stomach while running on a treadmill.)

Good times.

Part 2 here.

Here’s a video to teach you how to fold an International Breastfeeding Symbol T-shirt pretty professionally in under ten seconds. Get your own International Breastfeeding Symbol tee in the store. You can also find onesies, bumper stickers, patches, and toddler T-shirts. Donations for this month go to La Leche League.

Video contains no audio, so please don’t turn your volume up all the way.

Inspired by this video (contains audio in Japanese):

Sorry it’s incomplete; it’s the longest version I could find on YouTube.

I can’t believe it took me this long to realize this. I’m sorry I didn’t see it before. I just now noticed another glaring inconsistency with the International Breast Milk Project.

Does anyone remember their old website? I found this old webpage for the IBMP (cached on October 6, 2006) and saw this really intriguing quote, “Our third shipment got underway Tuesday, October 3, when 6000+oz of milk started its journey from donors home to Prolacta Bioscience in California, where it will be processed.”

The first time I read that, I understood it to mean that the third shipment of over 6,000 ounces was underway to Africa on October 3, 2006. But that’s not quite what it means. What that quote means is that donors here in the United States donated over 6,000 ounces of breast milk and that breast milk was sent to Prolacta for processing. Okay.

That third shipment was delivered to Africa on Thanksgiving 2006, according to an online TIME article. Also according to the TIME article, that third shipment contained about 23 gallons of breast milk. When you convert 23 gallons to ounces, you get almost 3,000 ounces. This makes sense because Penny Reimers herself confirmed it when she said the first three shipments were quite a bit less than the fourth one, which was about 5,300 ounces.

The International Breast Milk Project’s third shipment was not quite 3,000 ounces.

Wasn’t the third shipment supposed to be over 6,000 ounces? Isn’t that what the International Breast Milk Project website led everyone to believe on October 6, 2006? This was before the October 23, 2006 Oprah show, so the IBMP already knew Prolacta was skimming off the top, if they announced on their website they had gotten over 6,000 ounces to be processed by Prolacta and then turned around and only shipped less than half of it to Africa. I mean, how else do you explain 3,000 ounces of donated breast milk not accounted for?

The International Breast Milk Project must have known Prolacta was taking a cut — quite a substantial one — before the Oprah show aired. It seems awfully convenient that they would leave out such important information before letting Oprah Winfrey endorse their “cause.”

Another observation: The third shipment to Africa from the International Breast Milk Project was on Thanksgiving 2006. It contained about 3,000 ounces of processed breast milk. The fourth shipment from the International Breast Milk Project wasn’t delivered until May of 2007. That’s six months after the third shipment, way after the Oprah show (which aired October 23, 2006), and after the IBMP was flooded with breast milk donations from Oprah fans and the positive publicity that show generated for them. By IBMP’s accounting, the Oprah show generated about 55,000 ounces in breast milk donations, not including the 6,000+ ounces received before the Oprah special ever aired.

Why it is that after the International Breast Milk Project was flooded with breast milk donations, the IBMP couldn’t find the time to do exactly what it set out to do in the first place, which is to say, send breast milk to Africa, for six months?

Bravo, ABC World News! I was so pleasantly surprised when I saw the televised report tonight (entitled “Breast Milk Battle”) that I felt like I had to not only share a link to the video, but commend ABC World News for being the first news outlet I’ve seen to get this story right. It makes Meredith Viera and Dr. Nancy Snyderman from The Today Show (and Elisabeth Hasselbeck from The View) look like a trio of irresponsible, greedy alarmists in comparison, and rightfully so.

Watch ABC World News’ “Breast Milk Battle” and judge for yourself.

It’s amazing what happens when you get a really good policy change, one that will actually make a positive difference in the lives of so many babies and their mothers, and you mix it up with a bunch of sponsorship money, influential television shows, and biased health “professionals.” Well, what you get is the public believing that New York City has banned formula and baby bottles from NYC hospitals altogether.

If I were to hear that, I would be completely outraged, too! I would protest! I would demand justice! How dare Michael Bloomberg take away our womanly freedom of feeding choices! That man, he’s just a man, and what does he know about what women want or need anyway? And the government! What right does the government have to infringe upon women’s freedoms like this?! This is completely absurd!

It is absurd, because all of that is a big fat LIE.

Nobody is taking formula out of hospitals. Nobody is taking bottles out of hospitals. If a woman gives birth in a New York City hospital, she can ask for a bottle full of formula and it will be given to her. There is no infringement on anybody’s rights, and anybody that reports on this new policy change in that way is knowingly reporting inaccurate information. The official New York City press release makes the new policy abundantly clear.

Furthermore, it is not an inalienable right to have a free goodie bag full of formula when you leave the hospital. The fact that New York City is still handing out goodie bags with breastfeeding support information, and pumps to mothers who qualify, is a BONUS to the new policy change, yet another incentive to help new moms continue with breastfeeding (which, as everyone knows and even the formula companies acknowledge, is the BEST way to feed one’s baby). Nobody is saying formula-feeding is bad, only that breastfeeding is better (a well-established and scientifically proven fact, admitted even by the formula companies). Not only is breastfeeding better, it is the biological norm. In order to better set up NYC mothers to succeed at the way infants were meant to be fed, New York City hospitals are now finally taking the action all hospitals everywhere should.

There is no gestapo; there is no controversy. The controversy you are hearing about on the news is artificially created based on lies and deception and motivated primarily by money. Don’t think for a second that any powerful, influential person arguing against the formula sample ban cares about the welfare of women’s “rights” or babies. They will only do so as long as they have a stake in making some money off people believing they care.

I want to share with you a video segment from The Today Show in which a guest, Dr. (?) Nancy Snyderman shares her thoughts on the new policy change. I don’t know what world Nancy Snyderman is living in, but the alternate universe in which the government! and! men! are! making! feeding! choices! for! new! mothers! and! not! letting! them! decide! for! themselves! is not in accordance with reality.

An amazing reader of this blog and researcher, Melissa from Richmond, Virginia, Tivoed that show the day it aired and wrote down a list of all the commercials in between segments (she also located for me the link for the video below — Thank you, Melissa!). Not surprisingly, among the sponsors for The Today Show that day were: Juicy Juice Harvest Surprise, Purina Cat Chow, Purina Kitten Chow, and Lean Cuisine. Who owns these companies? Nestle, one of the biggest formula manufacturers in the world. Oh, but there’s more. There were also commercials for Ensure (made by Abbot Labs, maker of Similac infant formula), Centrum, Preparation H, and Caltrate (all three owned by Wyeth, maker of infant formula). There could be more, but if there are, they were harder to find. From just the aforementioned sponsors, the ones I was able to spot (with a little help from another blog reader and mom who wishes to remain anonymous) that’s eight commercials paid for by companies that have a stake in how well formula sells.

Based on what was discussed, the negative slant toward breastfeeding, the obvious denouncement by MSNBC’s own Chief Medical Editor (Nancy Snyderman) of the formula sample ban, and the evidence of conflict-of-interest presented by the parent companies of many of that show’s sponsors, I would NOT say The Today Show from the morning of August 2, 2007 was reporting on the NYC formula ban fairly and without bias.

My point in all this is, don’t let yourself be swayed by all the pretty window dressing. In the end, if you find controversy about any subject, look closer and you’ll find out all you need to know. The real controversy here is that most hospitals in the United States aren’t baby-friendly. Most babies born in hospitals in the United States are forcibly separated from their mothers immediately after birth and fed formula as part of the hospital routine. In order for a woman to try breastfeeding after giving birth in a hospital, she has to make special requests for her baby NOT to be fed with a bottle. How crazy is it that women have to fight to feed their babies the way they were meant to be fed and feeding them artificially is considered “normal?” How come no news anchors are protesting that?

Watch the formula segment on The Today Show yourself (there’s a random commercial at the beginning; wait it out and you’ll get to see the segment). Share your thoughts below.

I thought this might be of interest to those of you who care about full disclosure from non-profit organizations like the International Breast Milk Project. From the IBMP website (excerpt from a letter by Jill Youse):

“IBMP will publish quarterly donation reports on our website www.breastmilkproject.org, so you can track the ounces coming in and the funding going out. You will know that 100% of your milk is making a difference in the lives of babies orphaned by HIV in Africa.”

The letter is not dated, but it was written on or before June 3, 2007 because the same letter showed up on a thread in MotheringDotCommune’s message board, written by a user called “Jill Youse” on that date (you may need to log in to see it).

This got me thinking… If I could predict what that first quarterly report will contain, I know it will have to include that the IBMP started with at least a 55,000-ounce stockpile of breast milk (on May 31, 2007), and about 5,300 ounces of that were donated to iThemba Lethu in May 2007. Then the IBMP spent less than $2,000 to pay for two milk banks in an unspecified country in Africa (Cameroon? South Africa?). After that, there are no other milk donations to iThemba Lethu (I called and asked iThemba Lethu myself) nor to any other place in Africa (the “About Us” IBMP page doesn’t say they donated any other milk anywhere else either, and I’m sure if the IBMP had donated any other milk, they would have mentioned it by now).

I have no idea how much milk, if any, has been donated to the IBMP after May 31, 2007 from its generous donors, and the only ones who know the answer to that are the IBMP and Prolacta. This is one reason why I’m waiting for that quarterly report. It would be nice to know how much milk is being donated from the donors to the IBMP, how much milk is being sent to Africa from the IBMP, and how much milk Prolacta gets to buy from the IBMP for $1/ounce. And when I say I’d like to know how much milk, I don’t mean in the form of a percentage. I mean actual amounts. Surely this is being kept track of, so that the International Breast Milk Project can know exactly how much to send to Africa and how much money to collect from Prolacta. Hopefully that information will be shared with the public. Soon.

If you donated to the International Breast Milk Project around or after May 31, 2007, keep track of how many ounces you donated/are donating. Add it up and when the IBMP’s quarterly report comes out, see if your donation was a significant proportion of the total. Wouldn’t that be an interesting exercise?

Oh, one last thing before I finish…I found a curious thing, and I want to share it with you. Recently I visited this site and clicked where it said, “Africa Photo Gallery.” Awwww. Aren’t those kids cute? I wonder where they’re from? Where in Africa are they? It doesn’t say.

Happily, I think I figured it out.

On the IBMP FAQ page is this:

23. What will the dollar per ounce contribution from Prolacta to IBMP be used for? o This past year we have partnered with the Lewa Children’s Home Eldoret Kenya to bring clean water and healthcare to children orphaned by disease and poverty. We will help fund a healthcare clinic that will break ground in late 2007 or early 2008. We will be shipping the milk to Eldoret and exploring the possibilities of local milk donations. 100% of the dollar per ounce will go directly to aid the Lewa Children’s Home and healthcare clinic. Click here to view the photo album of the home.

Unfortunately, the above link won’t work if you click it from here, but it will work if you click it from the IBMP FAQ page (as of the date of this post). Go ahead, try it, but remember to come back here. Go to the IBMP FAQ page, scroll down until you reach #23, and click on the link. Did you click on the link to see the photo album of the home? Those children are really precious, aren’t they? Makes you just want to cry, doesn’t it, the way the Lennon classic is juxtaposed with images of the innocent, smiling orphans…

Wait, aren’t those the same kids? With the same music? What are the chances of that?

Well, regardless, it’s really great that the IBMP will be funding a healthcare clinic for the Lewa Children’s Home Eldoret Kenya. Since the pictures are on two websites, it appears as though the home is not only getting support from the IBMP but from Run for Africa as well! Well, good for them. I hope they are; why else would the pictures be on both websites if that weren’t the case?

Ooh! Bonus for the Lewa Children’s Home! According to the letter by Jill Youse:

Prolacta has also agreed to donate $1 to International Breast Milk Project for every ounce of donated milk that stays in the U.S. Based on current donations, IMBP will receive $50,000 - $75,000 each year, ensuring a sustainable, steady source of funds to build critically needed healthcare clinics for babies orphaned by poverty and disease in Africa, and will provide a vehicle to help local moms donate milk. 100% of every dollar that each ounce of milk provides will go directly to supporting babies orphaned by HIV in Africa.

Thank goodness for that. Now all we have to do is wait for the quarterly report to confirm that the IBMP has received around $12,500-18,750 from Prolacta for this quarter, ALL (100%) of which should go “directly to aid the Lewa Children’s Home and healthcare clinic.” I’ll bet the Lewa Children’s Home in Kenya could sure use that money. I, for one, want to see that those kids get the money promised to them. Wow, just imagine what 100% of $50,000 (the low end of the estimate given by IBMP) could do for that orphanage in one year!

I don’t know about you, but I’m eager to read that quarterly report confirming that all of these wonderful things are taking place. I wonder when it’s coming out?

Have you heard the news? (link includes video) New York City is doing away with all formula advertisements, posters, baby bottles, and formula samples in hospitals. Instead of formula freebies, which is what most hospitals across the country and in many parts of the world do (this is against the baby-friendly initiatives devised by the WHO and UNICEF, btw), NYC hospitals will now give away a mini cooler for breast milk, a baby outfit that says “I Eat At Mom’s,” breast pumps… And and and… This is the best part… The hospital policy from now on will be to put the baby to the mom’s breast in the delivery or recovery room within an hour after birth!! YEAH! No unnecessary hospital separations for mom and baby before they’ve gotten a chance to try breastfeeding! Woo-hoo! If I could re-elect mayor Bloomberg, the man responsible for making these new policies the law, I would.

Something I found absurd: A quote by a woman who allegedly disagrees with the ban was, “That doesn’t mean that those people have the nutrition or the education to support it [breastfeeding]. It [formula] should be an option.” This comment was made by a woman who claims she breastfed her child for five years. I think her comment must have either been taken out of context or she’s not understanding the policy. The policy doesn’t mean a woman can’t choose whether or not to formula-feed her child. A woman living in NYC can choose to feed her kid whatever she wants, even with the breastfeeding-friendly initiatives in place. She can even still request to have her child be formula-fed in the hospital; that hasn’t changed. What has changed is that the formula isn’t being shoved in new mothers’ faces, giving the implication, since it is being given away by health professionals unbidden, that it is somehow better than what their own bodies can produce. Breastfeeding is the biological norm, not bottle-feeding, so it would only make sense for hospitals and other health care facilities to support it this way, which unfortunately, most of them in the United States do NOT.

The education for breastfeeding that the commenter says people lack is finally happening all over NYC (and New York state for that matter), which is part of what makes this program so brilliant. Furthermore, to address her “nutrition” concern, you could eat McDonald’s and breastfeed and your breast milk would still be of higher quality than even the best formula you could buy, which should tell you a lot about how inferior formula really is. I didn’t examine all the ins and outs of the program, so I don’t know if extra help will be given to women in the nutrition department, but I believe WIC provides low-income women with extra food allowances if they choose to breastfeed.

The more I think about it, the more I think the woman who commented was asked, “What do you think of the new ban on formula in NYC?” Which can be interpreted to mean, “What do you think of banning all formula in NYC and disallowing women to formula-feed their children?” If that were the case, then her answer is totally reasonable.

Another commenter said, “I don’t think that is something that should be held against the mother [if she doesn’t breastfeed].” I agree with this, definitely, 100%. As someone who has to supplement with formula, and who has to use bottles because the breastfeeding didn’t work out, I am painfully aware that some situations warrant bottle and/or formula use. No woman should ever have to explain why she’s using a bottle to feed her baby. However, a lot of bottle-feeding is initiated because of a lack of support at crucial times after delivery or what can be interpreted as a silent support of formula in hospitals (formula posters on the walls and in doctor’s offices, free formula giveaways, goody bags with formula logos on them, coupons for formula, etc.), which this new program will help to address.

Yay!

(Other blogs where you can find more thoughts on this subject: Women’s Health News, The Lactivist, banthebags.org, babygooroo, Human Lactation Information, Black Breastfeeding Blog. If you have a blog and have written in favor of this new policy, contact me, and I’ll include a link to your post here.)