Compared to the exclusive breastfeeding group, the use of formula with DHA/ARA supplementation lead to a nearly three-fold increase in ASDs while the use of formula without DHA/ARA supplementation lead to a nearly 13-fold increase in ASDs.
Bottle-feeding has become a huge part of Western society, but this method of feeding is not what infants biologically expect. However, there are ways to try and mimic the breastfeeding relationship that mothers can use and that's what is focused on herein.
The following is an email sent to Professor Elizabeth Armstrong of Princeton University after she wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times on the use of formula in hospitals. I believe they both make wonderful points and hope more people consider all the factors that can help women and babies have the best start in life.
I am pleased to share five questions with Dr. Helen L. Ball, professor of anthropology at Durham University. Her work specializes in infant sleep practices, with a side focus on breastfeeding. Here she shares her thoughts on various aspects of parenting, research, and policy.
Breastmilk is better than formula. Babies aren’t getting nearly as much touch as they need. Co-sleeping can help your baby stay safe if done safely.
Is it really possible that how we feed our kids can affect how our body responds to a vaccine? Turns out the answer is ‘yes’ and below I’ve outlined the research on the matter for the most common childhood vaccines.
How we come to parent our children is typically made up of myriad influences. This is the story of how I ended up a breastfeeding, co-sleeping, babywearing, no toys, community-wistful mom. In other words, an evolutionary parent.
There is an endless array of questions and judgments and ‘should’s associated with both infant sleep and feeding. But this hasn’t always been the case. It used to be a simple matter of mother breastfeeding and mother and infant sleeping together with no judgment and no questions about quality or quantity of sleep.
Extrapolating over a ten-year period, there are approximately 7,400 infants under the age of one who died, most of whom need not have.
