Michelle Tant

There has been a call from Lesley Backhouse, chair of The Breastfeeding Network to scrap the slogan. No its not a backtrack on policy, its an attempt to shift the balance towards breastfeeding being the normal and usual way to feed a baby, rather than formula being the norm and breastfeeding being something slightly out of reach and unusually exceptional. "We've got to knock breastfeeding off this pedestal," said Lesley Backhouse. "It implies something special, whereas breastfeeding is the physiological norm, and suggests that formula is the standard way to feed babies. "Breastfeeding is the only case where the biological norm is expressed as the exception rather than the rule,". Of course breastfeeding IS exceptional, ie its amazing properties, its extraordinary ability to sustain and improve life, to improve life prospects even in terms of surviving childhood, reducing obesity and common childhood illnesses, right up to reducing pre-menopausal bre...

According to government statistics, 96% of women drink less alcohol once they get pregnant. So why is there this 'tar with the same brush' mentality to making recommendations about alcohol consumption? I'm certainly not negating the seriousness of fetal alcohol syndrome but I do think that the women who are going to drink to excess whilst pregnant will do so regardless of the governments well meaning guidelines. The vast majority, yes, safe to say, almost all women take a sensible view to alcohol drinking when pregnant if the figures are to be believed. In fact a third of that 96% actually give up alcohol entirely. There's a part of me that thinks that the whole thing smacks of a nanny state, driven to reactive government styles. Women are more than capable of making these decisions. We are not defenseless, ill-educated dolls hanging about waiting for someone, anyone to please tell us how to look after our bodies and children because really we have no idea. ...

Had a nasty surprise to start the day when I was unpleasantly woken up by the radio. I dislike early mornings at the best of times but to wake up to the news that comments in the British Medical Journal appear to undermine breastfeeding... bad start to my day. The media are quick to spot a sensationalist story when they see one and so the headlines quickly became 'breastfeeding not best for first 6 months'. Utterly inaccurate interpretations of the comments anyway, but no doubt the outcome has had formula milk companies rubbing their hands in money grubbing glee. An attack on breastfeeding is a direct hit in favour of baby milk companies who ultimately, no matter how much the advertising tells us that they have our babies health at heart, only really care about their bottom line. 3 out of the 4 contributors to the BMJ article are funded by, yes you guessed it, baby milk companies. They stand to gain financially by being mouthpieces for these immoral and unethical compa...

Frankie Boyle thinks that making sexually explicit jokes about a disabled young child is not only appropriate, but hilariously funny. He thinks that freedom of speech enables him to express this filth and even worse, make money from it. He should be ashamed of himself, though I now doubt he has enough decency in him to feel such an emotion. And to the people who think that any child of a person in the public eye should be open to this sort of abuse from the media, then shame on you too. What is going on in this world that this has become acceptable? Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

I was interested today to read about the furore surrounding the Popes comments on the use of condoms - from interviews being collated into a book and released this Tuesday. The media have latched onto it as a sort of 'comedown' from a known 'truth' that we all know that the Catholics don't do contraceptives. A little extra digging on t'internet reveals that its not really anything of the sort. What they're actually saying is that in the case of AIDS, its more about the preservation of life rather than the prevention of it. The Catholics say that only God has the authority to say if a baby should be conceived it not and it is this standpoint that the no condoms thing comes from. The church has been condemned in the past (and present) for being archaic and out of touch - after all, who is interested in a life of abstinence? I remember reading something a few years ago where the church said that abstinence was the only sure fire way of preventing the spre...