Go read the Disclaimer again. I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Seriously.
Well baby visits initially arose as a way to convince mothers to feed their baby formula. The formula companies set up milk stations where women could purchase clean milk (this was a problem, back in the pre-pasteurization days when adulteration was also common and refrigeration non-existent), and they also provided height/weight charts to convince women that their babies were not getting enough at the breast so they needed supplementation. In an effort to make this look less shady, they hired doctors to do the spiel, and also to help the women keep their now-much-more-likely-to-get-sick babies alive. This is how pediatrics as a specialty came into existence, so if you're unsure whether you want a pediatrician, you might add this to the list of reasons why a family practice doctor might be a better idea.
Despite WHO's recommendations of 2 years of breastfeeding, and the AAP's recommendation of 1 year of breastfeeding, continuing thereafter as long as mother and baby desire, a lot of doctors and other health care providers think that nursing a toddler is terrible. The AAP's subcommittee on nutrition still thinks introducing solid foods at 4 months is a good idea, which makes one wonder what planet they live on. The AAP recommended book on child care expects infants to sleep through the night after 4 months, which would imply night-time weaning, which leads almost inevitably to daytime weaning (to formula, of course), because of the reduced supply that results. With this as the US standard of care in pediatrics, it is hardly surprising that health care providers for your baby might be full of bad ideas and worse advice when it comes to feeding your baby.
Doctors are the natural prey of the pharmaceutical companies' sales forces. With rare exceptions, pharmaceutical companies are also formula companies, so while it is not surprising that pediatricians are the focus of many formula company marketing efforts, it is still, for me, a little shocking. Doctors, nurses and others in an office working with formula makers may receive as much free formula as they like for their own babies in exchange for recommending that formula to their patients. The AAP receives significant contributions from various formula makers, enough to cover building expenses and part of their operating expenses. Newsmedia which accepted advertising dollars from cigarette manufacturers were unable to report objectively about the dangers of their products or their illegal efforts to protect their business. It is not different with formula companies and those who accept their largesse.
When you are shopping for a health care provider for your baby, keep an eye open for formula company logos on goodies in and around the office. If you see them, they're having an influence. If you don't see them, you might want to ask your health care provider how long she breastfed her own children (or how long his wife breastfed their children, or whatever permutation on this seems appropriatee). If the length of time breastfeeding was extremely short, and there isn't an immediate follow-up along the lines of, boy, we sure wish we knew then what we know now because we'd do things differently, be wary and contemplate finding another health care provider. They do not do a good job teaching breastfeeding in medical schools. If your baby's health care provider hasn't taken the time and trouble to find out on their own, they won't know and they'll tend to have opinions any way. Given our culture, those opinions will vary from unhelpful to malpractice.
There is another, more paranoid way to look at the relationship between pediatricians (and the medical industry as a whole) and risky businesses such as cigarettes and formula. Doctors make more money when their patients are sick, but do not die from their disease. Formula only causes an excess of 4 deaths per thousand (around 8,000 deaths per year in the US) per year, but formula babies account disproprotionately for illness and hospitalizations. The medical industry makes a lot of money off those babies, starting with the formula, continuing through the need for vaccinations, through extra allergies and other chronic illness, then all the adult problems that come with that early beginning on obesity. You cannot guarantee that your child will live or thrive by breastfeeding your child, but you can certainly stack the deck that way.
Copyright 2006 by Rebecca Allen.
Created February 4, 2006 Updated March 8, 2006