Nurses and lactation consultants from all over the Southeast convened in Dalton last week to hear the latest in breastfeeding technology from renowned expert Diane Weissinger.

According to Weissinger, the “breast is best” tagline is a disservice to women and babies. Such slogans suggest that formula-feeding is the norm and breastfeeding is something better than the norm. Formula companies often state that breastfeeding is “the ideal.” Of course, something that is ideal is lofty but usually unattainable. None of us would claim to be ideal parents, for example. By calling breastfeeding ideal, they suggest that it is a lofty, unattainable goal.

Wiessinger says, “The truth is, breastfeeding is nothing more than normal. Artificial feeding, which is neither the same nor superior, is therefore deficient, incomplete and inferior. These are difficult words, but they have an appropriate place in our vocabulary.”

How often are we reminded that breastfeeding is simply normal? Every mammal species on the planet uses mammary glands to nurture its offspring. This is one of the defining characteristics that classifies humans as mammals. By choosing not to feed our infants in the normal way, we expose them to many known and unknown risks.

Wiessinger says there are about 13,000 studies that show problems with formula feeding. These studies are typically pitched as pro-breastfeeding (as if formula were the norm) rather than anti-formula. Thus, the experts tell us that breastfeeding reduces obesity or respiratory infections or earaches. Instead, they should simply state that formula increases obesity, respiratory infections and earaches. Likewise, breastfeeding does not reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS); formula increases the risk of SIDS.

Instead of emphasizing only the benefits of breastfeeding, professionals should stress the risks of artificial feeding. Despite the “more like breastmilk” ads, formula-feeding remains distinctly inferior to formula in every aspect. Formula not only increases the risk of diseases and disorders; it also fails to adequately nurture the brain, resulting in a lower IQ. Further, formula-feeding does not foster the maternal-infant bond the way breastfeeding does, because the hormone cycle is broken.

Breastfeeding is the physiological standard for human babies. Formula-feeding is not even second best. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), formula is only a distant fourth. WHO urges that all babies be breastfed by their mothers. In cases where this is impossible, the second-best alternative is to feed the baby the mother’s pumped milk. As a third-best alternative, babies should be fed breastmilk from another human mother. Only in cases where human milk is impossible or the baby cannot digest breastmilk (such as with galactosemia), should formula even be considered.

If formula feeding is so inferior, why aren’t American doctors and health authorities warning of the dangers? Most will say, “We don’t want to make women feel guilty.” Yet they have no problem making mothers feel guilty for smoking around the baby, or for placing a sleeping baby on his tummy.

Instead of warning parents about the risks of formula feeding, hospitals hand out formula samples, literature and advertising gifts. They receive kickbacks from formula companies in the form of pens, notepads and other items. While hospitals shrug off these gifts as meaningless trinkets that do not affect their work, Diane Weissinger asks why formula companies would spend huge sums of money on this advertising if it did not work.

In return for the goodies and the donuts, the hospital sends the company’s formula marketing literature and samples home with every mother in a logo-branded diaper bag. Even those women who plan to exclusively breastfeed get the bag. The diaper bag and its contents send a clear message that the experts at the hospital approve of formula. This tacit endorsement undermines breastfeeding promotion. Research shows that women who receive the bag are more likely to resort to formula once they get home, and 93 percent select the formula brand associated with the bag. Obviously, the strategy works.

The diaper bags are not the only way the medical community colludes with formula manufacturers. According to Weissinger, the delivery room procedures of most hospitals unwittingly work to undermine breastfeeding long before the baby takes its first breath.

Weissinger stumbled onto the birth-breast connection while studying the nursing behavior of animals. Weissinger was an animal behaviorist before she became a renowned lactation consultant. It was this background that inspired her to put together a talk on the breastfeeding and parenting lessons that can be learned by observing other mammals. Initially she intended to cover topics like how mammal babies find the nipple on their own, how mammal mothers never look at a clock before nursing the babies, and how animals wean naturally with no formal plan.

As Weissinger prepared the material, she was inevitably drawn to the distinctions between mothers who bond with and care for their infants, and those who do not. In every mammal species, she discovered that mothers who are deprived of their chosen place, time and sensations during the birth process have difficulty bonding and breastfeeding. Mammal bonding is adversely affected if birth is too hard — and if birth is too easy. The babies are even at risk if the birth is too clean.

Whether the mammal studied is a terrier, a horse or a rat, any interference with the birth risks the breastfeeding relationship. Interference might include something as benign as the presence of an outsider, or as radical as cesarean delivery. Veterinarians who must surgically remove a baby animal go to great lengths to normalize the experience by allowing as much labor as possible, placing the placenta with the mother she wakes, and leaving the newborns in an untouched state. They understand the risks.

Human beings are mammals. Because we are more intelligent than most other mammals, human parents will usually continue to care for a child no matter how it comes into the world. Yet, according to Diane Weissinger, medical birth is robbing mothers and babies of the easy, instinctive breastfeeding experience that results from normal birth.

Modern hospital birth generally involves an epidural. Wiessinger equates a long epidural to drinking 14 cans of soda. Excess fluid swells the woman’s tissues, including her breasts and nipples, which makes latching on more difficult. The epidural also slows down her milk, increasing the risk of jaundice and early supplements for the baby — two responses that increase the risk of early weaning.

The epidural drugs affect the baby as well as the mother. Since breastfeeding is primarily the baby’s job, newborns need to be awake and aware. Drugged babies have more difficulty recognizing and attaching to the breast, more sucking problems, and more bonding problems. Poor initial sucking may result in nipple damage – which is not a nice event in a place filled with unfamiliar and sometimes antibiotic-resistant germs.

Wiessinger says, “Mothers in our culture haven’t given birth since the early part of the 20th century. And no mammal who has birth taken from her goes on to nurse easily, or even to mother easily. It’s not the breastfeeding that’s the problem. It’s the birth!”

Jeannie Babb Taylor may be contacted at jeannie@babb.com, or you can leave a public comment on her blog at JeannieBabbTaylor.com.