It raises the question not just about twins but also about wet nurses. I mean its a pretty normal tradition for mothers to 'outsource' their breast feeding to other mothers, especially if they're tired or sick.
Also what about formula milk?
Also what about formula milk?
Studies like these are valuable, but it's tempting to jump from interesting observation to policy recommendation without keeping in perspective (or even bothering to quantify) the magnitude of the impact.
An excellent blog post on the state of research into breast feeding: http://www.skepticalob.com/2013/06/two-crappy-new-breastfeed...
This is a joke, right?
Simple reasoning and deduction will lead you to the right answer. We evolved to drink the milk of our mothers, not a chemical concoction derived from the milk of cows fed by corn.
I believe rayiner's point is that infants can thrive on formula milk as well as breast milk. Please don't mock parents who choose to formula feed; there are many cases where it is preferable and/or necessary, just as there are cases where it is necessary to use antibiotics to supplement the body's immune system.
And where have I done that? Formula is a fantastic invention that can specifically assist in very difficult situations.
But just as it is clearly inferior to take antibiotics daily because it is too inconvenient to wash one's hands ... so to is it clearly inferior to use formula when the mother is capable of breastfeeding, but can't be bothered.
Babies in the first world are: 1) not exposed to that many dangerous pathogens to begin with; and 2) in the rare cases they do become infected, are easily treated with antibiotics, etc. Sure, breast milk has live immune cells, etc, but does that matter in any practical way?
Remember, the couple of generations of Americans grew up on formula feeding. Breastfeeding rates were down to the 20% range in the 1970's. Yet, there is very little evidence showing any long-term negative impact in those generations.
I can easily see the possibility that long term benefits are masked or "washed out" by other factors. Short term benefits, on the other hand, are unequivocally and easily empirically established. The fact that immune systems and richer nutrients are passed through breastmilk undeniably give breastfed babies an advantage over formula-only babies.
Given such evidence, it has been recommended that in the first six months of life, every child should be exclusively breastfed, with partial breastfeeding continued until two years of age.
That's WHO guidance. They don't broker much consideration for formula milk in that statement.
It's stupid to take WHO recommendations, or medical recommendations generally, at face value, because they generally are devoid of any cost-benefit analysis. Take this study of short-term benefits done in the U.K. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/4/e837.ful.... It found a 53% reduction in diarrhea hospitalizations from exclusive breastfeeding, and a 27% reduction in lower respiratory tract infections. This is a very strong result and justifies the "breast is best" recommendation. Yet, when subjected to cost-benefit analysis, the result isn't so clear. The incidence of these conditions in the sample of infants was only 1-3% to begin with. In other words, exclusive breastfeeding reduces the chance of a diarrhea hospitalization from 1.1% to 0.5%, and for a lower respiratory tract infection from 3.2% to 2.3%. And remember, both conditions are easily treatable.
On the other side of the scale, exclusive breastfeeding guarantees that the mother will be saddled with the primary role of feeding the infant for six months to a year and cannot easily delegate the task to the father (even with pumping, the father remains wholly dependent on the mother). Does a statistically significant, but small, reduction in an unlikely outcomes really justify blanket recommendations to exclusively breastfeed? Do you apply that same sort of extreme caution to every parenting choice? Given that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death in children at every age from 2-14, shouldn't the WHO recommend that everyone move out of the suburbs into cities where they don't have to drive?