Medela and Codebreaking.

[foxytocin]

i know i am a geek about somethings. I suspect most women don't care about these things and that is ok.

It annoys me how companies find ways to make money out of women's bodies. Medela case in point.

Medela is milking women and not the only one who thinks so.

They make a breast pump and charge the earth for it. the technology behind it is no different from most other double pumps I suspect. This one doesn't come cheap when you can get a very effective pump for about a third of the price and the only difference is the touch pad and the lcd screen which adds the sophistication of a calculator to its production cost.

I am sure lots of women have gotten on great with this pump. I am happy that they found something that made their choices easier but I hate to think that Medela made going back to work is so expensive though breast milk is free.

Not so long ago someone linked this New Yorker article which says better than I what I think on breast milk, breast pumps, and women going back to work. Yes, it is America but a lot of it still applies to Western Europe.

I think this is a lot less about breast milk and more about stingy maternity leave, for one. gotta go. whingy children call.

No, not a geek, just right.

That's a bloody good article too, thanks for linking it. Almost a bit too intelligent sometimes, when some of it's best lines (when did womens' rights become the right to work?) are so brilliantly simple.

Yours, still awaiting a second wave of feminism where rights don't just equal being allowed to compete on mens's terms.

Foxytocin, yes, that article was very good, thanks for linking it again, I remember reading it when it first came out. You're very right though- it's not so much about expressing, more about very very stingy (especially in the States) maternity leaves. Breastfeeding is so much more than just the milk, it's very sad if a woman who wants to bf is forced to do expressing only, not as a choice, but just because she might lose her job is she doesn't return. Here in Europe we should consider ourselves lucky for the longer maternity leave... but I think there's still a long LONG way to go for things to really be good for mothers & newborns.

BTW I couldn't open your first link foxytocin, I think it doesn't work anymore.

Excellent article, yes, thanks for posting.Am always amazed at stingyness of American maternity leave.

continuing on my thoughts
it is also about marketing. Medela has a vested interest in the way women are pushed back into work. The more pumps it sells the better. They take advantage of women's wish to give their babies a normal start in life.

It is about more about selling pumps and selling feeding bottles. A good pump can be a cheap pump. Then there is also their feeding bottles. No more sophisticated than the 50p narrow necked bottles sold all over the third world. But this is what medela charges for their bottles. I suppose having Medela stamped on it probably makes it more expensive though.

I have now seen 3 different babies fed with Medela bottles and none of them contained breastmilk.

Foxy - cannot open your first link - says page not found.

I do feel they are making money out of me, but I have to go back to work now dd is 6 mo - dh is a sahd and so I need to pump. I don't enjoy it and as I consider myself (up to now) an attachment type parent and to me breast feeding is so much more than food I am dreading going back.

Re the bottles - I agree. I donate breastmilk to the local bank and the bottles they supply are identical to Medela but without the branding, and are presumably significantly cheaper for them (I hope)

DD is currently bottle and cup refusing however, so it may all be in vain....

That was all a bit rambly sorry....

sorry, here it is again

very interesting. I was lucky enough to avoid the whole pump at work thing which sounds like a nightmare to me as I took 10m mat leave with both of mine and by that time they were naturally only feeding morning and night so I could do (hurriedly) in the morning before leaving. I always feel sorry for US mothers though when they only get 6 weeks or something.

BCLass, I expressed at work for dd1 till she stopped drinking milk at nursery and she only started to eat solids at 13 months.

i think pumps are great and do allow women to return to work. when it has also become a tool to reinforce piss poor maternity provision then it becomes questionable. it also treats breast feeding like a commodity. They separated the milk from the act of breastfeeding in order to sell it. Breastmilk has advantages for the baby but breastfeeding isn't so important for her. Well it is just as important, for mother and baby and there can be no market value to that, surely.

Medela makes a good pump but it has inflated its price and are doing a hard sell to get people to buy it at that higher price.

Oh, dd1 was also a bottle and cup refuser. we will find out soon what dd2 will make of them. Thankfully, she is keener on solids and is promising at 28 wks.

Spookily I was reading about medela this morning and posted elsewhere about their WHO violation.
Does anyone else know if they are still violating the WHO code with their marketing?
I have been trying to discourage my local BF support group from using Nescafe and wondered if they should also not be allowing the medela rep to visit.
Its not so much about the medela products but the ethics - if you stop using one brand because of WHO code breaks then I guess you should stop all brands that break it.