Forget Gun Control; Here Comes Formula Control

In a shocking move last week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decreed that as of September 3, 2012, New York area hospitals must begin locking up the formula and start tracking when a new mom asks for a bottle. It’s all part of a new voluntary program called Latch On NYC.

As if a new mom doesn’t have enough to worry about already, now she has to justify when she wants to give her little one a little formula while the baby learns how to eat.

Reporting in the New York Post says that the move is to encourage moms into nursing their brand-new children instead of starting them off on formula. Have you ever been subject to a session with a lactation nurse? It ranges from intimidating to humiliating, in my opinion.

Here’s the official partial wording from the NYC.gov website:

“Hospitals joining Latch On NYC have agreed to:

• Enforce the New York State hospital regulation to not supplement breastfeeding infants with formula unless medically indicated and documented on the infant’s
  medical chart
• Limit access to infant formula by hospital staff
• Discontinue the distribution of promotional or free
  infant formula
• Prohibit the display and distribution of infant formula advertising or promotional materials in any hospital location”

Congratulations, moms, on your new arrival whose care is actually up to the city of New York. Of the area’s 40 hospitals, 27 of them have agreed to carry this program. I couldn’t find any stories about the 13 facilities that are not.

The Post quotes Lisa Paladino, of Staten Island University Hospital, as saying, “The key to getting more moms to breast-feed is making the formula less accessible (FF’s italics). This way, the RN has to sign out the formula like any other medication. The nurse’s aide can’t just go grab another bottle.”

So formula is now the equivalent of a pain pill for mom, kept in a locked room, to be signed out by an attending nurse. Like prescriptions. And no more freebie samples for mom either.

Uh, Mr. Mayor, what about the moms who have trouble paying to feed their children and those formula samples helps with the cost? What about working moms who can’t nurse because they have to go back to work? What about moms who would like to allow their husbands to be part of the child rearing process by giving the baby a bottle or two at night?

One of the comments on the Post’s story site asks when they will start limiting the epidural for mom because it might damage the baby? Where do you draw the line? One other commenter joked that moms will only be allowed to dispense 16 ounces of milk at a time, of course, since Bloomberg is taking public comment on limiting the size of soda and milkshakes in the city.

What do you think, folks? Should moms be allowed to feed in whatever format she wants or should she give nursing a try while she’s in the hospital? Did you have any experiences with this when you had your children? What did you decide? Please comment below.

Marijo Tinlin is the Editor in Chief of Family First, one of the oldest family-oriented websites on the internet. She writes for Eagle Publishing’s Family Events, is the Managing Editor of www.myColoradoview.com and she runs a small business with her husband. She is also the author of a book about patriotism and teaching our children to love this country called “How to Raise an American Patriot, Making it Okay for Our Kids to Be Proud to Be American.”  It features 13 interviews with patriotic Americans including Ed Meese, Erick Erickson and Jackie Gingrich Cushman. It’s available at www.raisinganamericanpatriot.com.