I'm breastfeeding my first child, who is now six months. Breastfeeding is extraordinarily convenient and time efficient when I compare it to my friends using formula. I can just sit down and feed him. My friends have to bring formula, water and bottles everywhere. Then they have to mix it, and wash the bottles. And they have less hands free while doing the actual feeding. This is especially true at his 6 am wake up feeding, which I can do while sleeping.

I do work full time, and I have to pump twice a day. Which makes it less convenient. But it takes less than 15 minutes each time. I'm fortunate to have a very flexible work environment though.

It's true his father can't help with the feedings this way, but there are plenty of chores to go around.

We're mostly bottle feeding our 5 month old right now. She eats a lot (97th percentile height and weight), and there is no way pumping just twice a day would be enough. She tried to breastfeed and pump from day one, and it would take her forever just to get a couple of ounces out.

The baby still wakes up to eat twice at night, and I take the night feedings. It's a huge benefit for us to be able to do that, because my wife needs 6-7 hours of uninterrupted sleep to function the next day, while I don't. As for other chores, they're trivial and easily outsourced. If I couldn't take on some of the feedings, I just wouldn't be carrying my weight.

And for a career woman, starting out from day 1 with the husband taking a lesser role in child-rearing is a sure way to become the primary care giver and the one who will ultimately have to downshift if push comes to shove.

I'm glad it works for you, but it would be very inconvenient for us, and given the tenuous medical benefits of doing so it isn't worth it to try and make it work. And I think if doctors encouraged women, especially women with careers, to evaluate the costs and benefits of breastfeeding rationally instead of regurgitating highly unscientific dreck the way they do, a lot more women would bottle feed without feeling guilty about it.

What grates on me is that a lot of people who breastfeed make other decisions that endanger their children, totally guilt free. Living in a suburban area where driving is a necessity and it is common for teenagers to drive is going to have more of a practical impact on your child than whether you breastfeed or not.

I'm fully supportive of parents doing whatever is right for their families, and I don't think there's anything wrong with formula.

I think that the breastfeeding advocates frequently don't mention how hard that first month of breastfeeding is, because they think it might be discouraging. But it is much, much harder than breastfeeding once it is established. Even if it goes perfectly, it feels like you are chained to the baby. To add to that, I had a lot of trouble the first two weeks, which was incredibly frustrating. Luckily, we got to see an amazing lactation consultant at Kaiser and it worked out.

So people start supplementing during the first month, and don't get to see how responsive to demand lactation is once supply is established. My son is 99th percentile, 29 inches and 22 pounds at 6 months. I pump about 18 oz a day for him in the two sessions, and that's a slight oversupply.

It's wonderful you were able to share night duties, that part was very hard on me. I don't think it's true that other chores are trivial though, the baby needs constant supervision, holding, diapering, etc, which my husband does a lot of. He also does most of the feeding of solids since we started that a few weeks ago.

I don't really think breastfeeding is any cheaper for us though, nursing bras and pumps are really expensive too.

You are lucky. For my wife it was painful, incredibly slow - 45 mins, and occurred every 2 hours for 3 months when our daughter just refused to have any more. Formula wasn't a choice we wanted but it sure was easier for my wife.

Most of the articles you have linked, as far as I can tell, say the case for breastfeeding has been overstated (fine, more controlled studies need to be done) but a benefit still exists. You are overstating your case.

>(the technical term for it is appeal to nature fallacy).

A couple hundred million years of evolution is just a hippie fantasy, I guess. If the evidence isn't there, fine, but I can't for the life of me understand how the null hypothesis among hackers is always natural = bad.

>Breastfeeding is only free if a woman's time has no value.

First, why couldn't they pump? Are you saying they don't have time for pumping, but they can afford child care and formula? These people are buying formula from overseas. From a quick search, it appears western families are paying $100-$200+/month (that doesn't include shipping) for formula and I'm not convinced poor Chinese workers are earning much (if any) more than that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_in_China

> Most of the articles you have linked, as far as I can tell, say the case for breastfeeding has been overstated (fine, more controlled studies need to be done) but a benefit still exists. You are overstating your case.

I didn't say there were no proven advantages to breastfeeding. I said that advantages to breastfeeding that have been proven are extremely tenuous (thin). There have been a ton of controlled studies on breastfeeding--it's not an area that's lacking in data. What the studies have proven is that, once you control for the fact that higher-income mothers are more likely to breastfeed, the benefits from breastfeeding are minor.

>(the technical term for it is appeal to nature fallacy). A couple hundred million years of evolution is just a hippie fantasy, I guess.

That's exactly what the "appeal to nature" fallacy is.

> If the evidence isn't there, fine, but I can't for the life of me understand how the null hypothesis among hackers is always natural = bad.

You're confused about what the situation is. It is not that "we don't know enough about the advantages of breastfeeding, so we'll assume that natural = bad." It's that "we do know about the advantages of breastfeeding, and they are tenuous, and therefore we should balance those minor benefits against the costs of breastfeeding."

> First, why couldn't they pump? Are you saying they don't have time for pumping, but they can afford child care and formula?

Most women produce less milk pumping than breastfeeding, and pumping enough milk during the day to feed the baby through the next day is a huge hassle because it's time consuming and you have to do it several times a day to get enough supply. Most women don't have the luxury of taking multiple 15-20 minute breaks to pump (especially in a country without worker protection regulations like China). Also, lactating in work clothes is a pain in the ass.

> These people are buying formula from overseas. From a quick search, it appears western families are paying $100-$200+/month (that doesn't include shipping) for formula and I'm not convinced poor Chinese workers are earning much (if any) more than that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_in_China

These are obviously not people in China making minimum wage who are shipping in formula from overseas. These are middle class people. And for them, as for most working mothers in the U.S., child care and formula does indeed eat up most of the wages from working. Mother continue to do it because some money coming in is better than no money coming in, and because taking time off work to raise children is a career-ender. Employers treat a mother who took a year off to raise kids even worse, if that's possible, than someone who was unemployed for a whole year because they couldn't find a job (and see the recent HN thread about what a disaster long-term unemployment is even without the stigma attached to motherhood).

Scientists also once thought the Earth was flat. All matters of health and nutrition should factor in biological anthropology (hippie bullshit, apparently).

That kid that you don't breastfeed is going to end being more expensive in the future, when his/her grades aren't as good as the kids who were breastfed, ends up getting a lower paying job, and ends up with a higher chance of getting a disease.

> Scientists also once thought the Earth was flat.

"Science" has only existed in its current form (empirical science) for the last 600 years or so, while the knowledge that the earth is round goes back to ancient times.

> All matters of health and nutrition should factor in biological anthropology (hippie bullshit, apparently).

I can't think of anything more deserving of the title "hippie bullshit" than anything anthropology related, and especially "biological anthropology" which is as far as I can tell an oxymoron or at least the worst sort of snake-oil, cargo-cult pseudo-science (http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm).

> That kid that you don't breastfeed is going to end being more expensive in the future, when his/her grades aren't as good as the kids who were breastfed, ends up getting a lower paying job, and ends up with a higher chance of getting a disease

That would be relevant to the cost benefit analysis if it were true, but the evidence shows that the health benefits, while statistically significant, are not meaningful in magnitude. How much money you spend on an SAT tutor is going to have a bigger impact on your kid's life than whether you breast feed or bottle feed.