BOSTON - State health officials have banned the practice of giving free hospital gift bags containing baby formula and other products to new mothers. These gift bags were usually sponsored by companies to promote their feeding formulas.
Officials say that the ban will mean that more and more women will turn to breast feeding, which is always a healthy alternative to baby formula. The ban however does not extend to hospitals, who give out free formula. Breast feeding advocates say that the ban will go a long way towards restricting the unhealthy practice of feeding formula food to infants.
Beth Sargent, an independent lactation consultant put the gift idea into perspective by saying, "There's no free lunch and there's no free gift. A gift is something given freely without the anticipation of a return. There is absolutely an anticipation of return." The practice of gift bags has already been stopped in some hospitals in the state, but this is the first time that such a ban has become a customary regulation. However, formula making companies are less than impressed with the ban, "I don't think they're respecting the decisions of women and the decisions of health care professionals. I think it's not respectful of their privacy," Gail Wood, a spokeswoman for Mead Johnson & Co, the maker of Enfamil.
Even mothers are up in arms against it and say that all the ban does is promotes a guilty feeling among women for neglecting breast feeding. 36-year-old Judi McLaughlin of Medford has given both formula and breast feeding to her kids. She says that the government has no right to interfere in what is basically a mom's prerogative, "My breasts, my business. Stay out of there," she said.
Donna Rheaume, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Health said that there is a pile of evidence to indicate that breast feeding is the best way to feed infants and that the ban was a simple way to promote breast feeding among reluctant women.
