Baby on Passport Application?

 I recently sent this letter to our government...

"Hello Mr. Layton,

I was recently informed by INFACT Canada that the new child's application package for a canadian passport has an image of a baby bottle on it.  I find this alarming for many reasons:

- it's portrays that in Canada the norm for feeding babies is by formula; when in contrary Public Health recommends exclusive breastfeeding until the age of 6 months and there after for breastfeeding relationship to continue as a compliment to solid foods until the child out grows the need.

-any image of a bottles can help sway a mother that is having difficulties getting breastfeeding off to a good start to turn to formula instead of seeking help to establish her breastfeeding relationship with her child.

- Passport are for one to be able to travel outside of this country and should not be associated in any shape with baby bottles, formula or breast-feeding.  

-Baby bottles are typically linked in ones mind to formula (not pumped breast milk); by putting this image on our Passport Application the government ends up promoting (for free to the large formula companies) formula feeding.

To finish here is are a few points I am highlighting from the International Code of Marketing of
Breast-milk Substitutes by the WHO.

 "Appreciating that there are a number of social and economic factors affecting
breast-feeding, and that, accordingly, governments should develop social support
systems to protect, facilitate and encourage it, and that they should create an
environment that fosters breast-feeding, provides appropriate family and community
support, and protects mothers from factors that inhibit breast-feeding; "

"Affirming the need for governments, organizations of the United Nations
system, nongovernmental organizations, experts in various related disciplines,
consumer groups and industry to cooperate in activities aimed at the improvement of
maternal, infant and young child health and nutrition; "

I would also like to point out article 5.1 of the code:

"5.1 There should be no advertising or other form of promotion to the general public
of products within the scope of this Code. "

The products the code talk about are breastmilk and bottle-feeding - I believe placing an image of a baby bottle on an application for a passport becomes a direct violation of this code and the WHO.  I encourage you take the time to read the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and come to your own decision on this subject.

www.who.int/nutrition/publications/code_english.pdf

Thank you.

from a concerned member of your contingency,

Pierrette Wiseman
mom to Christophe

Check out my family blog:
http://wisemanconspiracy.blogspot.com/"

Water what should I drink?

With all the new studies about BPA and it's effect on children we decided to stop purchasing water jugs for our water cooler and start drinking tap water. We do filter the tap water with a Brita filter; however I now question my decision. Witch is safer BPA water or fluoride water.

According to an article on CBC:

"he panel does acknowledge that excess fluoride intake, which constitutes 10 mg/day after 10 or more years of exposure, can lead to skeletal fluorosis, which is caused by too much accumulation of fluoride in the bones and leads to brittle and deformed bones.

However, "the current maximum acceptable concentration of 1.5 mg/L of fluoride in drinking water is unlikely to cause adverse health effects," reads the report.

The report does caution however, that infants are particularly vulnerable if they ingest powdered infant formula reconstituted with fluoridated water. "The risk of excessive intake of fluoride is higher for infants consuming larger quantities of infant formulas," reads the report."

To read the full article go to the CBC site.

I still think tap water is better then bottle water how about you?

Forcing formula on moms?

This morning I was shocked, upset, annoyed, stupefied and pissed all at once when my letter-carrier handed me a box from Enfamil containing a free full size tin of formula. I have requested twice now via email to have my name removed from there mailing list. So this time I called them and once again they promised not to send me anything...

Do we believe them?

Busy Times

Lost has happened since my last post...

Last Sunday Christophe went for his first "walk". We had been out and about many times but never for the purpose of walking. We bundled up Christophe and took the bug out with the bassinet, we ended up walking all the way up to the Danforth and picking up a few grocery items from a small market there.

On Tuesday this week we had a midwife appointment. Christophe weighed in at 8lb 2oz. He is growing too fast a few of his smaller onesies are already too small and a few pj's are getting there. It was Sara's last day as a student so it was nice to see her one last time. She is going to make a fantastic midwife. Sara said we can start weaning him off the formula so we have been doing one feed with formula one without. Most times (well 50% of the time) that we offer him formula he refuses it. After the visit we went up to my work to show him off to my colleagues and pick up a few items that I had left behind due to his unexpected arrival.

My sister called to let us know she is coming for a short visit. She will be arriving on Sunday and staying for a few days; I am excited to have her over.

On Wednesday we had a very exciting day... we started at the Big Carrot to pick up some food, the traveled to Queen street to go to Baby on the Hip were we picked up some disposable diapers, disposable wipes, flash cards and cloth wipes. The disposable stuff is for when we hit the town we only use cloth at the house. After that we stopped in at The Upper Crust for Supper and popped in to my pre-natal yoga classes to say hi.

In the mix of all of that I still found time to take some photographs of my favorite little guy.