Hostile Takeover: Planet Earth. Your Health in Corporate Hands.

Informed consent definition: Voluntary agreement with an action proposed by another. Consent is an act of reason; the person giving consent must be of sufficient mental capacity and be in possession of all essential information in order to give valid consent. A person who is an infant, is mentally incompetent, or is under the influence of drugs is incapable of giving consent. Consent must also be free of coercion and fraud.

In April 2019 the world looked on as New York city shredded the constitutional rights of a small religious Jewish community that was dealing with a measles outbreak. Contrary to how most people  react to measles in our fear driven world, most people in the tight-knit group were pleased that their children were getting the benefits of natural, lifelong immunity to measles at the appropriate age. This is a community that traditionally does not vaccinate, and they have not had a single measles death in the community for over 20 years, even though they have had regular bouts of measles over the years. Not a single death was reported during the entire outbreak, which ended in September 2019, but the NY mayor unconstitutionally fined families and denied them freedom of movement unless they could show record of vaccination. Neighbors were encouraged to call the police if they saw Jewish families leaving their homes, and there was a huge surge in hate crimes against this vulnerable group. Even though natural measles conveys lifelong immunity - something the vaccine cannot do - the New York authorities insisted on all children being vaccinated even if they had contracted and recovered from measles. After the pharma and government driven astroturfing on social media, vilifying "anti-vaxxers" has become global sport, so instead of alarming the broader community, the gross infringement of those peoples rights was cheered by the masses. The emergency order was overturned after 30 days, but the precedent was set. 

Now, in this insane dystopian lockdown, we can see that what was being played out then was a test. To see how much government over-reach would be tolerated by a public that had been slowly poisoned against the vaccine hesitant for years. Early in 2020 ICAN and Robert F Kennedy Jr, a world renowned environmental lawyer, won a freedom of information law suit against the CDC, the USA's Centre for Disease Control, to release ALL the studies and data they have based their statement that "Vaccines don't cause Autism". The CDC released 20 studies, which they say is the entirety of data that have based their claims on. This is supposed to be all the information used to make the claim that vaccines (Note, plural) do not cause autism. The specific requests were for all studies on all childhood vaccines, not just the previously released MMR studies that were so fraught with issues. There were none that definitively proved the CDC' claim, and in fact, what they presented was laughable (It's worth watching this short video which lays it out in 7 minutes) The upshot of this is, not a single person on the planet has had full informed consent when it comes to vaccines. 

Now there have been many, many, many more studies done on the vaccine-autism link, the vast majority of which prove that there is indeed a link, including the CDC's own study, which was run by Dr Thompson, the whistleblower who admitted they fudged the data to skew the results,  in a study that was supposed to be the definitive "no link to autism" study, and this was, tellingly, not included in the documents. It was the chilling story of this whistleblower that led to the filming of VAXXED. The data released by the CDC is dismal. If this is indeed what the entire vaccine schedule's "safety" claims are based on, it could crash the entire global health framework and indeed, the global economy, because there are MILLIONS of people with autism, caused by the vaccine schedule and every one of them will be entitled to sue. And this would cost over $2.5 TRILLION dollars in the USA alone, JUST FOR AUTISM. Riots and civil war would break out. 

"If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls who live under tyranny" 

Thomas Jefferson

And suddenly, we ended up, very conveniently, in a global lockdown, with the spectre of disease being driven down our throats, and again, vaccines being pounded into our consciousness as the solution to the current problem. And instead of the world hearing the TRUTH about this heinous, disgusting, evil cover-up, we are all focused on the terror of germs and the holy grail of a vaccine. A vaccine that is being rushed at "warp speed" through testing, bypassing crucial animal trials. As usual, ONLY the positive data (which is thin on the ground) is reaching mainstream media. Moderna exults that some humans have developed antibodies and declines to tell us that most didn't and three people out of the trial developed severe adverse reactions (see the poster boy for the trial here and here). The Oxford trial - which did go through perfunctory animal trials, is continuing it's trials in humans even though all of the monkeys in the trial got sick upon challenge with the virus, but they still trumpeted success in mainstream media. Nobody has ever made a successful RNA vaccine for any Corona virus. When they tried to make SARS and MERS vaccines the hosts seemed to make robust antibodies, but upon challenge with the vaccine, some had extreme reactions resulting in cytokine storms - the very mechanism that kills so many Covid19 victims. 

Goverments of the world are now also pushing the flu vaccine, as an adjunct to social distancing and masks, some countries, like Australia, even going so far as to mandate it for certain groups. This flies in the face of evidence based medicine. The Cochrane Collaboration, the most respected medical review board in the world has been shouting about the harms of the innefective flu vaccines for over 20 years. The Pentagon released a military study of veterans that showed that the flu vaccine actually INCREASED peoples risk of dying from coronaviruses by 36%. Why are the global governments ignoring the science? 

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.

Carl Sagan

Why indeed. For that, we need to look at the ties to the drug industry that riddles every single government in the world. And to the WHO, which is now funded mostly by Bill Gates, whose foundation earns billions off vaccines - and whose ethical record with regard to informed consent and human experimentation, and ties to Monsanto (and other ethically criminal corporations) large scale food production against the strident objections of activists in India and Africa have placed him in the driving seat globally. You can read more about Bill's backstory here (oh, and his own children are, according to their doctor, not vaccinated). He is not a humanitarian, he is much more interested in tax breaks and building his own empire and personal world vision, which includes supporting the tech that will enable global surveillance and of course supporting his fellow billionaires who will also profit from his agenda. The WHO is also massively funded by pharma and riddled with scandal, having been involved in nefarious activities, colluded with the tobacco, nuclear and drug industries, manufactured the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic to sell vaccines and to finally force a market for the dismally ineffective flu vaccine sector. The corruption has rotted the WHO from the inside, taking its focus off creating clinics and bringing clean water to poor communities, and instead has placed them as a clean front to the vaccine industry, where they spend an inordinate amount of time introducing drug makers to African and Indian leaders to enable the sales of their products, often funded by the WHO, or Gates, to the poorest and most vulnerable. And contrary to the popular belief that vaccines are lifesavers in rural Africa, in fact, the evidence shows that the opposite is true. 

Looking at how this pandemic is being run, one of the most important talking points is the sacrifice of individual rights for the "greater good" of the community at large. It isn't "your" right to personal autonomy you need to worry about, it's the safety of others. We need to sacrifice some of our "little, less important" rights on the altar of the common good. So a healthy person out in the world is putting all the other vulnerable members of the community at risk. This is key. Social media is driving a campaign to make it seem selfish to care about your own rights and freedom. This is how they run the fear campaigns around vaccines and illness, this is how they are going to justify changing the constitutions of the world in favour of less individual autonomy.

If we lived in a world where global governments truly did have our best interests at heart, where there was no industry money dirtying the waters, this would be much less of a stretch. But this is not the case. The WHO is not just fraught with scandal and unbelievable conflicts of interest, but is now an arm of pharma, it's most important advertising and PR program. We have been sold a lie, and one cover up after another until it started snowballing into the crisis we see today. And as a result of this network of lies, corruption, skewed science, zealous adherence to dogma, we have ended up here. Is this the end of it? Will pharma finally win, and force a world where health can only come in a syringe, or will humanity wake up? This is not a time to be idly watching Netflix and baking banana bread. This is an incredible opportunity to learn. Do it. And for a change, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. Don't accept the party line, don't use google, a branch of Gate's Microsoft future, to look. Ecosia and DuckDuckgo won't track or filter. There are only 20, massively fraught, shitty studies that are used to prove the global schedule. There are THOUSANDS that show that the schedule is deadly. Look for yourselves. 

These corporations run our culture and they riddle it with bullshit

Ben Goldacre

"Anti-Vaxxers" and the Dangerous Scourge of Social Media.

                                             (Edit: The coloured words in the text link to articles and studies)

In 2014 a whistleblower called William Thompson came forward and admitted that he had been part of a coverup that showed a higher incidence of autism in a certain vulnerable subset of children who received the MMR vaccine. His story actually formed the basis of the movie VAXXED. There was almost nothing about this breaking story on mainstream media, even though the story was horrifying, groundbreaking, and showed that the CDC were actively involved in vaccine safety fraud,  knowingly putting millions of children in harms way. Vaccine sceptics the world over celebrated as they thought that finally they were going to be vindicated and there would be an investigation into the crimes that the CDC was being accused of. But there was nothing. Silence from the mainstream media. Thompson was given immunity from prosecution and was supposed to be able to testify in front of congress, but still, nothing.

Photo courtesy of Pxhere

And then, suddenly, there was something. An outbreak in Disneyland - the symbol of American childhood. In 2015 the CDC, the Pharmaceautical companies and the US government went on a social media frenzy. Vaccine sceptics, called Anti-Vaxxers, were to blame! Without any proof, they said that an unvaccinated child was responsible for the outbreak. Later, once the data was released, it showed that they had no idea who patient zero was, but still, they pointed their fingers at the people they knew society was itching to blame, the Anti-Vaxxers. They used that term over and over again, whipping up a frenzy on social media using a well known technique called "astroturfing". For the first time, a properly targeted attack on social media against vaccine sceptics began. People started posting angry messages, accusing vaccine sceptics of being a danger to society, of spreading disease, parents posting heartbreaking pictures of their immuno-compromised children, posting articles about how dangerous the movement was and heaping vitriol on the unvaccinated. Some of the people who went viral were tracked back to Pharmaceutical companies.

It was unprecedented. And hugely successful. They managed to change the language people used when addressing the targeted groups, and to make people so angry that they were prepared to attack the sceptics on social media in ways we had never seen before. Threatening to intentionally infect unvaccinated kids, wishing death upon them, attacking, stalking and outing parents who didn't vaccinate and encouraging the public at large to dismiss sceptics as anti-science, far right (I'm far left) conspiracy theorists. Making videos linking vaccine safety activists to flat-earthers and UFOlogists to try to further discredit them by lumping them with people who are considered by the mainstream to be terribly stupid,  anti-science and beneath contempt. The CDC deleted info that showed serious flaws in the DTP vaccine, like they had previously removed the pages on their site that showed that the polio vaccine had been contaminated with SV40, a simian virus that causes cancer in humans. Websites disappeared. Google filtered their search engines algorithms so that any vaccine safety groups were pushed to the second or third page instead of the first, and some sites were suddenly totally omitted. Searching vaccine death or vaccine autism on Google yields very different results to searching on platforms like Duckduckgo, which doesn't track or filter.

The State of California managed to get laws passed, mandating vaccines and disallowing religious and philosophical exemptions, insisting on medical exemptions only. Dr Pan, a senator from California was the driving force behind this legislation.

We have now had 4 years of a more focused and angry social media language and awareness.

And so, when the CDC's expert witness on vaccines and autism, Dr Andrew Zimmerman, a Paediatric Neurologist came forward in 2018 and said that in 2007, in a landmark case against thousands of autism parents, he took the DOJ lawyers aside and said that vaccines DID indeed cause autism-like symptoms in some children and that he saw them in his practice often. He was summarily dismissed from the case but the lawyers went on to misrepresent his position and falsely use his redacted testimony to win the case. Those children and their families were left to suffer without any help.

And there was, yet again, no response from mainstream media. Utter silence. Vaccine sceptics have come to expect this bias from mainstream media.

What happened instead was chilling. The WHO came forward naming Anti-Vaxxers as one of the biggest threats to human health. This was what went viral, with everyone from Forbes to Rolling Stone climbing on the bandwagon to broadcast that the REAL threat was the 2% of parents who choose not to vaccinate their children.

And then, another "outbreak" was announced on social media, whipping people into a new frenzy of hate against the Anti-Vaxxers who they were now trained to vociferously attack. 101 cases - which is, if you look at the data, not a huge amount - there were 667 cases in 2014. What make THIS "outbreak" different, is the fact that it has happened in a small, mostly non-vaccinating population, and usually the outbreaks happen in vaccinated communities. (This also applied to Pertussis and Mumps)

CDC Measles chart

What is even more interesting here is that the outbreaks in previous years have been skewed in the opposite direction, often with almost half of the infected being fully vaccinated, and many more being partially vaccinated. According to the CDC in the 2015 outbreak, 45% were fully vaccinated and a further 68 people were reported as unvaccinated but when this was broken down further we saw that some of those were children who had received 1 or 2 MMR vaccines and were still too young for their next booster. So this vaccine, even if you have had all the shots, is not at all effective in preventing measles, because almost half of those infected were FULLY vaccinated.

CDC Measles 2015

What we need to be very aware of is that MMR is a problematic vaccine. Even the hyper-pro vaccine doctor and researcher Dr Gregory Poland has been trying to warn the public about the problems with this particular vaccine and why, even if there was 100% coverage, we still would not be able to wipe measles off the planet. The problem with herd immunity is the vaccine cannot provide it. Not the few parents who choose to forego the shots for their children.

Social media has become THE platform the CDC, FDA and the Pharmaceutical companies use to shape the public perception of vaccines so that their schedule - and as a result their profit (by the way, the CDC and the FDA both have patents on vaccines, the CDC alone pulls in 4.6 Billion a year from these vaccines) - remains intact. Also, many watchdog organisations are warning us that congress is owned by pharmaceuticals and that pharmaceuticals basically own mainstream media - the very vast majority of advertising revenue comes form pharmaceutical advertising. Facebook's Marc Zuckerberg has gone public saying that he would limit the freedom that vaccine sceptics have on his platform, and under mounting pressure, Facebook have deleted many groups and pages linked to the movement. Grassroots stories, the "human face" of the "harms caused by the Anti-Vaxxer movement" start appearing. Organisations like Bored Panda and Buzzfeed, "junk media" geared towards Facebook and Twitter put out Anti-Vaxx puff pieces that either encourage denigration or are geared to pluck the heartstrings. Stories like the recent one about Ethan Lindenberg, a son of Anti-Vaxxer parents, who chose to vaccinate himself at age 18 go viral, and then we find out he is a social media expert who is writing a book and has worked for government in health care, an other stories about Anti-Vaxxer parents "seeing the light".. An article about a mother whose severely immuno-compromised daughter died of measles makes the rounds with terribly sad pictures of her baby.

And these stories are touching and sad, devastating sometimes. But you only need to look at some of the vaccine safety advocacy groups on facebook to see pages like this one, which is much more heartbreaking and horrifying because mainstream media ignores these families and the powers that be encourage others to tease, shun or attack them. You can also see some of the bullying comments from the public on this page. (Edit - the page has been removed. Parents of children who died or were severely harmed by their vaccines posted their stories there. Facebook has removed the page as they don't want to allow any negative press for the schedule at all.)

"My child's vaccine reaction" group on Facebook

We also need to be aware of the total media blackout on ANY topic that would show a possible flaw or problem with a vaccine or the vaccine programme. Question the safety of ONE vaccine, and you are immediately labelled an Anti-Vaxxer and people have the licence to treat you like you have no rights whatsoever. When a child dies or is injured from a vaccine, current social media trends have people attacking the parent even though the CDC itself has stated that vaccines are unavoidably unsafe to a small subset of children. Those families get absolutely no respect from social media at large. One thread on Facebook, where a healthy child died within a few days of his vaccine had over 40 comments calling the parents various versions of "idiot anti-vaxxers" (They HAD fully vaccinated their dead baby) and claiming that there could be no connection, that correlation does not = causation. The vitriol was incredible, laughing emoji's on the post and nasty comments tagging the family. The family shut their facebook page down as a result. Which is exactly what the drivers behind this want. A shutdown of any voices calling for research into vaccine safety. But it is acceptable, nay, encouraged, to post articles calling sceptics terrorists.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/withoutacrystalball/2019/02/anti-vaxxers-are-terrorists-that-kill-and-harm-children/?fbclid=IwAR3BelnxUILka8077MzM3ZQbFryGbbiAjKvogClfXSEFKdy1HMbbb_aTfmM

And now we have Dr Pan, who successfully legislated to enforce mandated vaccines in California, now trying to limit the last recourse parents have to protect their children, the medical exemption.

People often fail to realise that the the very vast majority of parents who are sceptical of vaccines were once PRO vaccine. Polls taken in the vaccine safety advocacy groups show that MOST people came looking for information after a child fell ill or died after a vaccine, and the western medical community had no answers for them. What people also fail to realise is that the vaccine programme is corrupt from the top down. That vaccine manufacturers are piling more and more shots onto the schedule and the safety trials are abysmal. There are still no proper government funded studies on the health outcomes between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, although there have been some done by the vaccine safety advocacy groups, in which the unvaccinated group scored dramatically better in all categories. The US government, which through their agencies the FDA and the CDC, pretty much set the standard for drug safety throughout the world is totally bought by the Pharmaceutical lobbyists, who pay off more politicians than the oil and gun lobby combined. And when you consider that the US schedule has gone from 24 doses to 74 in the 30 years since the drug companies were given immunity from prosecution, and the vaccine industry, which was unprofitable due to lawsuits in 1983  is now touted as the biggest growth industry in Pharma and projected to be worth $50 billion dollars in 2023, it should give you pause.

The Sharp End: Why I have the right not to vaccinate my family.

The hysteria around measles has raised some very interesting debates on social media. I have been scrolling on by and rolling my eyes at some of the biased and badly written commentary, having to stop myself from commenting most of the time because frankly, it takes time and energy out of my day that could be healthily directed elsewhere. But after reading yet another badly informed article on a highly respected news site I have decided to draw my line in the sand.

I am not anti vaccine. I believe that like any drug, there are certain times when a certain vaccine, or a vaccination drive, may be beneficial to a child or to a community. I live in South Africa and have friends and relatives living in areas where there is extreme poverty, lack of resources and where there are people who have no access to any form of personalised medical care. Some of the time, well directed vaccine programs are potentially beneficial in these areas. Clean water and healthy food would help a lot more, but vaccines are cheaper, so that is what government will focus on. Vaccines are an emergency measure, a stopgap, a band aid. They should not be a permanent fixture in society, but in areas where children are not healthy enough to withstand illness and the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risk, they can save lives. There is a place for vaccines. However, that place is NOT in every child, with countless shots for so many diseases.

I didn't vaccinate my children. However, my decision not to vaccinate was only one decision of many I made to consciously create healthy, strong human beings. My research has led me to a lifestyle philosophy that is based on creating the conditions for health without relying on medical interventions. Every major decision we make for our kids is researched. I began researching in pregnancy, deciding on an evidence based birth plan that was as safe for the baby as possible. I breastfed my children - and not for weeks or months, but for years, because the benefits of extended breastfeeding for the childs immune system have proven to be incredibly important. I researched gut immunity and found out that a healthy gut = a healthy human. When I introduced foods at around 6 months, I had done my research and fed them fresh organic fruits and veg. No processed cereal or bottled puree. We avoid wheat, dairy and sugar as much as possible. Fresh fruits or veg are a part of every single meal, I bake my own gluten free breads. We have installed a water filter and my kids drink their rooibos tea with honey. Juice is a rarity. We didn't stop there. We don't use any toxic household products. Our dish liquid, house cleaner and laundry liquids are all non toxic and earth friendly. I have limited, as much as possible, my childrens exposure to harmful chemicals. 

When they get sick - and they do get sick sometimes, like all children do - the first thing i do is boost them. I up their liquids, give them vitamins and immune boosting supplements. I don't give them paracetemol to take down their fever. Fever is good, fever is the body's first line of defense. I use saline for sinus and coughs, and very rarely a nasal spray. What I have found after years of worrying is that actually, my kids are remarkably healthy. They will generally be over their colds in 3 to 4 days, whereas if their dad or I catch the same bug, we are down for a week. If the illness persists and I am at all concerned I take them to a family doctor who usually prescribes nothing but good food and lots of liquid. Don't get me wrong, judiciously used and properly prescribed medicine can and does help people, but we need to keep all interventions to a minimum if we want to create a healthy immune system. My kids however, have well developed and excercised immune systems and their bodies have learned to heal themselves. 

Why is it that I, in my role as a parent who doesn't vaccinate, gets maligned for my choice NOT to perform a potentially risky medical procedure when it is clear from my lifestyle and the choices we have made as a family, that I am doing everything in my power to keep my children strong and healthy without medical interventions? Interventions that I believe could weaken their immune system. Why is it that the laws that regulate the marketplace to protect consumers don't apply here? There are a plethora of laws in place to protect consumers in just about every other sphere. We can demand labelling, we can demand that toxic ingredients be removed, we can insist that dangerous products are recalled. However, when it comes to vaccines, this does not apply. If you don't like the ingredients, tough luck, you have to inject them into your kids anyway or you're a bad parent - or as our Minister of Health put it recently - a bioterrorist. 

I don't accept that. I feel that as parents we have every right to refuse a medical intervention without clear indication of a pressing need. We also have the right to use alternative remedies, and to refuse care from a doctor whose recommendations we don't agree with. Studies have shown that unvaccinated children are much healthier than their vaccinated counterparts, and often this is because of a range of healthier decisions their parents have made for their children. When I have put so much effort into growing healthy, strong children, and made drastic lifestyle changes in order to do so, why am I being pressured to conform to the vaccine program? I am not making a myriad of unhealthy lifestyle choices for my kids, I should not be punished because I have chosen not to follow the easy path. 

Why can't she just cover up?

One of the comments that gets repeated every time there is a discussion about public breastfeeding is "Why can't she just do it elsewhere, give the baby a bottle or cover up?"

To begin, lets establish why it is unacceptable (and illegal) to ask a breastfeeding mother to leave a public space while feeding her baby. Breastfeeding needs to happen wherever the baby happens to be. If a human is hungry, nobody has the right to withhold food from them. A baby has the right to have its need for sustenance and hydration met promptly, with neither the baby or mother feeling uncomfortable for any reason whatsoever. Asking a mother to leave a public space is infringing on her right to partake in normal society and expecting her to be at the mercy of her baby's feeding schedule, which if a mother is demand feeding as per the recommendations of practically every health agency in the world, mean that her own freedoms will be severely curtailed. Nobody has the right to expect her to go elsewhere when all she is doing is trying to maintain normal social contact, - which is vital to maintaining her sense of normality, which in turn helps to prevent Post Partum Depression -  and she is just trying to give her baby sustenance. Her baby is also a member of society and has the right as well as the need to be socially integrated. 

These are SOME reasons why breastfeeding mothers should never be expected to feed their baby from a bottle. 

A baby who is being exclusively breastfed simply cannot have anything other than breastmilk. Any foreign substance - even water - can cause serious digestive issues. The virgin gut is very, very delicate and needs to be treated with extreme care. So asking a woman to feed her breastfed baby a bottle of formula so that she wont "offend" anyone by nursing is simply not good for the baby or for the nursing relationship. So why can't she just express?

The WHO has ranked the optimal infant food in this order:

1. Breastmilk from the mothers breast.

2. Expressed breastmilk in a bottle, from the mother.

3. Expressed breastmilk in a bottle, from a donor.

4. Commercial formula.

There are many reasons why milk suckled directly from the breast is better for the baby and the mother, for the sake of brevity I will only list a few of them here.

Firstly, safety concerns - milk suckled directly from the mothers breast contains no external contaminants. A bottle by its very nature is a potential hazard. It can harbour germs, toxic chemicals and even mold, and unless scrupulously cleaned and sterilised after every use it can pose a health hazard to the baby. The milk may have been stored too long, be sour, or even contaminated by the bag it was frozen in, and may harbour antigens. The bottle itself poses a risk, there have been many recent studies done on the hazards of BPA in plastic bottles, which was removed from most infant bottles, but replaced with BPS, which has been found to be as potentially dangerous.

Babies who are introduced to bottles or dummies often develop nipple confusion. The bottle is usually easier to suckle from so they don't want to work harder at suckling from the breast. To put this in layman's terms, nipple is flattish when it goes into the baby's mouth. as the baby sucks, it changes shape and becomes more "tube-like". A baby instinctively knows that the nipple goes into a pointy, firmer shape, milk starts to emerge. A teat or dummy is already shaped in this way so the baby begins to prefer this "food giving" shape and starts to refuse the breast, which requires more effort to transform. Most hospitals have changed their policies and will only offer babies dummies if the baby is not going to be breastfed. Any midwife or lactation expert will tell you that if you are breastfeeding, avoid bottles and dummies at all costs.

Breastmilk is perfectly calibrated for the baby's current physical needs. Unlike formula which is homogenised and contains exactly the same ingredients at every feed, breastmilk will alter significantly in make up from feed to feed. Every time a baby's mouth makes contact with your nipple your breast re-calibrates its output to suit the child's current physical state. If the baby is too warm or if its saliva is thickened, the body will make more watery milk to satisfy thirst. If the saliva contains bacteria or viruses, the body will insert the right antibodies into the milk as well as increasing the amount of immune boosting ingredients. Expressed milk often doesn't not contain much of the fat-rich hind milk which is available at the end of the feed. The consistency and calorific content of the breastmilk changes during the feed. It starts off watery to quench thirst and then gradually becomes thicker and creamier, and more "hunger satisfying". Expressed milk will also not contain the necessary antibodies if the baby is coming down with a virus, so will not as effectively help to fight infection or address any current issues such as dehydration. 

One very simple reason it is preferable to feed directly from the breast is simply to maintain a good milk supply, to protect nipples from being bruised by the pump and to create better conditions for a long term and satisfactory breastfeeding relationship. Pumping for many women is exhausting, painful and time consuming. Many women, myself included, spend large sums on pumps and find that they cannot produce enough by pumping to provide enough for even one feed. And because the best way to get milk out of the breast is to suckle your baby, it will affect milk production too, because the breast should be emptied completely at every feed or it begins to produce less. Women that exclusively express will find their supply dwindling and often drying up completely. Finally, women that don't express should not feel forced to do so because they will be needing to feed their baby during an outing. To expect a woman who is accustomed to breastfeeding to buy bottles, sterilising equipment and a pump, and to spend valuable time pumping and freezing milk, to satisfy a prudish desire not to see her feeding her baby is ludicrous. 

On covering up:

So we have cleared up the reasons why breastfeeding happens in public. "But why can't the mother cover up?" you may ask "Can't she drape a cloth over the baby's head?" Well, I am glad you asked. Here are a few reasons why we shouldn't actually be expected to do this.

I cannot overstate the importance of a good latch when it comes to breastfeeding. As a mother who suffered through weeks of cracked nipples due to 2 days of bad latching in the hospital, bad latch nearly caused the end of my breastfeeding journey. To ensure a good latch I needed focus, two hands and a very clear view of my child's lips and jaw in relation to my nipple. To latch her on took all my coordination, and doing that while trying to clamp a towel between your neck and shoulder is just plain frustrating and uncomfortable. My daughter used to slip off and suckle the very end, which resulted in bruising and cracking. Feeding her with a towel over my shoulder - which I did do in the very beginning - meant that I wasn't able to always see how she was positioned.

Which brings me to my next point. Babies don't like it. Would you like to eat with a cloth draped over your head? My daughter put up with the cloth for about 6 weeks and then protested. Every time I tried to cover her, she clutched the cloth and whipped it off, making lots of indignant noise in the process. So I stopped using it. I found - as many mothers do - that the baby fighting the towel was guaranteed to draw more attention than simply feeding. Some mothers find that their babies are easily distracted and so they prefer to cover so that their child can get a full feed. That is their prerogative. Some mothers feel more reserved about showing the top curve of their breast and so, prefer to cover. That too, is their prerogative.But this does not mean that because some mothers are shy, and some babies are easily distracted, that all mothers and babies should be forced to cover up too.  

The next reason there should be nothing between a mother and her feeding baby is because babies have a need to constantly get visual reaffirmation from their mothers. Babies respond to human facial expressions, can tell the difference between happy and sad faces and communicate by means of mirroring facial expressions. Studies have been done on an amazing phenomenon called gazelocking. Gazelocking is when babies stare deeply into people's eyes, thereby making a connection and fostering affection in the person whom they are looking at. It has been hypothesized that gazelocking began in caveman times, when babies would try to connect with as many of the humans in its tribe to ensure that they would feel connected and thereby, help the baby to survive and thrive. Babies gazelock with their mothers while feeding and that intense bonding helps to prevent Post Partum Depression in the mother, as well as create a more secure baby who feels connected to and loved by its parents. If you have ever seen newborn pics of mothers with their babies, many of them will be of a mother and child gazelocking for all they're worth. It's an instinct we should not be expected to ignore. 

And of course there are safety concerns. If you have ever spent a considerable amount of time with your head under a cloth you will know that after a minute or so, re breathing your own air becomes pretty intolerable. We all have an inalienable right to oxygen. Babies should not have to be stifled to protect other peoples misguided feelings about propriety. 

Basically what it comes down to is that opponents of uncovered breastfeeding only have one issue. They are offended by the sight of a baby on a breast. Their only issue is one of prudery. Supporters of breastfeeding have many, many, many reasons - backed up by science and fact - why breastfeeding needs to be a normal part of their lives and their children's lives. The fact is, if you say "I support breastfeeding but..." then you don't support it at all. 

Breastfeeding and why YOU need to see it and support it.

There is one thing that is common to the human experience of every single person on this planet. We were all babies once. Every single one of us was once a tiny newborn, innocent and utterly dependent on others for it's survival. This is as vulnerable as a creature can be, hairless, unable to walk, communicate or protect itself from any kind of danger, that newborn needs us to help it grow into a healthy person.

One of the BEST things that can happen to a human baby is that it's mother manages to breastfeed it. Despite plummeting breastfeeding rates, some women manage to overcome the obstacles and ignore the naysayers and people giving detrimental advice and actually feed their baby from their breast as nature intended.

Now politics aside, because I know this topic gets heated, let me say that I have nothing but love for mothers who did not manage to breastfeed. I know how hard it is and I know how impossible it can be to fight off all the stupidity surrounding breastfeeding and get the right support you need to do it. For those who made the call not to try, I have no right to question their motives. But this post is also for those mothers. If we were more inclined as a society to support breastfeeding, those mothers would mostly have succeeded in their efforts. If more people applauded breastfeeding, maybe those who had no desire to do so would not have developed any bias against it.

What I am writing about today is the IRE that fills me every time I hear of a woman being asked to feed their baby elsewhere. Today that ire has been invoked by a kiddies restaurant franchise which has branches countrywide, that has in two of their branches in recent months, asked women to leave or feed in the toilet. These are restaurants that market themselves AT parents with young kids and provide play areas and kiddie themed menus, that advertise images of their restaurants as safe and fun spaces filled with kids of all ages.

But then when said parents come in, with children, young, dependent, hungry children, they are told "oh no, that child can't eat in public, go to the toilets please."

I am just gobsmacked. How is it in this day and age there are still cretins out there who think it's sanitary to send a woman with a small baby into a germ infested toilet to feed it? What if she has older children? Should she leave them playing unsupervised or should she take her whole family into the stall with her? What about her food? Should she leave it to congeal on her plate. What right do these people have to shame her for feeding her baby? Especially as they have gone out of their way to attract these customers to their restaurant. It's a slap in the face. If CHILDREN FRIENDLY restaurants still think it's okay to marginalise new mothers and discriminate against tiny children then this society has some very serious problems.

What we need is MORE breastfeeding, not less. Not shaming mothers for doing the very best for their kids. When i was asked (in a "child friendly" restaurant no less) to go to the back room to feed my 8 month old baby 6 years ago my first reaction was incredulity, my next was crushing shame. It took all my courage to feed my baby the next time I was out in public. I was lucky, I was supported by an amazing network of family, friends and midwife, all of whom were cheering me on and telling me that I was not the one in the wrong. That I was doing the right thing. That breastfeeding is good, it's amazing, it's incredible. That we should NOT be marginalised by a society steeped in Victorian prudery around womens bodies. We should not have to leave the room like naughty children doing something shameful. We should not have to cover our babies up while they eat. we should not have to feel any shame about doing what we all know is the best thing for our children.

If more women fed without any self consciousness in public we would start to see that it is simply a baby eating. It's not sex, it's not urination or defecation, it is a child getting the best possible start in life. You were a baby once. Have some bloody compassion.

Edit: The restaurant chain in question, Spur Steakranches, replied to my queries on their breastfeeding policy with this -

Hi Bronwyn
Thank you for your email. 
I will be away on leave from tomorrow until the 12 January 2015. Upon my return I will address your concerns with our Regional Managers around the country. We don’t have a “formal” policy as there has never been a need to put a policy in place to govern the feeding of babies in-store.
I will be in touch with you during the 12 – 16 January 2015 to provide more feedback.
Have a happy and safe festive season,
Kind regards

At first sight.

We have all heard of that Hollywood moment, that earth-shattering second that will change your life forever – the moment that you first lay eyes on your child. We are all aware that the angels are supposed to sing, that the heavens will open and that you will instantly know true love for the first time.

Well what if this doesn’t happen? It didn’t for me. I knew so much, I had done it all right, diet, midwife, antenatal classes, exercise. I had dreamed of motherhood since my earliest childhood. I was supposed to be the earth mother, the birth warrior. But in “that” moment I felt nothing except a sense of overwhelming relief that my baby was alive and an overwhelming sense of shock and disappointment that I was strapped down and cut open. There was no angelic moment for me. There was no sense of knowing this tiny screaming stranger. There was nothing.

It was only two weeks later that I realized that the protective urge I had been feeling all along was love – or had grown into love. I finally bonded with my baby. I fell in love slowly, it was not the mad, passionate dash I was expecting, it was a slow courting and getting to know each other. But eventually I grew to love my child. (And now I love her so much I kiss her while she poohs.) I blamed my "emergency" c section for my lack of joyous bonding at birth. Here is me and Ruby:

I started out wanting to make a photo essay of the difference between a natural, drug free birth and an interventionist or c section birth. I put out a call asking for "happy vag" vs "unhappy c sec" baby meeting moments. I was offensive and smug and I offended some people. I have had to eat some humble pie. I've been sent some amazing pics - each one is special, some are heart-rendingly sad, some are fiercely joyous. All are poignant. Some mothers got to meet their babies instantly, some had to wait minutes or even hours, but all are made mothers in that very instant they first hold or behold their baby.Thank you to all the moms who participated, you are all incredible. 

So here's to all the mothers and babies. Here's to birth, here's to that moment of meeting. Here's to a life starting and a life forever changed. Here's to the joy, the glory and the agony. Here's to birth.

And as promised, here is the picture of my next baby's entrance to the world. Humble pie, once again, my triumphant planned HBAC turned repeat c section... but hello my beautiful Julian, I am so honoured to have you. And this time - I had the Hollywood moment.

I am sad for my lost birth my baby boy, but I'm so happy to have you.