“I’d rather feed my baby a stranger’s milk that I have no way to test for HIV (etc) than get a vaccine.”
Poor kid is starting out life in hard mode.
Sounds like the kind of person to stop taking her course of antibiotics early because she’s “already feeling way better!”
It should be noted that the case for “take the antibiotics until the very end of your prescription” isn’t as strong as it was some years ago.
The assumption was that if you don’t take them until the end, strains immune to the antibiotics would survive, making them less effective in the long run. But the problem with this way of thinking is that the bacteria that gains immunity will survive it anyways – in fact a longer exposure to antibiotics rewards the trait of immunity, as evolutionary pressure is higher. There are fewer strains to compete against, as these have been killed by the antibiotics, making the unwanted mutations more likely.
Antibiotics resistance mostly comes from long time exposure to them. At least that’s my understanding, not an expert in the field.
Edit: since I got downvoted: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6370607/
The risk of antibiotic-related adverse events, including resistance, increases with longer treatment courses
When antibiotics are indicated for treatment, short courses are as effective as standard ones for most common infections
wouldn’t the doctors adjust the time they prescribe antibiotics for based on this?
(except for in France, when they give you penicillin for a tiny cut, but you need a prescription for paracetamol)
Probably depends on the doctor, how well they keep up with research and their general stance on prescribing antibiotics. I think last time I got some was 15 years ago and back then it was “take till empty” IIRC. But after that no more, which could either mean my infections were never of bacterial nature or that my doctors just deemed not necessary enough.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, from a cursory search it looks like your claims are supported by the literature. The hivemind knows better, I guess.
From the article:
A practical approach in the community setting is to educate patients and advise them that it is safe to cease the antibiotics early if microbiological results exclude a bacterial cause for their symptoms (e.g. negative urine culture or viral acute respiratory infection), or the patient feels better for conditions where the benefit of antibiotics is small and the infection is not severe (e.g. acute respiratory infections).
I imagine it’s from past information that had been communicated on this topic (as the original poster alluded to), it very much was the general understanding that it is important to take the full course for the reasons mentioned, however I am not too surprised that it appears that is not the case, logically the initial claim didn’t make sense, but I figured that was because I’m not into biology much. Interesting to see the counter argument which makes much more logical sense to me.
I also worry about people who have “unvaxxed donor milk” “stashed away.”
Just in case other people might know since I didnt till recently, the stashed away and sharing part is normal. I have a one month old and my wife pumps so I can feed the baby breast milk when my wife is unable to breastfeed since it can be better for the baby than formula. We freeze portions of it so that when she returns to work or travels, I’ll have a stash to defrost and feed our baby. It’s kinda normal for people who overproduce to share that milk with others who want their babies to drink breast milk but are unable to for a multitude of reasons (medicines, chemo, unable to produce, etc). We may look into donation options since the milk is only good for 4 months in the freezer and it would be great to be able to help a family in need (like a mom undergoing cancer treatments) and it looks like we’re trending towards overproduction. There are services that can help with verified matching.
The unvaxxed part is unhinged as fuck though.
Everything about pregnancy is somehow really fucking weird, but also perfectly reasonable at the same time.
That’s perfectly common. But I’m sure you’ll donate it properly with appropriate screening, and aren’t hoarding it because of antivaxxer nonsense.
At my height of producing I had a chest freezer full. I was collecting 2-3 times what we needed for her bottles each day, while also still breastfeeding several times a day. My goal was to donate. But when I went back to work I gradually lost my supply. I was still producing but each week was a little less and a little less. We ended up going through almost every bag in the freezer by the time she was a year old.
Also, be aware that some donation places require blood tests to be done before they’ll accept donations and they’ll only accept milk pumped after the results. If you donate to an individual they likely won’t care.
It was the unvaxxed donor milk part.
Just stashing it away makes sense.
I mean, there are people on this planet who haven’t gotten vaccinated, and there’s nothing I can think of that would make them any more or less likely to freeze extra breastmilk
Isn’t breast milk customised to the specific baby based on the input the mouth provides the nipple? So if someone else were to use it, especially for just 4 days, they might as well use formula also?
Yes! And beyond being customized for what the baby needs at that given time, also includes immune stuff to help the baby fight whatever sickness the mom might be fighting at the time. So even for us, there’s a downside to not using fresh breastmilk. However, the understanding that is even with those differences, all the extra stuff breast milk is packed with make it better for babies even if not tailored for what that specific baby needs at that time.
The other important call out - formula is fine. Many moms feel pressured on breastfeeding because of the benefits, but there are tons of reasons outside moms control that breastfeeding might not work. Or even just so much challenge with doing it (like having to wake up in the middle of the night every night to pump). It’s perfectly okay to not breastfeed and use formula, and lots of moms feel undue pressure and stigma which is unfair if the don’t/can’t.
You can get STDs from breast milk. But we wouldn’t want life saving antibodies, oh no.
So she can have antibiotics but doesn’t want the baby to have any, even though he’s been exposed to strep. And I would bet she had at least some vaccines as a child but wants to deprive her child of that protection.
