Hi. I'm here too. Jenstover@bsky.social

Do you know any more about this?

Yesterday I heard Gabbard lie to Congress about not targeting the lawyers and others who worked on those same cases. Today they are fired. I guess you can say they didn't lie because they haven't been confirmed yet. It is the acting heads of those departments that did Trump’s bidding.

bsky.app/profile/hcri...
She is here on Bluesky.

It's a long piece by Heather Cox Richardson. She does an excellent job analyzing what's going on with the Trump administration.

Yep. Also flowers for Valentine's day.

We are throwing close to 100 times more money towards planting a United States flag on Mars than we were going to donate to the World Health Organization. Which one do you think will impact your family more?

The U.S. is the largest funder of the WHO. Our $$ make a difference globally and here at home. Our contribution for 2025 was going to be $261 million. For context, NASA’s 2024 budget was $25 BILLION dollars.

It is always WHO that does the work to show that this assumption is wrong. Babies are more at risk when the dyad is separated, and artificial feeding substitutes are given. Or they provide research backed guidelines and education on how to safely keep mothers and babies together during disease.

I watched this unfold before my eyes just a few years a go as Covid swept our country and affected every maternity and postpartum ward. There is always an assumption breastfeeding in these situations is bad or unsafe and should be stopped. Babies should be separated from mother.

As each of these diseases emerged in the world the knee jerk reaction of our medical establishment has been to limit, separate or otherwise inhibit breastfeeding and breastmilk.

Most of us know the World Health Organization tracks diseases around the globe. WHO not only does disease surveillance but also does studies on the intersectionality of disease and breastfeeding. Recent examples include HIV, Zika, and Covid.

It was WHO that first looked at exclusive breastfeeding’s impact on fertility and child spacing. Understanding how the hormones of lactation affect our cycles has put family planning directly into women’s hands. It doesn’t work for all women, but it is highly effective for most women.

t turned the tide in our culture on how long it was normal to breastfeed and eventually changed the American Academy of Pediatricians’ recommendations on exclusivity and duration of breastfeeding.

This research was vital in opening the eyes of doctors and hospitals to the risks of feeding formula to fragile infants. It is why our local Neonatal Intensive Care Units all provide donor milk as much as possible.

For example, WHO not only does research on best practices for initiating breastfeeding but also on how long babies should be exclusively fed human milk and how long they should receive it as a complement to solid foods.

The WHO aggregates important data on birth practices and breastfeeding which they make available to the world. This allows people to directly benefit from and utilize evidence-based practices.