Amy Spangler from Amy’s Babies was featured on 20/20 Friday, July 14,2006. The piece, titled “Is the Breast Better” was produced by Lee Hoffman, Ann Varney, Leslie Yeransiana and Elizabeth Vargas, who also served as the host for the segment. It is likely that Ms. Vargas has a particular interest in this story considering the recent announcement of her pregnancy.

The 20/20 segment focused on a recent Government sponsored Ad Campaign by The Ad Council of America that is considered controversial because of its use of risk based messaging to communicate the negative effect on babies whose mothers choose to not breastfeed.

As the former president of the International Lactation Consultants Association (ILCA) and the US Breastfeeding Committee, Amy was a consultant on the campaign and was invited to defend the messaging and clarify the viewpoint of the campaign during the piece. She sat with Elizabeth Vargas and helped explain some of the reasons behind using this messaging for the campaign, the continuing struggle to educate mothers about breastfeeding, and the fight to make it easier and normal for them to do so in their daily lives.

During the segment they showed the two ads, including one with two pregnent mothers log rolling and another with a pregnant mom riding a mechanical bull. The message is clear. You wouldn’t do risky things before your baby is born, why do it after they’re born. Breastfeed for 6 months to avoid the risks.

They speak to mothers who chose to bottle feed their babies, including Jen Spitzer, who says that the ads make her feel guilty for saying she put her baby at risk. But according to Amy, that’s not at all what the campaign intended. “It’s not that we were equating that. The ad campaign was simply a humorous framing of a very sensitive topic,” said Spangler. “Any kind of a message using a risk-based focus is always a difficult arena to venture into and it’s always controversial.”

The piece goes on to discuss the lack of government funding and awareness for helping breastfeeding mothers in the work place. Amy encourages mothers feeling that stress to approach their employer for a conversation about their needs.

With passionate proponents on both sides of the fence, it is likely that this topic will continue to be controversial. For us, the big issue can be summed up with one quote from the piece. “America has one of the lowest breast-feeding rates of any industrialized country. That could be due, in part, to how uneasy Americans get when it comes to seeing a woman nursing in public.” This is something that requires improvement, and ad campaigns that grab peoples attention are one way of spreading the message that it is not just normal, but far better for your baby to breastfeed a minimum of 6 months.

In our opinion, there will always be mothers like Ms. Spitzer who chose not to breastfeed for personal reasons. If making her feel a little guitly is the trade-off to get thousands of women across America to understand that breastfeeding is the best alternative for their babies future, we feel that’s a trade-off worth taking.

Either way, this campaign continues to spread the word and we at thehappycorp our doing our part to help spread the message as well. In partnership with Amy, we will be launching a new community and publishing center for baby information: Baby GooRoo. The site will have 25 of the top baby health experts from around the world contributing helpful information for new mothers everywhere, on a daily basis.

The site will ba launched in the next month on thehappycorp’s new proprietary blogging platform - code name: Project Marvelous. Make sure to visit the site today, sign up for the mailing list, and check back to see the progress.