Statue, Ensada, Mexico.Alright. I've been resisting this post for lots of reasons. It's going to take me hours. I don't want to get into another fight about it. Tensions run high. I really don't want to upset anyone, and someone always gets upset.
But then I have to write this post because I felt so angry, and distressed by the conversation that engendered it. And because Milan asked me why I hadn't got involved, and the fact that I didn't get involved made me feel guilty in the first place. So here we go with the can of worms that is unfortunately the Breast Versus Bottle Debate, again. Whatever you may feel, this is necessary and important. I'm going to speak personally and frankly, and as I believe strongly in the importance of breastfeeding, I'm going to upset or infuriate those of you who don't, and I'm sorry about that. So if you're not interested, I'll say what I would say to anyone who had a problem with me feeding my child in public - if you don't like it, look away now.
Lactivists always end up upsetting mothers who bottle fed, making them feel judged, outraged, pissed off. We've had conversations on Roller coaster about this, it's NOT our intent. I've struggled to explain why I feel strongly enough about the topic to make bald statements about what is best for other people's babies. One thing that I want to stress is that there is a difference between a theoretical statement, and an individual situation. We talk theoretically, and a woman who has specific reasons for not having breastfed feels attacked. It's never that simple, of course it's not. But I don't think that's a reason to stop sharing the information.
Judgement. I'll give you that. I am judgemental. So are we all. And necessarily so at times. When we see parents hitting hteir children, crushingtheir self esteem, leaving them in or out by themselves. Spoiling them... Do we really not judge other's parenting? When I see a pregnant woman smoking, or people smoking round small children, I just can't understand it, it makes me want to cry. When I see people hitting their children. Or putting them down and crushing their self esteem. I've made some spectacular parenting no-nos in the last year - judge me for it, support me, show me a better way to deal. Please. Don't pat me on the head and tell me I'm doing fine. There are so many things we once considered private, and looked the other way. I wish that breastfeeding choices did not have to be one of those things.
Why won't lactivists respect women's choices? Well, I have to say, women who breast feed come in for a hell of a lot of abuse and undermining pressure, from their families, husbands, doctors... it can be really hard to do, especially if you're having trouble, or your child is not putting on weight according to standard, bottle feeding weight charts. But what we want to highlight are the conditions and social morées that may have informed those choices on a cultural level. It's one thing to talk about personal choice, but I believe that people need to look deeper. What may be seen as personal choice is far from it - it is a choice affected by the impact of decades of anti-breastfeeding propaganda, buried in our culture.
The chances are you grew up without seeing breastfeeding or images of breastfeeding - dolls all had bottles, babies were fed from bottles. Public breastfeeding was vilified, is still equated with urinating in public by some. My daughter's Montessori teacher asked if she could take her baby brother home - her answer was, 'No, you don't have the milk to feed him!' and her teacher said 'Can I not just buy some in a shop?' My daughter thought that was hilarious - as did her teacher. A mutual and fundamental non-comprehension on both their parts. But I can't see my daughter ever having to leave a room, sickened, by the sight of a woman feeding her baby.
My mother in law never knew that breastfeeding was an option, as she was simply handed a bottle. And being working class, she was well trained to do what she was told by people with authority - so she didn't question it, despite the milk spilling out of her that was tailor made for her baby. She regrets it now, and resents the choice having been taken from her. Poor women breastfeed, as they can't afford superior, modern, scientifically designed formula.
A friend of mine had a a friend who had her baby when she was nineteen, came home from hospital and worried because her breasts were leaking - it turned out she didn't know what breasts were for - and her response? 'That's disgustin'!' And where does that response come from? There has been a concerted movement to stop breast feeding in this country - Milan is right, customs change with the times - but breast feeding is not a fad, it's not that scientists are going to come out and say, 'oh we were wrong'. It's clear that doctors have been, and still are, hideously, moronically wrong about breastfeeding and the properties of breastmilk. And in the name of all the misinformation, what has happened is that the realm of birth and babies that should be a woman centred place, has been taken over by the consumer interests of corporate giants, and their advertising, and women have internalised and propagated negative feeling about breastfeeding, and become insecure about it due to the shitty mismanagement of it by a tragically patriarchal hold over the medical profession. Don't tell me maternity hospitals don't get financial rewards for pushing formula. When I had to take my newborn to hospital, the first thing they asked me was 'are you breastfeeding and topping up?' That's sabotage, right there. And if I hadn't known what I was doing, the nurse would have fucked things up for me the first chance she got, with her misinformation and emotional bullying.
Another huge factor that puts people off is the pathetic support women receive in trying to breastfeed. Now the HSE are pushing breastfeeding rather than discouraging it, but in a heavy handed and destructive way. They are putting people off, by forcing breastfeeding on women, but failing miserably to have the knowledge or educational support to help women who are having a hard time. One friend had real trouble with positioning as the chairs in Holles St all had high arms, so she couldn't feed the baby in them, and the bed had a plastic sheet she couldn't sit upright on. Every midwife gives different advice. Most are untrained in breast feeding support. Some will have aggressively pushed formula up to very recently, and will now be resentfully hostile about having to push breastfeeding, and their methods will reflect this - like refusing a woman in pain a bottle of formula and walking away - how does that help resolve a breastfeeding problem?? Stupid. Ignorant. Bitch.
I was breastfed, it's in my family, I'm from an educated middle class background, I had homebirths etc - so statistically, the odds were stacked in my favour. If I had not had that background, and was only surrounded by helpers like my MIL, no doubt I would have fallen at the first hurdle without question. The breastfeeding rate in Ireland is poxy, and it's largely down to the hospitals and their miserable support. I read one story about a new mother asking for help, and the midwife raised her eyes to the ceiling and said 'Did you not read the pamphlet?' It would be funny if it wasn't so outrageous and tragic. The amount of women who want to breastfeed, get no help, suffer, and end up feeling like failures - I hate that that word is even in the vocabulary of new mothers, it's just not right. One woman on RC was angry that a woman should have to breast feed though in pain, and that 'support' made no difference. She misunderstood - we don't mean support like someone patting your hand while you bite on a towel in agony - we mean educated help that will stop all need for that sort of experience!
As Ina May Gaskin said, she and her community never had any breastfeeding trouble because they just knew what to do. In an educated (and I mean about breastfeeding, not generally) supportive environment, the problems will not arise becaues they are pre-empted.
Too many women's opinions have been affected by their friends' and sisters' bad experiences. Fear and misinformation abound. Attitudes to breasts don't help (though apparently is the stretching that occurs during pregnancy, not breastfeeding that makes 'em droopy). If a woman does not even want to put her newborn to her breast, I cannot accept that that is a simple matter of 'personal choice', there have to be layers of reasons beneath that choice. Certainly trying to make her feel guilty, or force upon her something she is not comfortable with is not an answer, or option. But surely it should be all our jobs to investigate those layers, and unearth the source of such a negative opinion?
It is a baby's most basic need, to be held skin to skin and root for a breast to find comfort and nourishment from. Here's a quote: Mothers and infants sleeping side by side, also known as cosleeping, is the evolved context of human infant sleep development. Until very recent times, for all human beings, it constituted a prerequisite for infant survival; outside of the Western industrialized context, for the majority of contemporary people, it still does. Because the human infant's body continues to be adapted only to the mother's body, cosleeping with nighttime breastfeeding remains clinically significant and potentially lifesaving.
This is because, of all mammals, humans are born the least neurologically mature (25 percent of adult brain volume), develop the most slowly, and are the most dependent for the longest period of time for nutritional, social, and emotional support, as well as for transportation. Indeed, in the early phases of human infancy, social care is synonymous with physiological regulation. That is, holding, carrying, and/or caressing an infant, and emitting odors and breath in his or her proximity, induce increased body temperature, less crying, greater heart rate variability, fewer apneas, lower stress levels, increased glucose storage, and greater daily growth.1
Moreover, since the content of human milk is relatively low in fat and protein and high in sugar, which is metabolized quickly, and since human infants are unable to locomote on their own, continuous contact and carrying, with frequent breastfeeding day and night, is required. Thus, any biological scientific study that attempts to understand "normal," species-wide, human infant sleep patterns without considering the vital role of nighttime contact in the form of breastfeeding and maternal proximity must be considered inadequate, misleading, and/or fundamentally flawed.2
Of course a bottle fed baby receives love and nourishment. And women have different definitions of what a mother's role is. My personal feeling about it is that newborns have the right to be breastfed, if it's possible. That a certain sacrifice is part and parcel of the experience of motherhood. When I see babies drinking from a bottle propped up on a rolled blanket, it makes me want to cry, when I think about what they need, and are being denied. I'm going to be controversial now, but to me there is a certain rejection implicit in not wanting to feed your baby. At a basic level, and to agree with Candy from the original conversation, and I'm sorry for not saying so earlier, yes, I feel it is a fundamentally selfish choice to decide against breastfeeding without trying it, without researching it, without seeing what it can be. It makes me frustrated, it makes me sad.
And I think this is where lactivists' intrusive passion comes from. Nobody wants to demonise women who don't breastfeed. God, no - but we feel for the babies, and for the mothers, and for what they may be losing.
I totally take MW's point about not wanting that connection, and fearing the sacrifice involved would have threatened her sanity and therefore her children's well being. Individual situation - best choice. And I know nothing about Shan's wife's situation. A major reason I didn't respond was that I didn't want to upset her with my extreme views, which do not take into account specific situations, nor are they meant to. It does work for some people who are having a hard time - one woman told me her baby blues were so bad, one day she just got into the hot press. But she said that feed times were her only moments of control and clarity, a break from her fears and depression. I know it's not right for everyone. But generally, I think that's a reason we should be insisting on better knowledge and support, not throwing it out wiht the bathwater.
There's so much to say, everyone. About its physical and emotional benefits. Oxytocin and the role it plays in bonding, and general feelings of happiness for mothers and babies. How breastfeeding after labour stimulates the womb to contract. Decreased cancer risks. Eyesight benefits. Health benefits into adulthood. For anyone interested, here are some articles that say it all better than I do.
Of course there is personal choice, Just make sure it is personal choice, not choice affected by decades of emotional propaganda, misinformation, poor maternity services, medicalised births, lack of support.
I totally take MW's point about not wanting that connection, and fearing the sacrifice involved would have threatened her sanity and therefore her children's well being. Individual situation - best choice. And I know nothing about Shan's wife's situation. A major reason I didn't respond was that I didn't want to upset her with my extreme views, which do not take into account specific situations, nor are they meant to. It does work for some people who are having a hard time - one woman told me her baby blues were so bad, one day she just got into the hot press. But she said that feed times were her only moments of control and clarity, a break from her fears and depression. I know it's not right for everyone. But generally, I think that's a reason we should be insisting on better knowledge and support, not throwing it out wiht the bathwater.
There's so much to say, everyone. About its physical and emotional benefits. Oxytocin and the role it plays in bonding, and general feelings of happiness for mothers and babies. How breastfeeding after labour stimulates the womb to contract. Decreased cancer risks. Eyesight benefits. Health benefits into adulthood. For anyone interested, here are some articles that say it all better than I do.
Of course there is personal choice, Just make sure it is personal choice, not choice affected by decades of emotional propaganda, misinformation, poor maternity services, medicalised births, lack of support.
2. J. J. McKenna, "An Anthropological Perspective on the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS): The Role of Parental Breathing Cues and Speech Breathing Adaptations," Med. Anthrop. 10 (1986): 9-53.
15 comments:
I think you've put it very well!! I love the quote, where did you find that? I'm on the bf side tho, so I'd love to see what a ff says about it. I think it's lovely, and I have pretty much the same thoughts and emotions that you do about it. Thanks for saying it, I'm very bad with words :-).
The quote comes from a Mothering article on nreastfeeding and co-sleeping - their website is full of info - just search for whatever you want: www.mothering.com
Very well said Jo! I generally stay out of these arguments as 1) i believe when people get up on their high horses about breastfeeding that every other gripe they have with the world gets attached onto it aswell. Theres nothing like it to rev people up and I dont believe its just about breastfeeding.
and 2) I think there are many ways to breastfeed and there are far too many rules attached by certain organisations and "ah sure you will be fine- get into bed with your baby " statements on the boards.
I followed a link from a friend's LJ and For Nine Pounds, and I just wanted to commend your writing here. I think this is the best essay re: breastfeeding v. bottlefeeding I've read in a long time. It says everything I feel I'm always trying to say but comes out wrong every time. I can't see how a bottle feeding mother could read something like this and be upset with you. I, too, am frustrated on places like rollercoaster (I'm escape14) and before long FF who feel under attack make an education campaign a holy war instead. Kudos!
Well, I do think there is a time and place for geting into bed with your baby - a day of getting patterns established can cure an awful lot, and there is too much pessure on women to be able to do everyting all the time, one reason why bfing is not more popular: it can be really hard if you don't give a lot up to it in the early days. But I agree we need indiviual support from trained professionals - nobody should have to get their info from chat rooms, really, where people are well meaning but can't necessarily give preofessional help tailored to yur situation.
As to high horses, well, I'm not sure what that means. I mean, if I'm not on my high horse in this post, who is? I suppose it's about attitude and compassion. I don't think anyone means to denigrate mothers when they insist that breastfeeding should be the norm. I think if breast feeding WAS the norm, women who didn't would actually feel a lot LESS pressure, because it wouldn't matter so much...
Thanks Candi, but it din't work! In fact it failed miserably - I upset a friend, made her feel I think she's a bad mother. And in the end it seems I'm only preaching to the converted: the message of why we feel the way we do, and the information about breast feeding's importance have got trampled in the emotional mire of blame and judgement again. So it feels like I've done exactly what I wanted to avoid!
Great post;) I agree with you. I breastfed 3 of my kids till they were 2 and a half years old and one for only 6 months because we were both sick and I always regretted having to stop. I believe the thing to do is what suits you and your child and your lifestyle and feck the rest;) You cant please all the people all the time so you might as well please yourself;)
PS Good luck at the awards with your group blog. Hope to see you there;)
What a well written post. I don't have kids yet, and have always wondered how I would approach the breastfeeding versus bottle feeding decision. Part of me has always felt that this is something that is simply not for me, whereas the logical part of my brain recognises that we are always going to be pushed towards formula, for the simple reason that someone can make money from it.
I have seen my sisters-in-law struggle with breastfeeding, and they have talked about the great sense of rejection and shame that they felt when they failed. I am appalled that there is no professional help or advice available for women in positions like this. I think the lack of professionals in this field is what makes it such a contentious issue, people simply don't know where to turn when things go wrong, and end up internalising instead of recognising that the system has let them down. You've certainly made me think about exactly what my position on this is, and who knows, I could be back here at some point in the future looking for advice!
Thank You.
Do come here looking for advice! And there are a lot of more experienced women on Rollercoaster who give great free advice and links. Support and info can make all the difference - nobody should haveto suffer. Or make a decision before they try it, ideally.
I would strongly recommend a breastfeeding class while pregnant -
Nicola O Byrne runs a private consultancy out of Leopardstown , she is so lovely, very down to Earth, not an 'earth mother' like me! I went to her class second time round, learned lots of stuff - lots of stuff v interesting about the effects of epidural on breastfeeding, and of course sections. But also huge amounts of practical advice and great resources, and hten you ahve her to come to your house if you need her.
She says she would agree with my previous post on LA Leche, and be more prone to direct people to Cuidiu (though I know a lot of people have been helped immeasurably by LLL, and their info is comprehensive and excellent, but you never know who you'll get, I think.
It's easy to talk about the immediate overwhelming love you ahve for your new baby - but if you've had a traumatic birth, or one that has not gone ideally I can see very clearly how you might not feel like giving yourself over to your baby - hospital, medicalised birth, and drugs, interrupts the flow of natural oxytocin that gives you that loved up feeling.
Statistically, women who have prepared more are more likely to keep breastfeeding after hospital, and I think having your support all lined up is one of the best things you can do - don't wait til your weepy and stressed after giving birth and you've ahungry crying baby and sore nipples!
I'd recommend 'Bestfeeding', it's a lovely book.
Finally have a moment to respond.
I agree completely. Completely. I also feel like crying when I see babies propped with bottles. It makes me sad, but it also makes me feel a very visceral anger which must just be a biological reaction--from a breastfeeding mother, an urge to "protect" all other young?
Heard a story recently of a mother struggling with her newborn: feeling kind of hostile toward him, feeling annoyed by his constant needs--she just didn't seem to be bonding with him, or feeling any kind of nurturing, protective "mama bear" emotions. This mother wasn't breastfeeding, hadn't even tried. Bottles from the get-go. So, part of me wonders how her experience would be different had she been nursing and been able to experience those lovely nursing hormones that make you feel connected and calm and sleepy and loving toward your baby.
I am lucky to live in a fairly progressive part of the country, I think--I see breastfeeding going on all over the place, and every single mom in my playgroup nurses or did nurse for at least a year. So, at least in my little bubble here, breastfeeding is the norm, and bottlefeeding is looked down upon.
I'm not going to say breastfeeding is a cure all for those PND typeof feelings towards your child. I think it's still a very real experience to have the tie and need of your baby make you feel trapped and resentful, definitely. Personally I would go to other options to try and resolve those feelings before I chose bottlefeeding as a solution, but other options don't exist for a lot of people, and if bottle feeding is a freeing, positive experience and one they consider satisfactory, why bother. I agree that the rationale is clear.
Jo, you could publish that. It was amazing. I just wanted to give you a quick comment now after reading that. Now I need to ingest it all. Thank you for writing such an amazing blog. It so clearly defines how so many of us breastfeeders feel, but have so much trouble turning the feelings into words. I think the two years of breastfeeding done you good!!
Thanks Mary :)
Thanks for all the comments, the aftermath of the signpost post I put on the group blog was so not good, I felt really about this post. The support made me feel better and made me feel confident again in the reasons why I'd posted it.
I came in too late then. Is the group blog you wrote gone? Sorry I couldn't be there to offer my support. x
Mary
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