I think we can all agree that breastfeeding, if possible, is a better option than formula. But, cripes, does DHHS have to be so damn alarmist about it?
Warning: Public health officials have determined that not breast-feeding may be hazardous to your baby’s health.
There is no black-box label like that affixed to cans of infant formula or tucked into the corner of magazine advertisements, at least not yet. But that is the unambiguous message of a controversial government public health campaign encouraging new mothers to breast-feed for six months to protect their babies from colds, flu, ear infections, diarrhea and even obesity. In April, the World Health Organization, setting new international bench marks for children’s growth, for the first time referred to breast-feeding as the biological norm.
“Just like it’s risky to smoke during pregnancy, it’s risky not to breast-feed after,” said Suzanne Haynes, senior scientific adviser to the Office on Women’s Health in the Department of Health and Human Services. “The whole notion of talking about risk is new in this field, but it’s the only field of public health, except perhaps physical activity, where there is never talk about the risk.”
Check out these ads put out by the government. Guilt-tripping at its finest:
A two-year national breast-feeding awareness campaign that culminated this spring ran television announcements showing a pregnant woman clutching her belly as she was thrown off a mechanical bull during ladies’ night at a bar — and compared the behavior to failing to breast-feed.
“You wouldn’t take risks before your baby’s born,” the advertisement says. “Why start after?”
I’m not at all concerned about WHO’s promotion of breastfeeding as the biological norm, given the history of formula pushers in Africa who elevated profit over health. Nestle has been boycotted several times, dating back years (I remember hearing about this is high school, back before the earth cooled), because it would provide free baby formula to poor countries for a certain period of time, promote it as healthier than breast milk, and then cut off supplies after the mothers’ milk dried up. So rather than have a free source of food for their babies, these mothers had to pay, dearly, for infant formula, which was often mixed with contaminated water and stretched because there wasn’t enough money to buy a sufficient supply.
But DHHS is a different story. It’s playing on maternal guilt — the same kind that makes the daycare issue such a hot one — to promote breastfeeding as the “gold standard,” without regard to the reality that breastfeeding often isn’t possible:
Child-rearing experts have long pointed to the benefits of breast-feeding. But critics say the new campaign has taken things too far and will make mothers who cannot breast-feed, or choose not to, feel guilty and inadequate.
“I desperately wanted to breast-feed,” said Karen Petrone, an associate professor of history at University of Kentucky in Lexington.
When her two babies failed to gain weight and her pediatrician insisted that she supplement her breast milk with formula, Ms. Petrone said, “I felt so guilty.”
“I thought I was doing something wrong,” she added. “Nobody ever told me that some women just can’t produce enough milk.”
Moreover, urging women to breast-feed exclusively is a tall order in a country where more than 60 percent of mothers of very young children work, federal law requires large companies to provide only 12 weeks’ unpaid maternity leave and lactation leave is unheard of. Only a third of large companies provide a private, secure area where women can express breast milk during the workday, and only 7 percent offer on-site or near-site child care, according to a 2005 national study of employers by the nonprofit Families and Work Institute.
“I’m concerned about the guilt that mothers will feel,” said Ellen Galinsky, president of the center. “It’s hard enough going back to work.”
And now there’s the whole childhood obesity bugaboo to scare mothers with.
The potential for curbing childhood obesity was one of the selling points of a recent national campaign to promote breast-feeding. One magazine advertisement featured a bowl of ice cream with two scoops of vanilla, each dotted with a cherry in the middle.
“Breast-feed for six months,” the caption said. “You may help reduce your child’s risk for childhood obesity.”
So now there’s an additional reason to hector mothers with fat kids: You didn’t breastfeed, so it’s your fault!
Keep in mind, I don’t object to the goal of encouraging breastfeeding; I just would like to see the guilt-tripping dialed way the fuck down. And I’d like to see a comprehensive campaign to make it easier for women to breast-feed or to pump if they are working. Because, once again, we have the government trying to shame individuals into making a change when there are structural, societal barriers to making that change. God forbid we should abandon our rugged individualism.
This chimes pretty nicely (and by nicely I mean annoyingly) with the flap over the CDC’s “every woman must prepare to be pregnant at all times!” guidelines. The problem isn’t the goals: good health for mothers and babies. Who’s not on board with that? The problem is in the assumption that women and their bodies exist for the sole purpose of producing and nurturing children. I will not have children. If I did, I would hope to breastfeed. But I would also hope, should I not be able or willing to do so (you’ll notice that the profound pain many women experience w/breastfeeding is not mentioned in the DHHS or WHO warnings, not to mention the societal barriers you bring up, zuzu) that I would not be castigated as an un-maternal, and therefore less than a whole, woman.
Right on. Jeez, this is irritating.
I don’t see logrolling as a dangerous activity, even as portrayed in this ad. Am I missing something? They’re falling into WATER for goodness sakes, not into oncoming traffic. Maybe the women are just supposed to look ridiculous? Can someone pleae inform me?
Irritating in the extreme. Owing to the difficulties of breastfeeding and working, does this strike anyone as a subtle way of saying “Once you have a baby you should stay home anyway”?
Thank You. When my wife had to supplement, she felt guilty, and when her leave was up and she had to go back to work part-time, she couldn’t pump enough to be meaningful. Some women cannot do it for physical reasons, some for logistical reasons, and some for a combination of both.
Ah, I love our government. Among all the other heinous things they do, they make alarmist recommendations about breastfeeding without creating any societal change that would actually make it possible for individual women to breastfeed with ease.
I completely agree — breastfeeding is best, do it if physiologically possible. It’s not just good for your baby, it’s good for you (you burn a ton of calories — 600 a day if breastfeeding intensively — and you lower your circulating hormones, which reduces reproductive cancer risk). But here are the things that would need to happen to make this possible (and they would all have to be FREE or heavily subsidized):
-doulas for every pregnancy and birth
-lactation consultants that can do follow up home visits
-free high-quality breast pump — maybe one for home and one for work
-significant paid parental leave policy
-decrease the stigma and sexualization of the exposed breast so women can breastfeed in public with less embarrassment
-require breastpumping rooms in every commercial space
There are probably many more, but that would be a good start.
Ditto what Thomas said. My wife is a post-natal nurse and knew what was going wrong, yet her milk still dried up. If she has a second, there are a few things she’ll do differently & hopefully it will go better.
Staying at home for either of us just wasn’t an option with the housing costs here and 60K in student loans.
If we’re going to promote breastfeeding, women need to be given a lot more support, education, access to lactation consultants, etc. Breastfeeding doesn’t always come naturally to either moms or babies and, when I was in the hospital after my daughter’s birth, I received very little instruction or coaching on how to nurse correctly. I was later able to visit a lactation consultant (which my health insurance did not cover) but not after enduring excruciating pain from breastfeeding. I’ve also known women who give up breastfeeding when a baby has trouble latching on; again, this seems like something that could be corrected if help was more easily accessible.
I breastfed both of my boys for about a year each. I started supplementing at about 4 months with each one, because I had gone back to work and pumping just wasn’t providing enough milk. I did a research paper at the time I was breastfeeding my first son (9 years ago now), where I found out that there is a significant decrease in breastfeeding among mothers who have to go back to work at 6 weeks. If returning to work can be delayed until 3 months, the mothers are most likely to continue on until 1 year. At the time, the research I did also pointed to the fact that employers who supported breastfeeding efforts also had a higher percentage of mom’s coming back to work, lower absentism and just an overall cost savings over the alternative which was either to rehire/retrain in the position (if the mom quit) or to require the mom to return at 6 weeks and not actively support breastfeeding. I was lucky because I returned at 3 months and went part-time for awhile after my sons were born, but I’m not sure I could have continued if this had not been the case.
I have been a recipient of WIC and I really feel like while they don’t support breastfeeding as well as they should. Yes, they offer you food for the nursing mother versus formula for the baby if you opt to breastfeed. But I never felt like they offered much guidance on breastfeeding, so many of the other WIC moms I knew opted for formula feeding. I stuck out breastfeedign mostly because I knew I’d lose my benefits once I went back to work and knew I wouldn’t be able to afford the formula then. On WIC, 80% of the formula is funded by your WIC check, so it makes formula feeding an option, and if you don’t have much guidance on how to breastfeed it may be your only option. I say this because i think if the government is going to guilt everyone into breastfeeding, maybe they need to take a hard look at their own programs first. Now, I only had experience with WIC in my own corner of the world, maybe other offices were more proactive about this in other places.
I’m a big believer in breastfeeding, but its not something that can be done without lots of good support. Pediatricians don’t receive a lot of training in lactation, when my older son was born I heard that they received only about 8 hours of instruction in their entire medical training. It can be easier for them to quantify the amount of formula that a formula-fed baby is ingesting and so they sometimes lean towards encouraging formula feeding when there are feeding problems or problems with weight gain. Lactation specialists are the ones who know their stuff in this area. I tell my friends who are having babies that it is important that they find their own way with how they feed their babies, and not to let anyone pressure them to do it one way or another. I got tons of guilt from some because I supplemented, but its what worked for us. I encourage them to seek out a good lactation specialist if they want to breastfeed, so that they have the support in place to not just start but to continue.
yes, i think the onus here lands squarely on the government to legislate away these barriers to breastfeeding. Hectoring moms to adopt a breastfeeding-only feeding regimen won’t work, and let’s face it, corporations and institutions don’t provide things like extra/flexible leave time and on-site childcare unless they are forced to do so.
My only addition to the above comments is to suggest that labor unions could play a role in fighting for these changes. It would be an easy thing for a union to hire part-time lactation consultants, for instance, and send them out to members’ homes and/or job sites for demonstrations. Women and men who are union members and who care about this issue ought to make it an issue at bargaining time.
So, Livejournal doesn’t allow breastfeeding default icons and much of the population is up in arms about breastfeeding in public, but a magazine ad showing vanilla ice cream with cherry nipples is kosher?
(off-topic, yes, but I’m in TV – that’s what really caught my attention)
Livejournal doesn’t allow breastfeeding default icons when the nipple is shown, just like they don’t allow nipples on any other default icons. Ahem.
No clue. But it could be worse – they could be wrestling at one month pregnant or wrestling while pre-pregnant!
i wasnt breast fed. i never get sick, i am not obese. most people i know who WERE breast fed are always sick. I dont particuarly think it has any effect one way or another. i dislike women who breast feed in public too. so not a feminist thing to say, but put that crap away. why would you need to put pictures of your gross saggy boob with a child attached on your myspace? honestly.
this is just another ploy to get mothers feeling guilty if they arent doing everything right. what if i simple dont WANT to breast feed bc of how contricting it is to my life. especially if the woman is working. my cousins didnt breat feed bc they didnt want the only person getting up at night to feed the kid and they didnt want to spend a ton of time pumping every day. if formula was such an issue, there would be FAR more unhealthy kids in the world.
hey kate-your list seems a tiny bit out of control. havent women been breast feeding for centuries without all this support? doulas? lactation consultants? if you need THAT much help, you shouldnt be having children to begin with.
i agree with most of the others though. except breastfeeding areas in every commercial space. yuck.
Don’t like it; don’t look at it. No one forces homophobes to watch gay porn and no one’s forcing you to watch public breastfeeding. Ew, icky? That’s your argument? You do realize that if you ever get pregnant, your boobs are going to fill up with milk and get “gross” and “saggy” too, no matter if you decide to breastfeed or not. Oh noes!
I also wonder why breastfeeding seems to be so much harder now. (Not logistically, since office jobs are new etc.) What did women do beforehand if their baby didn’t latch correctly? (I assume that probably if they had insufficient milk there were wetnurses.)
What is a “breastfeeding area”? Lots of commercial spaces have nice chairs or benches or sofas — other than people saying “eww boobies”, is there something wrong with them? (I don’t have kids, so I don’t know. Maybe the chairs are too small or hard or something?)
Try it first and then tell us how easy it is and how support is unnecessary for this or any other function of mothering.
Well, in the old days a woman who had trouble nursing had a lot of women around her who had nursed, and whatever problem she had, one of those women probably knew the answer to it.
Breastfeeding simply isn’t instinctive in people; it needs to be taught – I’ve read that gorilla mothers who have never seen nursing need to be taught how to do it as well.
My breasts certainly headed south after pregnancy (as much as AA cups can, which isn’t too far), but may I assure Katie that they were never gross to the kids, and nobody ever complained about my nursing in public. Referring to breasts as “gross” and “crap” (and does Katie only mean the droopy ones, or do rocket-cones get a pass?) says more about one’s attitude towards women’s bodies than about the breasts.
when i read this article this morning in the paper, i had the same reaction: it’s good to encourage women to breastfeed, but there’s no point in making them guilty about it. my best friend recently had a baby, and had a really hard time breastfeeding, even though she was totally dedicated to it. in her desperation, she even asked (childless) me if i’d be willing to act as a wetnurse.
however, my friend is relatively well-educated and a bit of a hippy. my roommate is working on an epidemiology degree, and is looking at the breastfeeding issue in indian (native american) communities. a lot of indian women don’t know that breastfeeding is better. in fact, in some of the surveys my rommate showed me, women think it’s less healthy for the babies, and believe that it makes mothers gain weight. i know it’s hard to believe that everyone isn’t well-educated about some health issues, but it’s true. so in those situations, i can see how the ads might help. especially since some of the major health problems in native communities are related to overweight, such as diabetes. (you can argue about why that is, but it seems to be true.) some things that might be insulting to women who already “know better” might be useful for less fortunate women.
Good question. Not latching on correctly is a major problem. Not only is it incredibly painful, but can lead to broken skin which can become infected and you can end up with mastitis. Not fun, and in the past probably could be fatal as infections were. And it doesn’t heal well because the baby had to keep nursing. No downtime.
Before modern medicine intervened with childbirth/nursing, midwives and other mothers supported a new mother’s efforts in nursing. If every mother in your community has breastfed (and they all did, since there wasn’t really options for formula) then you have a wealth of community resources. But, you had problems too such as … how do you feed the infant of a mother who has died in childbirth? what do you do when a child can’t latch on due to cleft palate, or some other medical issue? I think this might be where formula and bottles came into being. Which were then quickly recognized as a convenience for mothers who may have been able nurse but for whatever reason didn’t want to. (Breastfeeding is wonderful but it is also something that can tie you down, especially in the beginning. You feed more often than with formula and the responsiblity falls to the mother entirely if there is no pumping, although fathers and others can certainly help out with other duties).
At some point, midwives were pushed to the side in favor of the more sterile hospital environment and much of this culture of women was removed from the equation. There was a whole period of time (I’m thinking 30′s-60′s) where women were rendered unconscious for childbirth by anesthesia and breastfeeding was frowned on upon (because of the sexual connotation) and discouraged. My own mother was told that formula was the preferred method of feeding. (The side effect of being told not to nurse was also that her children were not spaced very far apart… 7 children in 9 years.)
And so there are a lot of women right now (me included) that breastfed but didn’t have mothers to turn to for advice. And while yes, you could probably figure it out on your own, there are some things that go a lot smoother with good support and this is one of them. If it goes smoother, the percentage of mothers who continue with it for 6 mos or a year will increase. And, since lots of moms work outside the home these days, lactation specialists can help you sort out the logistics of that.
Sometimes she got advice from women around her, sometimes the babies died. Remember, the idea that every baby born is going to live to adulthood is really a very new one.
Also, sometimes women’s babies wound up getting nursed by other women.
Em said it better than I, but if one has children, the breasts sag. It doesn’t really matter if you’re going to breastfeed or not, the swelling and filling with milk will happen anyway and when all is said and done, they point south. Life happens, so just deal with it.
And as far as breastfeeding in public goes, the kid has to eat, so shut up and deal with it. It isn’t like we’re whipping them out for a community ogle session, there’s really nothing sexual going on, and it is solely for the purpose of feeding a baby. I breastfed both my boys for about 10 months (not so much because it was better for them–although it is–but because breastmilk is free and formula is damned expensive) and I did it wherever I happened to be if the babies were hungry, restaurants, shopping, etc. I’ve even been known to climb into the back seat and contort myself to feed the baby in the car seat if he wouldn’t take a bottle on a long trip. Again, life happens, kids gotta eat, and such is the way of the world.
However, I do agree that if society were more accomodating to breastfeeding mothers, it would be way easier. I stayed home with my first and so didn’t really have any problems, but I worked part time after my second was 2 1/2 months old and even that much with pumping and so on, it was logistically a nightmare and way more difficult. I can only imagine if I’d been working full time how bad it would be.
There was a nice book on the cult of breastfeeding a few years ago (which, interestingly, includes Christian conservatives who think that breastfeeding is part of “God’s plan” as well as liberal naturalist-types who think that formula is a corporate conspiracy to poison babies). It was written from a choice feminist’s perspective, and was called “When Breastfeeding Is Not An Option” by Peggy Robin.
Breastfeeding is probably marginally better for babies, and therefore deserves mild encouragement and support from the government. But babies aren’t going to die just because they are bottlefed.
Because breastfeeding is “natural” and because it requires some sacrifices, it has a lot of psychological appeal to certain sorts of people.
Dilan, I think the studies have shown that breastfeeding is more than marginally better than formula, particularly because of the immunity it confers on babies. But given the fact that this is the first world, those advantages are far less crucial here than in the Third World.
But you’re right that the whole “natural” and sacrificial thing appeals to a certain type of self-righteous busybody — look at that “organic sex” idea. I think the government’s going too far with ladling on the guilt while doing nothing to actually make breastfeeding feasible for a lot of women who just find it too difficult or inconvenient now. It’s the health equivalent of an unfunded mandate.
Thanks to the people who answered my question — I think I assumed it was more instinctive than it is. (I don’t have any real experience with seeing breastfeeding — my younger sisters were adopted, we’re not close to my cousins, and none of my friends have had kids yet. I’ve seen women breastfeed in malls or in the park, but somehow asking intrusive questions about it never seemed like the thing to do.)
Here is an interesting link to a list of reasons why breastfeeding rates are low (from a pro-breastfeeding point of view), some of which has already been discussed in comments.
Age makes one’s breasts sag. I breastfed four kids, without noticeable sag, but now that I’m nearly 70, they do droop quite a bit. As for “it didn’t use to happen,” I knew several women in my mother’s age group who were unable to breastfeed.
What, does wrestling while pregnant increase the risk of abortion complications? Just have ‘em sign a waiver that they won’t file suit over birth defects or miscarriages.
@Kate (#6)
No, no no. You’re missing the point — this is a concerted, two-pronged approach to the probelm of women in public. Not only are we passing laws and codes to make it far harder for women who want to breast-feed to do so, but we’re also adding in this whole guilt-tripping deal as well.
It’s part of the neoconservative push to make sure that women stay indoors, at home, with child, and close to the kitchen. Where they belong :) That way, all the good jobs open back up for real WASP men. It’s just not fair that women are stealing those jobs, under the guise of “feminism” where they march in the streets draping themselves in NOW flags and demand special rights.
God, I hate the patriarchy. Why the need to make women feel guilty about ANYTHING?
I have 2 kids. With the first, no one told me that I needed to drink lots and lots of water (plus I was dehydrated from the delivery–much blood loss). Our first evening home, we still hadn’t produced any poopy diapers, so we called the doc, who told me I was starving my baby. Thanks, asshole. Good policy to make the new mom cry instead of simply explaining the urgent need to supplement with formula. Just induce guilt.
Luckily, my SIL is an ER nurse and her best friend is a lactation consultant. What the hell do regular folks do? We fed the boy formula that night, and then the next day when he rejected the breast (b/c it’s harder than using a bottle) I would have given up if not for my SIL’s support. He ended up being the easiest eater ever–we’d top him off with formula after nursing just to be sure and he went from breast to bottle with no “nipple confusion”. Never hurt at all.
When I had my daughter, I knew what to do, but she didn’t. She NEVER latched correctly. That’s when I learned it takes 2. I was able to breastfeed her exclusively, but it was never comfortable and often hurt. I totally can understand why some women quit, and that’s their RIGHT. You do the best you can, and if breastfeeding doesn’t work for you, nobody has the right to make you feel guilty about it. We live in the 21st century, and we have alternatives.
As if guilt was such a great motivator anyway. Why can’t they simply promote breastfeeding as the healthy alternative it is? Why the need to belittle women who can’t–either physically or due to life situations?
As for public breastfeeding–it’s not yucky. You don’t even need special clothes. There’s nothing anyone can see, unless they are looking WAY too closely. It just looks like the baby is sleeping in your arms. I can’t tell you how many times my dad, an enormous prude, tried to take a nursing babe from my arms.
zuzu:
Breastfeeding confers some immunity on babies. But plenty of breastfed babies get sick, and plenty of formula-fed babies don’t. That’s why I say the effect is marginal. It’s not zero, but in the scheme of things, it’s not that big a deal. (I would also add that not having a frazzled mother is probably also good for a baby’s health, and to the extent that formula feeding promotes parental tranquility, that’s a health benefit that militates in the other direction.)
Furthermore, in the third world, despite the theoretically greater imporance of the immunities, breastfeeding can actually be counterproductive because it is a method by which HIV can be passed from mother to child. So even there I am leery of overpromotion of breastfeeding.
The bottom line is that I don’t have a problem with some mild governmental promotion of breastfeeding, e.g., publishing pamphlets promoting the benefits of breastfeeding or whatever. I also think that it would be a good idea to provide governmental support to women who choose to breastfeed, through mechanisms such as anti-discrimination laws that ensure that businesses can’t kick breastfeeding mothers out of their stores, flex-time and other mechanisms to allow working mothers to breastfeed if they choose to, and aid programs that ensure that poor women have access to lactation consultants.
But it’s possible to do these things without shoving breastfeeding down people’s throats. If a woman wants to formula feed, that’s perfectly fine.
You commenters are awesome. You’ve really said it all.
I do just want to reiterate, it’s not just that breastfeeding is better for kids (we can argue how much, it’s not too important to this argument), it’s significantly better for moms to be able to have a bit of a reprieve from hormones, and better to have two calorie-burning machines strapped to your chest when you’ve just had a kid. Reallocating energy from fat storage to breastfeeding is a good, healthy process.
That said, so many of you have put it so well: enough with the guilt. Enough with God’s plan or natural is best. Do it if you can, get the resources if you can. But don’t beat yourself up about it, and don’t let anyone else do it either. Formula-feeding moms are absolutely wonderful moms, as are breastfeeding moms.
Good support of mothers in general helps decrease being a frazzled mom. Formula does not erase being a frazzled mom. Formula comes with its own set of frazzleliness: try having to wait for the bottles to sterilize and the formula to cool down before feeding a wailing baby (unless of course you plan ahead, which i was never good at). Once you get the breastfeeding thing figured out, its really quite convenient and an excellent way to bond with your baby. Having said that I totally support any mother who makes the choice to bottle feed exclusively or to supplement. We all must find our own way and lets hope there are supports in place to help up muddle through the way we choose. The thing about guilt is that it only affects those of us who care in the first place, and I’m not sure we’re the ones who need to be targeted.
I am still nursing my 21 month old son. but i had a lot of problems in the begin and had to take it day by day for the first 3 months. my milk came in but it wasn’t enough some days. i pumped and grew more frustrated at the lack of milk i produced. when i stopped pumping and accepted that my son would get about 8 oz of formula a week, things started to get better. by 4 mths he didn’t need any formula, he just nurse until his 1st birthday when we gave him solids.
he still nurses 3 times a day. and i am grateful there is formula out there. not everyone can produce milk and we need options.
This is somewhat off-topic, but I’m basically just sick of being given advice about the best way to be a parent. Obviously, advice has its place — knowing that your little boy isn’t going to catch teh gay from playing with dolls is a good thing — but it’s so often delivered in this perscriptive, heavy-handed way that turns me right off. And once a best parenting practice is established, deviation from that is framed as near-abuse, taking “unnecessary risks” on the part of a helpless child.
I nursed my youngest daughter until she was four, so I’m all for it, but damn.
My mother was about to die from trying to breastfeed me and it wouldn’t work. She said the pain put labor to shame. Fuck anyone who thinks one size fits all–that’s basically the issue here, trying to make anyone who’s even remotely different suffer from enormous guilt.
I also wonder why breastfeeding seems to be so much harder now. (Not logistically, since office jobs are new etc.) What did women do beforehand if their baby didn’t latch correctly? (I assume that probably if they had insufficient milk there were wetnurses.)
Well, it’s a logistical problem. Women have less children and less association with each other and so finding a friend or relative to wetnurse is harder to do.
And, as a nasty reminder of how the good old days weren’t so great, a lot of babies starved to death.
My grandmother said she kept goats to help women in her neighborhood who couldn’t breastfeed, since goat milk is a little easier on baby stomachs.
I have no experience with breastfeeding myself, but I am damn proud to be a part of instituting a lactation room for the women that work in my male dominated workplace (brewery). Women who would like to use the lactation room have a private, clean, quiet, and comfortable place to pump, or to bring their infant if they can and want to, to nurse. We’re working on the childcare…
My mom’s generation was guilted into formula. “It’s convenient. It’s good for baby.” I was a formula fed baby myself. My uncle was a pediatrician so my parents were able to get their formula for nearly free when we were infants. People raised an eyebrow when they saw a mother breastfeeding. THEY STILL DO TODAY!
There is a black box label on every cigarette pack in America. Do people still smoke? In DROVES.
Let’s face it, Americans, as a whole, don’t care about their health. We smoke. We overeat. We don’t exercise. Even though we know what *is* healthy, we still won’t actually do it.
We are SELFISH pigs. And we don’t even just harm ourselves.
Pregnant women all over America drink alcohol excessively. Smoke. Do drugs. Despite all the warnings and campaigns, they still do it!
The recommendation for breastfeeding for at least 6 months and preferably for the first year has long been around. Has it mattered? Not so much.
Okay, yes, my first son nursed like a champ from day one. My second son, not so much. There were a few visits with the lactation consultant right after his birth in the hospital and a couple more in the weeks after we got home before we got things right. Sure, I supplemented with formula sometimes, and was glad I had access to it. But for 13 months and 16 months, my boys had breastmilk.
In my personal experience, for every mom that has struggled and done everything she could to breastfeed, before turning to formula, there are exponentially more that turn to formula out of convenience after either no attempt or a half hearted one at breastfeeding. They don’t want to read Nursing Mother’s Companion. They don’t want to try fenugreek. They want the “easy” way out. So what if it costs so much?
If you’ve tried to nurse and you can’t, then you can’t. You can take pride in knowing that you did everything you could and it didn’t work out. There is no shame or guilt in that.
But more women don’t even try. They don’t want to try. And that’s a shame.
Yes, the campaign is heavy handed and alarmist and over the top. Guidelines and recommendations don’t work for the general public, though. Threats and warning might garner interest. To be honest, a reality show would be even more effective. “A Breastfeeding Story” or perhaps “Lactation Nation”
“Honey, we’re killing the kids” has raised more awareness than any public service announcement.
Of course I don’t think they should label formula as risky or dangerous. But I wouldn’t mind seeing the breastfeeding recommendations on cans of formula. “The surgeon general says…”
In fact, isn’t there a brand of formula that actually has a “Breast is best, but if you can’t breastfeed, Brand X is the closest to breast milk” type slogan?
My hope is that this campaign can help make breastfeeding the norm, not the anomaly. That it could help push forth legislation for employers to provide a non-bathroom area for lactating employees to pump and/or nurse their children. Insurance coverage for lactation consultants and breast pumps.
My point is, even with this campaign being so over the top, people are going to do what they want anyway. Even if you had to get a prescription for formula, doctors would write them if you asked for it. They schedule unwarranted C-sections, don’t they?
It’s interesting to me that this issue comes up around the same time that Ferber is re-clarifying his getting your child to sleep method and adjusting his stand on co-sleeping. Is the natural parenting grassroots movement taking hold? Or is it something more???
Good lord! OUCH! Sorry for the inane comments, but my memory of labor was that it put getting your nails ripped off to shame and the idea of something worse is just…YECH!
My critter was a “procrastinator” who didn’t think much of the colostrum so I had problems the first few days. Of course, I was also badly dehydrated and on opiates the first day (recovering from a c-section after 12 hours of labor that barely started dilation, a fever of 105F, and fetal distress…I started refusing drugs except tylenol when it became clear that really the post-surgical pain was quite mild). So the critter got one bottle of formula and three of pedi-lyte in the hospital, but once the milk started coming in she had no nipple confusion at all: she knew rubber from breast and knew which one she preferred. I ended up breast feeding exclusively for about 8-9 months and as a supplement to solid food long after.
My workplace had a lactation room: a small, windowless room in the basement that was probably originally meant as a closet, but at least private. They didn’t make it easy to find though. It took me a month, during which i was pumping in the bathroom, library, or anywhere else I could get a seat and not harassed too badly, to find it.
Ann, what brewery is this? I know some beer people who’d be very interested to hear about your news.
I am a firm believer that a big part of the pro-breastfeeding fanatic movement is just a re-packing of “Controlling Women for Dummies”, and modeled along the same lines as Christian fundie movements.
1. Guilt, guilt, guilt about whether you are “good enough”
2. Despite being the only organized group (there is no anti-breastfeeding group) whine constantly and only position themselves as victims (of intolerance, a vast formula conspiricy, etc.) and in the minority.
3. Despite offering advice on how to pump breastmilk for your child, always equate bottle-feeding with formula feeding, which forces anyone who bottle feeds (say, a working mom) to defend themselvs also (really, it’s breastmilk).
4. Refuse to acknowledge that there is any reason why you cannot exclusivly breast-feed. If you dont, you’re just not trying hard enough.
5. Have adherants (unlike non breastfeeding moms) who will casually tell you that you are a horrible mom, shouldnt have kids, deserve to have your kids taken away, etc. for the crime of formula-feeding
6. Claim to support womens right to work and have children but dont provide any suggestions/support/lobbying effort into changes that dont include guilting non-breastfeeders.
7. Use words like “selfish” and “convenient” to describe the actions of women they dont agree with.
8. Are deliberatly vague about subjects that would allow women greater autonomy while breastfeeding – try figuring out how to have an alcoholic drink without harming the baby from a breastfeeding website.
9. Pretend that breastfeeding is free while the alternative is expensive – try adding up a breast pump, a travel pump, doula, a lactation consultant, bottles & storage bags – breastfeeding is hardly free (except under a strict set of circumstances, which, oddly enough, are usually only available to rich white women).
10. Disregard/Ridicule any science that doesnt conform to pre-existing beliefs – pacifiers more likely prevent SIDS than not, breastmilk immunity nil after 6 months, etc.
I breastfed my daughter and had a horrible time. Probably because of a lot of the things mentioned (not tons of support, huge societal issues with breastfeeding in public) in combination with the fact I wasn’t taking care of myself at all and I had no choice but to go back to work at 6 weeks. She lost weight, we supplemented. There are people ho will act like it’s bad thing, but my daughter thrived on formula in a way she didn’t when I was exclusively breastfeeding. I also ended up with a clogged milk duct, which hurts. We switched to formula completely at 4 months and she did fine. Now, I wish we had been able to longer. I am staying home a lot longer after the baby I’m carrying is born and I’m hoping that what I learned with Isabelle will allow me to breastfeed a lot longer with this baby, because I really do think it’s the healthiest option IF you can do it and your baby does well with it. Plus, it’s so much less expensive and much more convienent in the middle of the night. However, if you can’t do it (or heck, even if you choose not to) it’s not going to kill your children and I know a lot of babies that had a really hard time breastfeeding who thrived on formula. It just annoys me to see this huge push of breastfeeding without the social support that needs to go with it.
How timely, I just contacted Le Leche League and bought a copy of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding yesterday. Nursing is an act of love, and narcissism, but mostly love. That’s my entire experience with motherhood so far. I confess I loathe babies, they repulse me, but my own has literally grown on me. Images of labor and delivery make me think of Alien and long for amnesia-inducing drugs, but I’m dutifully giving birth at home so I won’t be tempted by the drugs (can’t have them anyway). Thoughts of breastfeeding remind me of picking the ticks off the farmhouse dog, leaving me nauseous, but the pragmatic side of me can’t argue with her improved health (and IQ, go figure), weight loss, and the reduced expense. But being guilted and forced into breastfeeding? I can’t handle people dictating to me like that. Under different circumstances, I’d have an abortion and mail the genius who thought this up the bill: I refuse to reproduce if I’m not given the autonomy to raise the child as I deem best sans abuse.
I think that’s kind of the issue: feminism involves seeing women as basically rational, responsible adults. That means that there should be PSA’s about the benefits of breastfeeding, and public support for breastfeeding (as well as assistance for women who have difficulty doing so for whatever reason). It also means that we shouldn’t condescend to women or act as though they’re mostly a neglectful, selfish group; ads like the ones described do imply that.
When I breastfed my first son, I was told that I should have absolutely no alcohol. One day, when he was really, really crazy fussy my neighbor told me to drink a beer and that it would settle him down. I was desperate and I did and it worked (well, I think it worked–maybe he had just fussed himself to sleep). Anyhow, I felt like a complete shit after that and for a long time.
By the time the 2nd one came along, I was less easily guilted and I did a little internet research and found out that alcohol consumption is not contraindicated while breastfeeding. I asked my doctor about thsi and he said “you shouldn’t drink alcohol while nursing”. I pointed to my research, and he said, “well, yes, its not contraindicated, but stilll… you shouldn’t drink.”
Ah! So, really the not drinking thing is more about the “appropriate” behavior of a mother and less about any real medical issue for the child.
While I’m not advocating doing shots while caring for your baby, I think medically speaking having a glass of wine here and there or a beer isn’t a problem but no one wants you to know that! Because if you were a “good mother” you wouldn’t want a drink now would you? There is this weird guilt applied to mothers in the name of “medicine” that’s really more about how someone else feels we should be conducting our lives.
there are exponentially more that turn to formula out of convenience after either no attempt or a half hearted one at breastfeeding. They don’t want to read Nursing Mother’s Companion. They don’t want to try fenugreek. They want the “easy” way out.
Nice straw new mother — she’s so lazy! She makes choices for her baby out of conveeenience! What That Girl said.
[...] Human Services’ new campaign about breastfeeding. (link requires free registration) Here’s a (well-written, IMO) analysis of the problems with the campa [...]
Well, it took 40 comments, but we got ourselves a Drive-By Mommy!
Sorry, that’s my fault.
(see here and here)