While I doubt this has crossed the minds of many here, but some of the breastfeeding advocacy has been done in neighborhoods/cities of lower SES mothers where it is even more imperative that moms breastfeed. Why? Because it is common in these situations for moms to dilute formula or substitute it with things you don’t want to know about, because it saves money. They really don’t see anything wrong with it, because it’s likely what their own moms did for them and what they see being done all around them. They just don’t know any better… so this is where breastfeeding advocacy is truly in the best interest of the babies.
I guess I was lucky. I admit there was some discomfort/pain initially with the 1st kid initially, but H & I figured it would be ultimately be MUCH more convenient and to our understanding at least worth a good try. We made things work and for D it mostly went better, even tho D was hospitalized for a long weekend at age 2 weeks. Breastfeeding can be done for as long or short as the mom is willing. I have known some moms that go for 5 years (mostly as a comfort measure once they’re older than a year), but others who only nurse for the first week or so and then switch to formula and others who opt to just go straight to bottle. There is no ONE way that works or is right for everyone.
^^^^The pain can usually be corrected with help in the technique. I had EXCRUCIATING pain with D1 for a while. I would definitely have said “screw this!” with absolutely no guilt if my pediatrician hadn’t had a lactation nurse who helped me turn it around. I won’t go into detail, but it wasn’t pretty.
Right as I got it all down and things were going fantastic, I had a physical illness and surgery which necessitated giving up breastfeeding. I was a little let down, but we did fine and D1 grew into a beautiful, healthy, very intelligent child.
Yep, pain is nearly always about positionlng the baby wrong. Unfortunately we lost the wise old women in our society who could show new Moms what to do. I must say I am glad I had my first kid in German where you got six months leave to stay at home with your new baby and your boss was required to hold the job open for you. You even got extra “mother-money” during that time!
I think to some extent individual women either have an inborn desire to want to do this (and would feel sad / disappointed if they weren’t able to, and / or feel sad when they have to or choose to stop), or they simply don’t and don’t find it appealing. And it’s just how different people are made, and there’s little benefit in trying to change one type of woman to the other.
Here’s an imperfect analogy: Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers doesn’t go throwing weight-watching tips in front of people who haven’t decided to engage in weight loss. They do say - hey you, if and when you ARE interested, here we are and we can help you. They focus on increasing success among those who have the desire, not chasing those who don’t have the desire. This is simply Marketing 101.
Where some of the bf advocacy groups ran off the rails was that they set their goal to increase the % of women who have the desire, rather than increasing success among those who already have the desire and “letting be” the women who don’t have the desire.
This is a bit off-topic, but I have always felt guilty about the fact that I may have discouraged another woman from breastfeeding.
I have the sort of figure that is tactfully described as top-heavy. (Translation: Sometimes even the DD cup bras are too small.)
When I was a young mother, a woman came up to me on the beach while I was holding my younger child on my hip and said “You breastfed, didn’t you?” I said yes, not really thinking about it. She said, “It figures” and walked away.
I should have run after her and said “No, you don’t understand. Breastfeeding didn’t do this to me. I’ve looked like this since I was 15.” But I had to keep an eye on my older child, who was in the water at the time, so the woman, and the opportunity, disappeared. And probably that woman decided to formula-feed so she wouldn’t look like me.
“Yep, pain is nearly always about positionlng the baby wrong.”
Yes, but see, even if it weren’t actually painful, the very idea just makes my skin crawl and makes me want to fold my arms over my chest and swat anyone away. This is not a neutral body part for me. I am hardly alone, as a quick google will reveal.
@Marian, It doesn’t take much for a person to confirm his or her bias. I have always been well-endowed (since I was 12) and when nursing, got “fuller,” but as I have aged a bit less so. I don’t think that nursing (or if I opted not to nurse) has affected my breast size as much as aging has. I have known women with all sizes of breasts have successes and failures with nursing.
There is just so much variation. Marian, I don’t think you should be concerned that this 15 year old young woman had a bias she already held confirmed. There are women who nurse in the hopes that it will permanently increase their breast size as well–so far as I know that doesn’t happen. People who WANT information and to learn about the pros and cons of nursing and bottle feeding have more resources on the internet available to them than ever before. It’s a shame that there aren’t as many elders with positive experiences for a lot of young paremts, but resources are available if they are really interested.
Romani: Woof! My sympathies.
Remembering my painful condition gives me the same reaction.
I know several women who felt the same way as you. It didn’t occur to me to argue with them, and they never expressed disgust at any of us who did choose to breastfeed, all for various lengths of time. 25 years later, all the kids are doing well. As we knew they would.
I do agree that when there is pain and complications you have to really want to do it to continue. I am not saying that people who don’t power through are deficient, just that there will likely be times when that is what you need to do if you want to keep going. Also, there are kids who won’t eat out of a bottle. D wouldn’t even take formula, pumped milk or water out of a bottle and yes, we tried every kind of bottle and nipple. They just made her mad. She and DH got an understanding that she would just save her appetite for when I got home again. Eventually she would drink water out of a cup while I was gone. She wouldn’t take a pacifier either which was a royal PITA on car trips. She is still stubborn.
I did not like that ad. I did not like the portrayal of various ideas as snotty and intolerant. That just plays into the idea that people are snotty and intolerant. Over 23 years of raising children, I haven’t run into anything like that. My friends have been kind and supportive, my family also; if I did something that raised eyebrows (as when I was still nursing kid #2 when kid #3 was initiated), I ignored it and life went on.
Far more significant, and destructive, has been my internal voice: are you good enough, are you doing enough? My mother died when I was 8 months pregnant with my first, so I didn’t get a running update–you were just like that, your sister was the same, etc. That’s what I missed, and what I needed. I feel strongly that the corrective to handing mothers cans of formulas when they went home was sorely needed, because it’s damned hard to breastfeed, at first: it hurts and it’s scary and it’s uncontrolled, and people like control. Mothers-in-law like formula, fathers like formula, it’s measurable and it’s controllable and it’s Scientific. It is so easy to give in to the “Here’s something they will like” siren call. I loved, loved, loved, being able to breastfeed easily, happily and effortlessly (and cheaply!), but getting to that point was tough. I needed help from people who told me it would be worth the trouble, and it was. If you choose, for whatever reason, to feed formula, I do not have a problem with that; I respect your choice, and I’m sure it worked for you, and we all need to do what works. What needs to be understood is that formula is a clear choice; choosing to breastfeed is more difficult, and needs support because studies have shown that, over all, it is better for the baby–and you can’t go back and change your mind. This isn’t that big a deal: we know lots of things that are better for us that we may choose not to do (for me, exercise and lose weight!). We know lots of people don’t exercise and lose weight, but that doesn’t stop us from telling people that it would be better if they did. Every parent will make choices, and no one benefits from second guessing them. What people need is support, and help making choices that help them and their children. The ad that says that formula-feeding is “lazy” is really obnoxious, and unrespectful of the real pressures and difficulties of having a baby in this economic climate. This country has deliberately chosen to make it hard for people to have children, with no guaranteed parental leave, no support of new parents, no state-run competent childcare, as is common in other “developed” countries. We do what we can with what we have.
Marysidney - I’m sorry for your loss. Fwiw neither my mother or MIL engaged in much “this is what you were like at that age.” They’d likely forgotten. Frankly I couldn’t really tell you at what age my babies did x y or z without looking it up in their baby books. I think some people are baby people and remember those details fondly and permanently, and others just see it as a necessary stage that has to be gotten through on the way to more rewarding stages. I look back fondly on certain times and stages in my kids" lives, but babies? Not really. I don’t desire to hold other people’s babies and never really did. Mine were, of course, the light of my life but babyhood in general? I’ve forgotten the details.
THIS is the true mommy wars and it cannot be emphasized enough.
This country sucks at giving a crap about our children and families. Ironic, since you hear more of our politicians spew about “family values” (gag) than most other places.
ETA: I am the same age as many of your children and getting married soon. I am terrified to have children. Not because of the whole pregnancy and childbirth thing (which, admittedly, does kind of creep me out despite working in repro health)- it is because we are tens of thousands of dollars in debt because we had the audacity to come from lower income families and wanted degrees. It is because we’re afraid of not having stable, well-paying jobs which can support a family. It’s because we want a SAHP but know it might not be possible and then we worry that almost one of our incomes will entirely go to decent childcare. These aren’t worries most young people in the developed world have and it’s very, very sad.
I am with Pizzagirl when it comes to babies. I love my kids, but the baby stage wasn’t my favorite, and I also don’t like other people’s babies.
Fwiw I had two kids in two countries two years apart. First country kept babies in the nursery. Rooming in was a new concept there and was executed inconsistently. In the three nights I was in the hospital, one night they came and brought me the baby, the other two I had to beg (yes beg!) to get my baby. The other women did not ask for their babies; they were happy to let the nursery be in charge for a few days. I was sent home with formula, but the hospital did tell me nursing was good.
I was a new mom and joined a new mom group that was run independently of the government provided well baby care program. We met weekly and were supposed to get breastfeeding support, learn little songs and games, talk about new baby issues, that sort of thing. This was in a country that gave six months of leave to new moms btw. I can’t remember how many of us there were: maybe twenty? At the start, everyone was nursing. By the time baby reached six weeks, the numbers began to drop. By three months, I was the only one still nursing. From what the women said, they were encountering problems, and 1) when they went to the well baby clinic, were not receiving support from the nurses and 2) their moms didn’t nurse, so they weren’t receiving support at home. Our weekly new mom meetings didn’t fill the gap, apparently. There wasn’t any judgment when women would stop, but I was surprised so many stopped so soon. (I didn’t have any issues and my goal was six months. I figured after that I would want some freedom to leave baby with someone else for longer periods of time. I ended up going for a year. My choice to go longer DID surprise me. I went into breastfeeding not knowing what to expect, but ready to give it a go. It went well, so I kept on.)
Second child was born in the US. Rooming in meant being with your baby 24/7. Of course, I was discharged in 24 hours—remember that? I did get lactation advice, but since I had already been successful once, it wasn’t so important. No formula at discharge.
I didn’t join a new mom group since I had already been through all this before.
With baby number one, nursing for a year was viewed as pretty far out. No support from friends or MIL. I was the only person I knew who did it. I was self conscious, but hey, it was working for me. With number two, I knew lots of women who went for at least a year, some for even longer. It did seem more ideological here in the US, but at least I wasn’t an outlier any more.
I hear it has changed in my old country. It is more like here. Anecdotally, I met a young woman who had a baby at the same age I did who nursed for a year and was not unusual. She said her peers were like her. The culture has changed. It is still different from here because more women work and because there is that six month maternity leave. (Well, and in fairness, though this may bring the temperature of this discussion up, there was an incident of a local formula maker who sold infant formula that was missing an essential element. Somehow this was not discovered until several babies had died. I am sure this tragedy is still in the minds of new mothers.)
What country was this, Lizardly?
I enjoyed my babies and little children. Those years, for all the work, were sweet ones to me. My MIL and mother stayed far away and uninvolved as I had lot of kids and they were not interested in that kind of work. SO not much advice or help from either of them, but not much criticism either.
I guess I was thick skinned then and also just involved in my own world, as I did not feel that there were any mommy wars happening around me. Yes, there were sometimes snark remarks about any sort of thing, but they just didn’t stick and they were not anything that I took as a theme.
I nursed and bottle fed at the same time. I always scheduled a relief bottle so I could get away, and the breast pump just didn’t do it for me. My SIL who went right back to full time work was able to feed her two breast milk exclusively for about year with pumping, but I always had formula support from the beginning but also nursed up till 6 -11 months with each of mine. But I did not get any commentary about that. I can tell you that with my later children, the price of formula figured into my nursing as long as I did. With my many kids, the budget was always tight.
My pedi was frankly surprised that I “let” my two nurse for as long as they wanted. Both stopped on their own. S stopped at 9 months and D stopped at 18 months. It worked fine for us, tho I was glad D was ready to stop at 18 months because I was by then quite ready to stop too.
Formula and bottles were useless in our house because neither kid would take any of it, no matter whether it was breast milk, water, juice–they would starve until I was available, which was tough for S when I went back to work at 3 months! I was lucky that nursing was fairly intuitive and easy for me. I really didn’t have any support from friends or relatives because most of them had had problems nursing. I have no regrets and never was given any advice or support from any of the nurses or pediatrician. I also never tried contacting La Leche or anywhere else.
Israel