Unauthorized Cinnamon, I think the key to the issue is what you said in this paragraph of your OP:
The problem is, you can dig around and try to figure out & fix the mother’s problem all you want, but at the end of the day, she still has the husband, the relatives, the doctor, the friends, the neighbors, the boss, and the culture to deal with. If her husband, her mother, or her boss are unsupportive or undermining, then you are asking her (or she will perceive that you are asking her) to fight a battle that she may not be willing or able to fight. And if that is added on as a layer of guilt, her feelings toward you are not likely to be positive.
Part of the issue with problems is age. Many women in the first world are having children older. My wife was 40 when we did. How many third-world women are having their first child at 40?
There may, in fact, be plenty, but there also may be friends and relatives around who are nursing and can help them out. Our pediatrician told us a story about a patient’s mother who was having trouble nursing. The family had emigrated from a middle-eastern country (I can’t remember which). The woman told our doctor that where she came from it wasn’t uncommon for a relative or friend with an older, nursing baby to “trade” with the new mother so she could practice nursing with an “experienced” baby. They also felt that the older, stronger baby could help increase her milk supply.
My mother’s mother nursed a few neighbor’s babies, too (rural Kentucky), if they needed help for some reason.
I think most Americans would find the idea rather oogy, nowadays.
No problem, it’s nice to find someone else who actually reads those things. I’m about the only non-healthcare professional I know who reads medical journal articles. I also read all the tiny fine print on the prescriptions I get. It drives my wife nuts when I can quote how many people involved in the clinical studies got diarrhea from antibiotic X. I find a lot of that stuff very interesting, even though I never use it in daily life.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, and it is an enormous topic.
Mtgman has already provided a very good, relatively unbiased source on the relative benefits of breastfeeding. If you’d like to learn more, I wanted to contribute the most up to date, unbiased large scale review of the topic that I am aware of, which is the American Academy of Pediatric’s 2005 policy position on breastfeeding. It addresses the benefits of breastfeeding, when breastfeeding shouldn’t be used, banking of breast milk, and other topics.
Generally, the topic of breastfeeding’s effect on neurological development and IQ is a difficult one to study with a large number of confounding variables and very long time frames. The evidence supports breastfeeding, although breastfeeding advocates have likely overstated this to some extent. The advantage in terms of resilience to a number of common diseases in early childhood is indisputable.
I mentioned this in the other thread, and I think somewhere else on the board - that breastfeeding is, and has been, a class issue for a while now - but I was underwhelmed with the response.
Not that the other thread was the appropriate place.
Sorry - my response to you in my head was, “yep, I agree”, only I didn’t post it.
And that’s the crux of it, really. I think breastfeeding should be a medical issue. Not a class issue, not a moral issue, not a parenting issue. A medical issue. And, as a medical issue, there should be research into it and better (hell, ANY!) medical treatments for those, like me, who really just can’t make it work.
What we have right now is a group of well-meaning LAYPEOPLE, for the most part, trying to help one another (LLL) and a group of well-trained in an ill-understood field (lactation consultants) who have only about a dozen tricks up their sleeve (nipple shields, positioning, pumping, pillows - really? THIS is the sate of the art in breastfeeding assistance?! We can put a fucking man on the moon and we can’t increase milk supply?!). What we don’t have is droves of medical doctors doing medical research on the medical puzzle of how to increase milk supply in a population of the medically abnormal or chronically stressed.
For the “really just can’t make it work”, yes, I can see why attempts at education and “keep with it” feel like attacks. God knows I spent enough 2 AM pumping sessions crying into the milk because I could only get 2 ounces despite the herbs, the diet, the quasi-legal Domperidone pills from an internet pharmacy in New Zealand, the visualizations of waterfalls, the smelling of the baby’s blanket, the whole 9 yards and then some! But really, if there was something better to offer us, they’d tell us. They’re not being meanies. “Stick with it” really is the best advice for 95% of the population.
But it is kind of like telling a diabetic, “your blood sugars will normalize, just stick with it!” Perhaps some training in differentiating the medically unable from the sabotaged, ignorant or lazy would be helpful. But for that to happen, medicine would have to recognize hypolactation as a genuine medical problem and figure out how to treat it.
Like Unauthorized Cinnamon, I’m mostly interested in educating those vast droves of women who *could *breastfeed, but chose not to. Yes, I’ll admit it, I do have a negative judgement towards that population. unlike what **eleanorigby **said in the other thread, I know literally dozens of women who have chosen not to even attempt breastfeeding because it’s “too much trouble” or “it’s gross”. I’m talking well off stay at home mothers here - no excuses about full time employment and pumping and bottles for daycare. And it’s THAT sort of thinking that I think is best addressed by changing our language and making breastmilk normal and formula inferior. Frankly, and I know I’m going to piss people off here, if you’re with your baby all the time, your breasts work just fine, you don’t have sexual trauma around your breasts and you just think it’s gross or troublesome to breastfeed, I think you’re a selfish shortsighted bitch. Or, perhaps, just perhaps, ignorant about (and I’m chosing my words with care) the shortcomings of formula. Not the benefits of breastmilk, but the shortchanging of formula.
Which do you think might be more successful? Calling women selfish shortsighted ignorant bitches? Or rephrasing things so that people are actually faced with the consequences of their choices? “Benefits” are easy to turn down. “Shortcomings” are harder to accept, no? These women choose to decline the benefits of breastmilk - but would they be so quick to embrace the shortcomings of formula? Same action, different thought process.
This language wasn’t invented by breastfeeding advocates or doctors. This language - the very phrase “breast is best, but…” was invented by advertisers trying to sell formula. Just like other slick advertising phrase, it’s designed to make their product look better than it is. And when research about the “benefits of breastfeeding” (which should be aka “the risks of formula feeding”) came out, those researchers fell right into those language patterns. They fell for it - they fell for the advertising, and kept using formula as the baseline, instead of breastmilk. This is against all standards of medical reporting - aspirin reduces blot clotting, insulin lowers blood sugar, Viagra increases erections, ibuprofen reduces pain - the “normal” is our body as it is without intervention. Only in infant feeding statistics is normal the artificial choice and the altered state the natural state of our bodies. What’s up with that?
Breastmilk doesn’t raise IQ. It just doesn’t. Raised as a human infant, drinking human infant milk, that’s the IQ - that’s what it should be. Formula feeding LOWERS IQ. And so on and so forth.
I wish when I was pregnant someone would have taken me aside and told me how much breastfeeding would hurt. I think I would have been better prepared for those initial struggles. It is the reality of breastfeeding that takes some women to early weening. It hurts. You leak. It makes you tired. There can be infections…and blood! It’s awesome, but it’s not the beautiful experience a lot of pregnant ladies think it’s gonna be!
In hospital, I was treated poorly by the lactation consultants. I wanted to be alone and yet they kept barging in while I was perfecting my technique. Being a highly private person by nature, I resented their intrusion and one had the nerve to shake her head and wonder aloud if I was going to continue or not. I did, by the way.
Now that my son is off the breast, I can look back at the experience and chuckle a bit at how emotional I was at things that were said…and things I perceived.
Now that I am surrounded by moms all day, I see both camps…and witness great Mothers coming from each.
My parents gave me sweetened condensed milk. Not formula. Not breastmilk. Not even regular milk because it was too expensive. Stuff out of a can.
I can understand women who can breastfeed choosing not to do so because it’s a PITA and they want their bodies back. Breastfeeding is like still being pregnant.
Women in their first year(s) of motherhood with their first babies are going to be somewhat crazy. The hormones, the change in lifestyle, the all-consuming love of their child; it’s just all too much. I wouldn’t mess with them. Whatever they want to do, fine.
There are MUCH bigger mistakes to be made down the road.
It is interesting, though, what a previous poster said about new moms being handed “experienced” babies to nurse - that makes a lot of sense, I’ll be that’s how they get it done.
And BTW, I thought that breast milk/IQ thing had been thoroughly debunked in the past few years? Wasn’t it?
I agree and disagree here. If you mean that breastfeeding makes your nipples sore for the first couple weeks, I agree. And it pisses me off when some advocates say, no no, it never hurts at all. It does. Your nipples are doing things they’ve never done before, and it takes a little time to adjust. I also agree that it helps to know that there can be problems - I thought, “nipple, baby, how hard could it be?” and oh boy, did I get an answer to that!
But, if you’re saying that breastfeeding hurts the whole time you do it, I think this is a great example of you getting misinformation and lack of support that could undermine breastfeeding. After the first couple weeks, pain is an indicator that something is wrong. At any time, pain that makes your toes curl and your eyes water is an indication that something is wrong. Infections and blood are indications that something is really, really wrong! This is not the normal course of breastfeeding.
If you were in pain for months on end and kept going, I am so impressed with your fortitude. But I think not many women have that much strength and dedication, and if we want to help people breastfeed in accordance with AAP recommendations, we really do need to make sure that someone in that situation gets correct information and help, immediately.
I come from a culture of breastfeeders. I find those who are squicked by breastfeeding a bit…odd. Breastfeeding is just the Right Way to Do It, in my mind. So I totally get why some who really believe in breastfeeding are pushy about it.
But if a woman really can’t do it, then she should have alternatives, eh?
I don’t know. It makes me skeptical too. I have allergies and asthma, and they gave me so much tetracycline for ear infections when I was small that it discolored my permanent teeth. My mom had postpartum depression too …and I was breastfed until I was on solid foods.
Committing to breastfeeding already knowing that the proported benefits aren’t definite seems like a lot of effort for women who are struggling.
I formula fed my adopted son and breastfed my daughter…and I fail to see how its ANYONE’S business that I did either. Why do we spend all this effort on breastfeeding and almost none on how much fast food they eat or how much soda they drink three years later? Why did I get pressured from all corners to breastfeed, but looked at like an alien when I feed my kids organic tofu. Why are breastfeeding advocates in your face (and literally, when bottlefeeding my son, and after six months when my daughter rejected the breast, my daughter - rude enough to come up to you and tell you you were doing the wrong thing) and elementary school feeds my kids chicken nuggets and apple dippers and calls it food.
I suspect we’d get healthier and smarter kids if we tackled something that doesn’t have the emotional impact of breastfeeding - the diet of a kid from two to eighteen - without managing to piss off, depress, and annoy a bunch of well meaning people who DID give it a shot.
I wonder at statements like this – just look at the huge range of pain responses in the recent dental threads. It IS actually possible that what is “fleeting discomfort” for one person is “intolerable pain” for another. One person can have a root canal with just local, another has local, nitrous, and xanax and is still screaming from the pain. Pain is actually not a completely understood phenomenon – it is simply not possible to predict what subjective experience of pain another person will have in any circumstance. How can you even claim that you could?
So, because I choose not to breastfeed, even though I was at home, I am a “selfish shortsighted bitch”? Think about what you’re saying here…
Until someone tells me that bottle-feeding creates a serious health risk, I say you (not you specifically, but those with that mindset) are a judgmental harpy. I did hours of research, with both of my children, and found no evidence that choosing to bottle feed my children would put them in harm’s way. I am fully aware of the immunological benefits of breastfeeding; however, I also faced overwhelming evidence, in the form of most of the people I know, that bottle-feeding was not detrimental.
If you personally think that women like me are selfish shortsighted bitches, then me thinks it will probably leak out in your attitude toward new mothers who may be having problems. I also suspect that you are unable to be rational about the subject, in the same way that many mothers of autistic children can be unbalanced on the subject of vaccinations.
Ultimately, in spite of the self-righteousness attitude of LLL and people like you, it’s none of your business to make decisions about my children. Would you support a law to make it mandatory?
To **others **- thanks for the links! I’ll poke around them and see what the data says…
Perhaps some training in differentiating the medically unable from the sabotaged, ignorant or lazy would be helpful. But for that to happen, medicine would have to recognize hypolactation as a genuine medical problem and figure out how to treat it.