I would, personally, myself, feel like a dairy cow if I was pumping. A lot of my friends feel the same–those who had to jumpstart the process…which I would consider in the short-term, but not for storage in general. You can feel however you wish, of course. That’s my whole point. Feel free to look down your nose at me for not wanting to pump my breasts. My intention is to express how I, sj2, feel about pumping…not you or anyone else for that matter.
As for me, I’m not doing daycare or plan to be away from my baby for any period of time that would prevent me from not nursing for at least 6 months. If need be or if required, I will supplement with formula. It’s not something I just thought of out of the blue.
And I won’t change my mind…maybe if a bunch of women showed up and tried to convince me otherwise, I’d change my mind—oh wait, that is the point that this is a hot-button issue right?
It’s not just the superior attitude of breastfeeders either. I got in with a formula support board when I was supplementing. I eventually dropped the supplements but I enjoyed some of the people there enough to hang around.
Not too long ago a relatively new poster made a crack about how nasty it was when she heard some of the mothers of toddlers her son’s age were still nursing. Several people agreed and even claimed that extended nursers are “only doing it for themselves” and that their children would be too attached. Because, you know, it’s awful for a toddler to be attached to mom. :rolleyes:
According to them, since formula isn’t recommended after the first year breastfeeding should stop too.
Of course I get it from both sides. At the BF board I asked a question about weaning. I’m ready now that Bella is seventeen months old. Bella is NOT. So I ask for some weaning tips and I get ragged on for wanting to wean “unnaturally”.
I shouldn’t be surprised after the big row about me supplementing early on. Those women truly do see formula as rat poison I believe.
sj2, I hear ya. I felt like a milking cow too. And never could pump more than an ounce or two, even with a consultant helping (cute image for ya) Apparently my silly nipples want to invert when I pump.
I formula-supplemented with no problem until Bella got the hang of things. My milk didn’t dry up, we had no nipple confusion (I did use those nuk nipples so that might have helped) and she started nursing just fine eventually.
Now if I could just get her to stop!
I have to agree, and I’m one of the ones that posted a horror tale. :eek: I wonder why so many of my friends here beat themselves up over it when it just wouldn’t happen for them. I think it’s Mommy Guilt. I feel like it’s more of a life-death situation in places like where I was born-where sanitation can be very suspect and difficult to achieve.
Heck, wet nurses and goat’s milk were invented way before baby formula…
If you can do it you can and if you can’t (for medical reasons, or because the baby won’t “take”, or because whatever, doesn’t matter why), well, you can’t.
Playing basketball’s good but I can’t (yes, I know it’s an exagerated example)
My first nephew is 6 months old now. The SIL is a worrier. She can argue with herself, aloud and in excruciating detail, about whether to put potatoes in his meals already or not; she can spend hours like that, finally looks it up in The Book, and if what The Book says is not in absolute agreement with the decision she had almost reached begins again, finally does what The Book says. The Proud Father thanked Mom for having offered to feed them lunch because not only does it have the benefits Mom pointed out when she offered - it means someone will be there when SIL begins her self-arguments and point her in the right direction. Like with those potatoes last week (and yes, The Book agreed with Mom and me that it was time… good bookieeee! uh’sagood bookieeee!).
Thanks, BoringDad, for being an outstanding example of the sort of self-righteous zealot that’s been referred to here. By the way, how often do **you ** nurse the baby?
People make choices that are “incomprehensible” to other people every day. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t informed, valid choices. And most kids live every day without the “best”. As for my convenience, you’ll forgive me if I don’t disregard it as easily as you do. My convenience means something to me. I realize this disqualifies me for sainthood, and I’m okay with that.
BS in Genetic Engineering here, which required at least a passing knowledge of the scientific method. Although it’s not like people haven’t been repeating variations on that quote here since '99.
The benefits in the developed world are not earth shattering, they are incremental. How would an individual notice that their breastfed child has 5% fewer colds (all statistics here are pulled completely from air for example purposes only) than their non-breastfed child? If breastfed babies average 5 point of IQ higher, there are still going to be really smart formula babies and really dumb breastfed babies. But on the average, breastfeeding showed benefits.
Yes, no one is denying this. Look back at **WhyNot’s ** posts though, where she lists the benefits that she’s sure she received as a result of being breastfed. Look at her post about all the children around her who suffer from ear infections and asthma attacks. If the benefits that an American child gets are slim, then we have no idea that those kids would have been fine if they’d gotten breast milk. Actually for all we know, they *could * have been breast fed. Now **WhyNot ** is a good poster, so I’m sure she knows this. We’ve got a post here where someone talks about the great things that the (may have) gotten from being breastfed, so there’s no reason why people can’t talk of the things they got from being bottle fed, or the stuff they didn’t get despite being breast fed etc.
To me, the conscious decision ahead of time not to breastfeed is similar to the conscious decision to use corporal punishment. Both are common parental choices in todays society, both have known incremental detrimental affects on kids, both were frequently experienced by a wide range of people when they were younger, and vast majority of people who experienced them turned out just fine with no observable problems.
No. In some women there may be some leaking. I myself have never been much of a leaker. When you nurse something happens you may not be aware of; it’s called the let-down reflex. Baby sucks, sometimes for as much as a minute or more, and that stimulates the let-down reflex. You don’t walk around with boobs full of milk all the time. The sucking action stimulates the milk glands to produce and that’s when they fill up with milk – while the baby is sucking.
For the first few weeks, though, your breasts are sort of wild and out of control. That’s because they don’t know your baby yet. Right after giving birth, about 2 to 7 days, there is usually only colostrum, a clear fluid loaded will all kinds of immunities and goodies that a newborn infant needs. Then after a few days -BAM- engorgement. The breasts make a ton of milk. You can be sore for several days while they adjust to the amount your baby is drinking. (You can also use this time to build up a supply for the freezer but doing so keeps supply high.) After a while breast and baby get in tune and you make just the right amount that baby needs. When baby grows and sucks more, the breasts respond and make more milk. And then, months pass and solids are introduced and baby drinks less. Your breasts respond by making less milk.
The quality of the milk changes over time too. Newborn breastmilk is very different the milk I currently produce for my 20-month-old (who I nurse in the morning, when I return home from work, at bedtime and a couple times during the night. My breasts know this schedule and don’t produce any during the day. I quit pumping when he was about 8 months old).
The fact is - breast is best. All the available scientific data supports that. Just because a person can not or choses not to breast feed their own infant that fact does not change. It’s not less true for a mother who really wants to breast feed but cannot vs. one who won’t breastfeed because her own mother told her that it would make her breasts saggy.
Does that cause guilt in mothers who through no fault of their own can not? Yes it does. Does it cause angry “I wasn’t breastfed and I turned out OK.” reponses from mothers who chose not to breastfeed? Yes it does.
What it does NOT mean is that a woman who doesn’t breastfeed is a poorer mother than those that do. And that is what is crazy making about the entire subject.
IMHO there are three aspects of our culture that really come into play to bash new mothers in this area-
One is that insane Mommy competition thing we’ve got going. Every single solitary thing parents do in this culture is measured against others and judged “better” or “worse.” And every action taken when a child is an infant given huge import that is not deserved. There is really nothing done in the course of normal childrearing between the ages of 0 and 24 months that is going to ensure or prevent admission to Harvard.
Two is that we are a culture of bottle feeders. I was given bottles and formula at the hospital and the doctor’s office. Given it by the very nurses that were supposed to be teaching me how to breast feed. So mixed messages are pretty much the norm here.
Three is the fact that pregnant mothers and mothers with infants are seen as fair game for being on the receiving end of all sorts of unsolicited advice. NOBODY would walk up to you on the street and tell you to get a nose job, become a democrat, give your husband more blow jobs, or bike to work. They think nothing of telling you how to care for the infant either in your arms or in your stomach.
When my oldest was 2 months old I needed to go into a clinic to have a blood test taken. She was sound asleep in her carrier thingie when I walked in and placed it on the floor. The nurse who was going to take my blood came into the room, took one look at a happily sleeping infant wrapped in blankets and said, “She’d do much beter on soy formula.”
For the record - Sternvogel is a male who has never breastfed any child nor attempted to.
He did, however, log into my computer and post to the Straight Dope before leaving my office one time. We’ve joked that at some point he was going to give breastfeeding advise if he continued to use my computer without logging out and I continued to use it without checking.
I have no problem acknowledging that breastfeeding is better in a variety of ways - all else being equal. But that’s the rub. Sometimes all else is not equal.
In our case, in spite of all our efforts, we were not able to successfully breastfeed.
What I personally found distressing was the way in which the health care professionals I dealt with, for want of a better word, appeared to fetishize breastfeeding - to the point of insisting that we continue to attempt it when it appeared, to my eyes at least, to be creating possible health problems for the baby (not to mention unbearable anxiety to mom and to me, which in turn could not possibly be good for baby).
In other words, there does not appear to be a rational attempt to balance the costs and benefits of breastfeeding in any individual case - people appeared to approach this topic with a sort of messianic zeal I thought wholly inappropriate.
This is of course only my experience; but I’ve talked to others who have had similar experiences.
Is it okay to pay high health insurance premiums to cover some breastfed kid’s ear infections? Because both my kids (breastfed until they were almost 2) have had plenty of them. My aunt breastfed both her kids for a year, and the older suffered some minor hearing loss from chronic ear infections. My older son had a respiratory problem (akin to asthma) when he was an infant that he grew out of. Is it okay that your (and my) insurance premiums paid for a nebulizer for him?
Breastfeeding is not a panacea. Sure, breastfeeding has lots of health benefits, and it’s certainly healthier than formula feeding in Third World countries where there is a strong possiblity that germ-infested water will be used to prepare formula. But you can’t look at a kid with chronic ear infections or asthma and rant about how he’s been formula-fed, because he can just as likely have been breastfed.
I didn’t get a whole lot of encouragement or pressure to breastfeed. It was more the other way around!
The nurses who took care of BabyStainz for 2 1/2 weeks were supportive (some much more so than others) but they also insisted on bottlefeeding her, much to the dismay of the hospital’s lactation consultant. (She felt they should have continued feeding Baby through a nasal gavage tube instead of forcing the bottle on her).
I had to put a big sign on her bassinet telling the nurses that I wished to breastfeed as often as possible and to NOT automatically bottlefeed her without arranging it with me first.
I had to throw away the friggin pacifiers that some nurses insisted on giving her.
Once I brought her home, it was easier to relax and keep trying, and seek out support and advice, but again, I was making the calls and asking the questions - if I were a more passive person, I would have had one home visit from some junior nurse who had no idea what she was talking about, and I probably would have either given up on nursing altogether, or been SO stressed about it that every nursing session was a nightmare.
I KNOW that breastfeeding is a personal choice - to me though, it just seems like a really **obvious ** one.
And honestly sj2 - not to harp on it too much - but once I went through the struggle to breastfeed, there was NO WAY I was giving my baby formula if I wanted to go out, or feed her in public - that’s what made pumping such a no-brainer. To me that would’ve been giving up. At 31 weeks pregnant you aren’t in a breastfeeding mom’s shoes yet. You may change your mind.
Feeling like a “dairy cow” is not even an issue when you want to do what’s right for your baby. Most mothers find their feelings / issues get put on the backburner for a while.
Heh, our experiences with healthcare professionals were pretty different. Not one that we dealt with would ever have suggested bottle-feeding - the hospital where we went had posters on every wall extolling the virtues of breastmilk, and a whole staff of lactation consultants on hand. We were left in no doubt what the preffered option was.
On the other hand, when things did not work for us, we also went through a good deal of effort to seek additonal support - including hiring a specialist RN for home-lactation visits, and hiring post-partum doulas for night-time support - all at astronomical cost.
In short, we bought into it fully. I suppose our baby did in fact get at least some benefit out of it, as with pumping for the first three months he got at least part of his feed from breastmilk.
I just found it odd, and distressing, that none of these professionals we consulted ever said “you know, this isn’t really working too well, and the baby is not really doing well on this - perhaps you should supplement”. We did that against all the professional advice we received, because we feared for the baby’s health and our sanity.
The message we got, time and again, was that “if you supplement, you will not succeed at breastfeeding”. That was the attitude - that “success at breastfeeding” was the important thing. I thought that was somewhat perverse. Isn’t the whole point to “succeed at having a healthy and happy baby”? Breast-feeding, I thought, is a means to that end (and a darn good one in most cases) - but not the end unto itself.
Not that I’m accusing any here of saying that it is. I’m just commenting on what to me was a distressing interaction with the healthcare professionals I dealt with.
When I was in the hospital with Ivygirl, I shared a room with a woman who had also just given birth. Her mother was visiting her, and the mother asked me if I was going to bottle feed, and I said no, I was going to breast feed.
You would have thought I had served them a nice raw steak with maggot gravy. “Oh no no no!” were their cries of horror, while Mom proudly declared, “I raised you kids on Pep milk and Karo syrup.”
It wasn’t an issue for you, that doesn’t mean it’s not an issue for other people. Some people just want their body back. Pregnancy isn’t exactly a picnic for a lot of women.
Omega Glory probably said it better, but I am going to take one more stab at it…
What I am trying to say is that parents make decisions every day that are for their own convenience, and may be detrimental in some immeasurable way to a child. I am not comparing not breastfeeding to something that is obviously child abuse. This is why I used my living in the city vs. living in the suburbs analogy. I don’t think anyone would call living in the city child abuse. However, I think a lot of people WOULD think that it is not the best place to raise a child, for health and other reasons. But even though we know there might be some risk associated with raising the child in the city, we have chosen not to move to the suburbs, for our own convenience. Many, many other people do move to the suburbs for their families, and I applaud them, but it is not a sacrifice I am willing to make. I did, however, make sacrifices to breastfeed…I got up in the middle of the night every day for 6 months, I pumped 4 times a day, etc. This was a sacrifice I was willing to make. There are others I am not willing to make. I guess I don’t feel the need to judge someone over their choice of sacrifice.
(yes, I know it’s an exagerated example)