I said I wasn't going to write anything else on this topic after that one time, but, whelp.
In case you have missed the sharing of memes, articles, and brelfies - it's World Breastfeeding Week!
It comes after NFP week every year, and when we got to Tuesday without a breastfeeding dripping Facebook timeline, I thought I might have to throw a party. We were two days into breastfeeding week and people were playing it cool and keeping it logical and reasonable?! I'd buy a round for the house!
But it started on Wednesday, and my celebrations were promptly put on hold.
You see I'm one of THOSE. A formula feeder. A hard won formula feeder who, frankly, needs to speak a little truth to power for a second here.
This is what this week is like for formula feeders.
Literally every, single, other way of feeding your baby is celebrated but yours.
People are trying to be more open minded now. So it's not just breastfeeding. Anyone who pumps, uses donated milk, combo feeds are included!
You know the only group not included? Formula feeders.
No, there is no formula feeding week, in case you were wondering.
The barrage of events that make it clear that you are not invited.
You wanna know what makes me feel isolated as a mother? Seeing all the events for nurse-ins, breastfeeding celebrations, and other events that make sure to note that breastmilk using families are welcome to attend the festival of feeding!
I'm the type of mother not invited.
Bad Science. Sooooo much bad science.
When you are sacrificing so much for the sake of feeding your baby breast milk it might be nigh impossible to hear, but science is not showing that breast milk has any long term impact in the developed world. The sibling studies just don't bear it out.
Enough with the "science" articles and memes and whatever else claiming that breastfeeding will make your child a long-lived, immune to everything, genius, who will create world peace. (And that's not even an exaggeration, people! All of that are real claims I have seen in the past few days.)
Please feed your baby, but don't put yourself through hell to do it. Your baby needs a mother, not just milk. Mothering is more than feeding, and you are worth more than a bodily fluid.
I wonder if lactivists would say the things they do if they would see people like me?
There remains an identity of persecution among breastfeeding activists, and some breastfeeders, that just doesn't reflect reality where I have lived.
I have encountered serious issues accessing medical care because people cannot compute that I am not breastfeeding. I have to lead with it. Continue to correct the doctor who just went off on another why-this-medication-is-fine-for-breastfeeding talk. Get sent home with inaccurate care instructions.
Delays in treatment because the only measurement of normal for a postpartum mother is a breastfeeding mother.
I have strangers check in if there is breast milk in that bottle.
A push for donor milk for my perfectly healthy full term baby, even though there is a shortage for NICU babies who actually, medically, need breast milk.
Lactivism has actively hurt my mental, emotional, and physical health. Caused unnecessary health risks in my first two children, and severely limited my community support.
It's not ok.
There's a hugely uneven power balance here
Have you ever seen the back of a formula can? Every single one includes the phrase "breast milk is recommended" or "breast milk is best". ON THE FORMULA CAN.
In order to access formula in a hospital, you might have to sign a form certifying that you are "aware of the risks of formula feeding". Even if formula is medically indicated.
You know what message that sends to mothers who need to use formula?
That we're making a lesser choice for our babies.
That we can't be trusted to have evaluated this decision.
Breastfeeding is not the underdog when it comes to the power to impact mothers in this way.
No one mobilizes for discrimination against a formula feeding mother like they will for a breastfeeding one
I'm going to tell you a little story that illustrates this power dynamic.
I took my kids on a trip to an art museum, as parents might occasionally do. I had my young baby with me in a front carrier.
Half an hour into being at the museum she needed to eat, like young babies do.
I pulled out a pre-made bottle and starting feeding her in the carrier as we walked through a gallery, keeping up the commentary on what we were seeing for my older kids.
A docent came up to me, "I think you would be more comfortable over here with your baby."
"No, I'm ok, thanks."
"Well, we don't allow food or drink in the gallery."
"Even for a baby?"
"Yes, just follow me."
I didn't want to make a scene, so I stayed in the little alcove off a hallway the docent had led me to feed my baby in. Fed the baby, tried my best to keep the antsy big kids quiet-ish, packed up after and went back into the gallery we had been before we were redirected.
Sitting on a couch, in that same gallery, was a mother breastfeeding.
Same docent standing in the room, apparently un-bothered.
I was mad. I was frustrated. If I cannot feed my baby (who looked as old as the nursing one) in that space, why is breastfeeding allowed?
This was not a toddler walking around with a juice box and snack pack. This was a young infant being bottled fed in a close carry by an adult.
But I also knew that no one would have my back.
That there would be no one willing to do more than shrug and say "that's annoying".
Discriminating against a bottle feeding mother is allowed. These stories don't go viral. They don't inspire some sort of feed-in protest. Bottle feeding is not culturally valued in the same way as breastfeeding.
You know what all the breastfeeding celebrations are like for someone like me? A punch in the gut.
I don't even want a formula feeding celebration week. I just want to not be treated like a criminal embarrassment by doing just what a breastfeeding mother is trying to do - feeding my baby.
A little understanding this week would be acceptable.
Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for 7 Quick Takes.
Did any of this surprise you? How can we better celebrate all parents?
I can't even finish reading this post because my heart hurts so much from reading the first half. Yes. Yes. YES. Damn all the crunchy holier than thou mothers (and nurses and lactivists) who made me feel like a failure for not being able to feed my precious, hard-won, only child ever to be borne unto me through my BREASTS. I was literally told that feeding formula would stunt my child's IQ. (Or, you know, I could just let him STARVE and die and then his IQ wouldn't be an issue at all--???). I'll never have a chance to have a redo at breastfeeding; this sense of "failure" from my one and only child haunts me. He's 6 now. He's a freakin' genius (no exaggeration). Enfamil, I give all the credit to you, because clearly his smarts are entirely derived from the nourishment he received from 0-9 months.
ReplyDeleteI hope as more stories come out there will be more of a push toward policies based on sound evidence - not acecdotal studies that make marginal attempts to account for confounding factors.
DeleteBreastfeeding is not bad! But it’s not always right, and true lactation failure is far more common than the popular literature suggests. It’s very hard for those stories to get told in the current climate. Those moms are often told, like I was, that I must not have had enough resources. Or I should have “tried harder”.
When we have mothers sacrificing their physical, mentionable, and emotional health because they feel like to do otherwise is to fail their babies, we cannot morally continue to promote breastfeeding in the manner we are. It’s unethical.
I hear you on the shame. I bf and i get mad on your behalf. I am pregnant with #3 and someone asked me if I will bf already! She was so sweet and I was so shocked I couldn't bring myself to tell her to consider the implications of her question.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't know about bf week without your post telling me. I guess I have a differently minded social network. It seems to me 90% of people bottle feed out of necessity (work or bf problems.) My mom bf 6 kids and bottle fed 2 and she says bottle is indeed so much easier. So bottle week I think won't take off because there's less to discuss? No bottle consultants like there is lactation consultants. (I say the existance of lactation consultants proves bf isn't that natural!) I suggest a Fed is Best week.
I will say that re your medical professional problems it depends on who you have. I always have to call a pharmacist because no one pays attention to whether a prescription is bf compatible. I also have bottle feeding supportive pediatricians--and I am on my third. They all sooner or later go on a Fed is Best rant. So have hope, change is happening! On the other hand they give advice that directly contradicts lactation consultants' advice. Lactation consultants seem paranoid to me, but pediatricians unexperienced.
I guess with some of this I want to say, no matter how you feed your baby there is a cross. And there's also hope that change is happening in favor of Fed is Best. ---MariaE
I think I’m not interested in a bottle feeding week, but I am interested in letting people involved in breastfeeding activism know the repercussions of the intense push and pressure for breastfeeding. The message is that breast milk is worth any cost, and that formula is to be avoided. It’s led to policies, like Baby Friend Hospital Initative (BFHI), that SOUND like a great idea but are not done with nuance and the need for maternal care in mind.
DeleteThe Catholic circles I have been a part of have been extremely heavy on breastfeeding, and often I think breastfeeding gets conflated with being a good mother. It’s almost impossible to have NFP advice postpartum that can deal with a non-breastfeeding mother.
It’s not that we need our time to shine as formula feeders. But there needs to be room for our feedback and stories, and that is largely lacking.
Are the instructions different for non breastfeeding mommas with nfp? I get my periods back really early postpartum so the breastfeeding instructions don't really apply to me either...
DeleteThe big hole is there are no instructions for postpartum when you are not breastfeeding but are still not cycling. Anything between actively breastfeeding and cycles are not reflected in NFP instruction at all (it's a giant glaring hole!)
DeleteOh man, that's a problem!! :(
DeleteI'm so sorry you've had so much judgment as a bottle feeder! I'm always half jealous of bottle feeders, haha, because their babies tend to be better sleepers and dads can help more with feedings! Breastfeeding is HARD so I'm glad there's a week to celebrate it and remind moms of the benefits but I'm sad that your circles online and IRL sound like they make it a mommy war! We're all in this motherhood thing together just doing the best we all can. <3
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't appreciate about this week is a lot of the benefits touted are not exclusive to breastfeeding. The vast majority have more to do with mom's education level and economic status than feeding method, as shown by the sibling studies. It's fine to love breastfeeding, but promoting it on false claims isn't ok in my book.
DeleteDefinitely! Social media makes it so easy to widely spread false research :(
DeleteI agree that Catholic circles, especially SAHM, are almost entirely BF. Nfp advice with bottle feeding is non-existent! I have noticed even though I can follow bf nfp. I would have no clue what to do if I bottle fed. I think the assumption that there will be bf gets enterwined with the nfp-doesn't-require-much-abstaining ideology because bf gives you 6 months of open season supposedly.
ReplyDeleteI think everywhere bf are the "saintly" mothers. I try not to discuss what any baby, including my own, is drinking unless the parent initiates, in which case I offer support. ---MariaE
BFing didn't do that for me, lol! My periods return within a couple months postpartum and then it's back to the drawing board. ;)
DeleteIt's the assumption that bothers me! That there is a singular default type of NFP using postpartum mother means that anyone else gets erased from the narrative.
DeleteThank you for bonding with other moms on a basis besides feeding! I know it often takes a little more effort, but I so so appreciate the moms who are interested in me as a person and not me as a set of parenting choices!