Supporting Breastfeeding Families: Systemic failure and the myth of “choice”

Um, I love you.

This is absolutely what needs to be addressed – the culture that makes breastfeeding difficult, where people seem surprised and “Good for you!” when you tell them you’re breastfeeding. When women are given strange looks for feeding their child in public without a cover.

We need to normalize breastfeeding by showing it in mainstream TV shows, by having “Mother’s Rooms” right out in the open, by re-training what people expect to see.

As someone who fought like mad to follow through on my “choice” to breastfeed, and refuses to use a nursing cover, I’m a big fan of normalizing the healthy way to feed your baby.

Thanks everyone!
Just to provide a bit of context, I had originally posted this as a series of (ranty) comments on my FB page and Dan very kindly requested permission to use my words on this blog.
As a longtime feminist I have been disheartened and disgruntled by the discourse surrounding breastfeeding, the “mommy wars” and “choice”. It is getting us nowhere in terms of the lived experiences of breastfeeding families, so I wanted to shift the focus to a systemic approach that affirms the need for radical social, institutional and cultural change.
So thank you for your kind words and the growing sense that I’m not alone in my thinking. The need for paradigmatic shifts is not a new concept, however the recent debates within the mainstream media have made it clear that systemic failure needs to be addressed if we are to move beyond pitting women against each other in a cheap media sideshow.

The early mohnts My girls are now 21 mohnts old, and I can barely remember the early mohnts. But the bits I do remember are clear.I don’t remember their first feeds at all. I remember the first feed for my older two (singletons). I have pictures of the first feed for each of my twin daughters, and the first time I managed to tandem feed them, that same day but I don’t remember it at all. Given how foggy my memory is of the first few mohnts, that’s a small sorrow, but an expected one. At least I have the pictures. I remember being astonished that a football hold not only worked for one, it worked for both. Neither of my older ones could stand football hold. Then astonished again when I could use hold after hold and they put up with the contortions. But hey, after all, they’d been squashed up against each other all along, I guess that would be normal for them. I remember in the first days, identifying them by their nursing style as much as anything else. Meriel was the shark’ she’d lunge at my breast, mouth wide, and chomp hard. I’d have to detach her a few times to get her latch right, because she was too fast for me. She’d get it right if I left her alone and let her figure it out, though. Trying to help too much made her frustrated. She could get there fine on her own, thanks! Rowan, however, wanted to be helped, held and supported, into position. Her latch was more gentle, but also a bit on the easygoing’ side lip in, lip out, whatever. Her muscle tone was low-ish, and she just couldn’t get there without help, but didn’t seem to mind the interference. I had to fix her lips over and over and over. Those general attributes still describe their personalities very well. I remember having to chart Rowan’s feeds carefully, because she developed jaundice, enough to have a bili-light tethering her to the nearest power outlet for a few days. She looked like a glow worm, greenish light glowing through her shirt. Tracking the feeds was challenging, with two eating on their own schedules. It was also very important, as I found I was forgetting who ate last, and which side. I became more anxious that I’d forget one for a few hours but reassured by having the log to check back on, since my memory was so hazy.I remember the visiting nurse looking around my bedroom, on the first followup checkup for the jaundice, and wondering what she thought of our big bed, the two snuggle nest’ beds lined up on one corner, the EZ2Nurse2 pillow still buckled around my waist. My newest babies were just a few days old, and I was awash in hormones, and more tired than I could have imagined and yet, less wiped out’ than I thought I’d be, likely running on hormones and adrenaline. In other words, likely to be sensitive to judgement. Fortunately, she was all for anything that helped me breastfeed longer. She laughed outright when she realized the end-table next to the bed was actually a dorm fridge. Fully stocked, so I didn’t even have to get out of bed to feed my breastfeeding-twins-starvation. I remember thinking the two of them were so tiny, and fragile, and floppy. My older two had been much bigger, even though the girls’ were quite normal sized (6 lbs 10 oz and 7 lbs 6 oz). I remember feeling an almost painful urgency for them to grow, needing them to get big from my milk (though I’m sure that feeling is the same no matter how you feed them!). I remember sitting in the recliner, nursing pillow in place, knit blankies propping little baby hineys to keep them from sliding anywhere at all, my step-mom handing me a sandwich over their heads, and me having to hold my elbows out to the sides to eat it without bonking the babies. Brushing crumbs off my front, and picking them off the sleeves of my little ones fallen asleep at the breast.I guess I remember enough. Enough to know that I succeeded in part because I had the equipment I needed, and that was because I had the support I needed, and that was in no small part because I asked.The support was as simple as my DH stocking the fridge, as broad as friends who would pitch in to buy me a minifridge, as deep as my family members committing to driving almost an hour each way just to be there when I asked, every week. Humbling, but then just asking for the help in the first place was humbling. The WIC billboards around here say loving support makes breastfeeding work’ don’t I know it! That, at least, I remember very clearly.

Great job, as always, MLB. Once again you have hit the nail on the head!