Dr. Sarah, a British doctor/writer who I’ve come to respect as one of the coolest “pro-breastfeeding, pro-mother” activists out there, wrote this fabulous post in response to last week’s lengthy debate. As I’ve been working on my “mission statement” (thanks to Amber’s wise suggestion), Dr. Sarah’s post hit a nerve (in a good way, like when you get a deep tissue massage and they reach just the right spot in your shoulder blade….). She mentioned it in the comments section of an earlier post, but I wanted to highlight it in separate post, too – because I can’t thank her enough for her eloquent explanation of where I stand, and for taking the time to discuss these issues on her own blog.
I hope you guys will go here and show her some love, too. It’s a great blog, incidentally, so maybe you’ll discover a new favorite while you’re there.
About the Author:
Suzanne Barston is a blogger and author of BOTTLED UP. Fearless Formula Feeder is a blog – and community – dedicated to infant feeding choice, and committed to providing non-judgmental support for all new parents. It exists to protect women from misleading or misrepresented “facts”; essentialist ideals about what mothers should think, feel, or do; government and health authorities who form policy statements based on ambivalent research; and the insidious beast known as Internetus Trolliamus, Mommy Blog Varietal.
Suzanne Barston – who has written 428 posts on Fearless Formula Feeder.
I'm going to respond here, just because this blog, not that one, is the one I frequent.
In the post I was responding to, Brooke wrote:
“It is my hope that someone lurking on this blog who has a feeling that something might be wrong is able to ask questions and even try formula without the guilt that seems to plague many breastfeeders-turned-formula-feeders.”
My issue was the suggestion that someone jump right from “something might be wrong” to “try(ing) formula”. I have no beef with anyone switching to formula if there is a clear and genuine breastfeeding problem they cannot reasonably overcome. But this standard (“there might be something wrong”) is far too low a bar, and illustrates at least part of why breastfeeding initiation rates in the U.S. start out reasonably high but drop off so sharply after only a few weeks (incidentally, the UK appears to be one of the few developed countries with worse breastfeeding stats than the U.S., so it is questionable how much wisdom Dr. Sarah has to offer us in this regard).
FFF wrote:
“I often worry that people might come across my site and get the impression that breastfeeding is next to impossible”
You will not likely be surprised to learn that I have the same worry about your blog!
This is precisely the reason I offered a counter-anecdote about the experience my children's mothers had (no need even of lactation consultants, never any thrush, mastitis, etc.). At least one person complained that posting this anecdote was insensitive to all the readers of the blog who have had trouble; but it was precisely for those newer readers you mention,–who have yet to attempt breastfeeding and might start to wonder if they could ever possibly accomplish such a seemingly Herculean task–that I wanted to provide a competing narrative, one which happens to be just as true and accurate as the others.
Thanks for sharing that post, it's a blog I intend to revisit!
This about sums things up for me: “But, the way I see it, we don't try to put pressure on women to try formula; we try to stop everybody else putting pressure on women to use any particular feeding method (whether that be formula or breast). We don't try to talk women out of breastfeeding. We just want to be sure that they feel freely able to stop it themselves if they want to do so.” Well put.
Regarding the concern that this blog makes breastfeeding sound impossible, I would argue that it is actually simply realistic. Breastfeeding, though a natural process, is certainly not easy! And we have to be able to talk about that. I would have preferred to read about breastfeeding problems before I was pregnant with my first child, so that when we spent two or three days trying to learn how to latch, I wouldn't have felt so defeated. (As in, everyone else can do it, why can't we?) We did, eventually, so while it was true for us that breastfeeding got “easier”, that is simply not true for everyone. I see nothing wrong with anyone sharing their experience as it was, positive or negative. Readers will take away from it what they choose to, we just have to give them enough credit to know that they will make their own choices.
@Alan,
I agree, sometimes people do jump to the conclusion that something is wrong a little too fast. However, we mothers (most mothers, not all) have strong instincts and sometimes that feeling cannot be shaken away no matter how much we try to rationalize it.
In the beginning I felt something was wrong, but I ignored it. I kept going on thinking that it was just the lack of sleep and realizing how hard it was (it was really really hard for me). Then as the days went on he rarely slept and as I said before wasn't hydrated or full. I'll keep things short, but the full story is on my page (it's not as nicely written as the one on here as I had to rush).
Sometimes that instinct is actually correct and it's important to listen to it. I admit I could have supplemented, but I truly hated breastfeeding and it was making me depressed. There is research out there that shows the lack of estrogen can trigger depression in some women. But it's rarely talked about because people don't want to discourage women to stop just because they are depressed. That is a whole different topic though and I do think it's wrong to not inform the mothers who grow increasingly depressed that it could be breastfeeding. Depression does not help a mother bond.
I agree, that maybe this site might discourage a person because they are afraid of how hard it will be. But they need to know. I really think that if I knew how entirely hard it could be and that it could hurt like heck that I wouldn't have been so stressed. This, combined with some positive stories could help a women understand what's ahead of them if they have problems.
@Andrea: “I agree, that maybe this site might discourage a person because they are afraid of how hard it will be. But they need to know.”
@Cheryl: “Regarding the concern that this blog makes breastfeeding sound impossible, I would argue that it is actually simply realistic. Breastfeeding, though a natural process, is certainly not easy!”
For you it's not, for Andrea it's not, for the (non-randomly selected) majority of people who comment here it is not. But for others (like my wife Brittany, who has posted here as crunchymidwesternmama, and for that matter for my ex-wife as well), it is easy. It wouldn't be right for them to blow off the experiences of those who do struggle or have struggled to breastfeed; but it's also not right to blow off her experience and simply say “breastfeeding is certainly not easy”, or that the implied universal difficulty of it is just something women “need to know”.
For women who have never tried before and don't know how it will be for them, I think they need to know that it's not inherently something that every mother struggles to do, with some succeeding and others failing. For some percentage of women (it would be interesting to know how many, but I seriously doubt I just happened to marry two of a tiny population), it is not a struggle at all, and in fact is much easier, even from the very beginning, than formula feeding would be.
To post a sort-of-counterpoint, I did assume it was easy because I never heard anything to the contrary. All I ever heard was “breast is best,” with an implied assumption that formula was a choice, not a necessity.
I also doubt that this blog is frequented by women who have not yet faced the formula dilemma. I know I didn't come here until I had already had problems bfing and was looking for support.
“I would have preferred to read about breastfeeding problems before I was pregnant with my first child, so that when we spent two or three days trying to learn how to latch, I wouldn't have felt so defeated.”
Hello and amen! I think the experience of Alan's wives is far less common than the experience of people here. Frankly, I DO think it's more of a disservice to women to tell them more happy stories – I heard enough of those, and it seems to be that most lactivists skim over the hard stuff and focus on talk about how wonderful breastfeeding is. So as a result most women, like me, think “oh, a few weeks of sore nipples doesn't sound so terrible, we can do it.” In reality, for many, sore nipples turn into thrush or mastitis or a tongue tied baby or lack of supply, and those are issues so frequently brushed off by the lactivist community that it is truly unfair to the majority of women to only hear the good and “minor” bad. There's a fine line between scary stories and cloud 9 stories, but since most of us seem to fall into that middle ground, better that we hear a lot more about issues we might have than have them glossed over. I'd rather look back and thank my lucky stars that I didn't have certain issues (much as one would if one hears about c-sections but doesn't have one) than never know about them at all.
How about cautious optimism backed up by plenty of support? What's wrong with that?
“In reality, for many, sore nipples turn into thrush or mastitis or a tongue tied baby or lack of supply, and those are issues so frequently brushed off by the lactivist community that it is truly unfair to the majority of women to only hear the good and “minor” bad. There's a fine line between scary stories and cloud 9 stories, but since most of us seem to fall into that middle ground, better that we hear a lot more about issues we might have than have them glossed over.”
Amen to that. My multiple issues with bf'ing were really not addressed fully by the books I consulted, or my midwife, or my very well-informed and well-meaning lactation consultant. After 2 rounds of Diflucan, a round of topical antibiotics, and consultations with half a dozen doctors, the final diagnosis I received was that I had tissue trauma. That's right, my nipples just plain hurt. A LOT. The prognosis I was ultimately given by the clinical dermatologists I consulted was that the pain would go away when I stopped.
@crunchymidwesternmama
I am all for “cautious optimism backed up by plenty of support.”
(Responding more generally to everyone):
But I agree with everyone else– it really would have helped me to know what the common challenges were before my baby was born. Partly to prepare me with some information at hand and partly so I didn't feel like there was something 'wrong' with me. I am sure there are women for which bfing is 'easy' but I have a hard time believing that the number is more then a small percentages. Why? Because in a province with a bfing initiation rate of 90% and a at 6 months rate around 50% (I believe) I have yet to meet any Mom (who BF successfully or not) who didn't experience at least one common issue. That doesn't mean many (but not all) of those issues can't be over come with good support.
But it does means I think it is does more harm then good to try and sell women on breastfeeding without being upfront about the possible challenges (and without the policy's and support to allow them to be successful at breastfeeding like maternity leaves, hospital/birthing centers conducive to natural births, pumping rights, good lactation consultants, ect.). (I know, I am a broken record.)
I don't think it's necessary for this site to represent a statistical picture of how many women have trouble breastfeeding. It is *for* women who *did* have trouble, and who struggled with the decision to use formula and thus need some support.
The fact that women feel the need to get some support here should tell you that they already value breastfeeding. If they happily chose formula without a second thought, they'd never need to come here.
I went in prepared with a breastfeeding class, having read up on it, coming from a family of all-breastfeeders, and sure that although there can be problems, you can correct them if you try hard enough.
I had one baby (my first) who was a challenge. Too sleepy, jaundiced, poor latch, followed by continued latch problems, fussiness, thrush. I spent 6 months trying to make breastfeeding work. 6 months of feeling nothing more positive than grim determination regarding feeding my baby, before I finally decided it was *not* how I wanted things to be.
Thank goodness for modern formula! It allowed me to just enjoy feeding my little guy. I got to cuddle him and enjoy him, while he thrived.
My second baby was one of those no-problems babies I had started to doubt existed. I had no temptation to use formula with her because there was never a problem with breastfeeding.
So yes it can go either way. But if there are problems, ONLY the mother really knows when she's met her personal limit, for personal reasons that only she knows and should not have to defend to anyone. And if a few of those women want to get together for support, well, I don't think that's really the biggest obstacle standing in the way of improved breastfeeding rates.
@FFF, a very belated but heartfelt thank you for your lovely comments and for encouraging people to visit my blog, which I always love.
Though you may have built me up a tad bit too much, considering that Alan seems to have somehow got the idea that I'm singlehandedly responsible for UK breastfeeding rates…
@Alan: While I can't speak for Brooke on this point, it does seem to me that you're taking her comments way out of context if you assume them to be a complete description of the *only* possible responses she wants to see women feeling able to make in a situation where they feel things are not going well with breastfeeding. Granted, I can't speak for Brooke – but I do think the fact that you interpret that comment as 'clearly' showing an agenda of promoting formula feeding has more to do with the fact that you already suspected us of doing just that, were looking for evidence to confirm your suspicions, and saw just what you wanted to see.
I've also written a reply to the second part of your comment, about your goal in posting an anecdote of successful breastfeeding. However, for sheer length this also had to go on my blog, and can be found at http://goodenoughmummy.typepad.com/good_enough_mum/2010/07/how-not-to-be-a-successful-lactivist.html.