What Would It Take To Make Breastfeeding the Norm?

I've posted before about breastfeeding, and how it's okay not to be all delirious with joy. I mentioned in that same post that La Leche League kinda bugs me. However, as part of my job today I was explaining that in order to win a fight, you must establish your position as the norm, and the opponent's position as substandard. It helps if your opponent's position really IS substandard.

Then I remembered I GOT that from LLL. It was an essay on making breastfeeding the norm.

I haven't changed my mind, by the way. I ended my last post on this topic by pointing out that formula isn't rat poison. If you really tried breastfeeding (REALLY tried, with support and helpful books and lactation consultants), sometimes you still gotta choose formula - and you have the right not to feel guilty about it.

But you have the right to feel angry about not being allowed resources to learn, and the time to do it. I was talking with another friend today about how our society fetishizes motherhood, but only if the mother in question asks nothing of society in return.

It took THIRTY DAYS for me, a brand new mother who had never seen regular breastfeeding, and only two friends in the universe who'd even tried, to establish a nursing relationship that didn't make me want to scream. It took longer to figure it all out, to learn the holds and the positions, to learn the baby's cues and my needs, to find our rhythm. As a consultant who works from home, I had to be back at work after three weeks, but I didn't have to disrupt the nursing process. I had the luxury of being able to offer milk every time he asked for it, and this developed my supply and our trust in each other.

He was four months old before I had to leave him for more than an hour.

You think I'd still be exclusively breastfeeding my eight month old without all those advantages? I don't.

And yet maternity leave is six weeks long if the mother is lucky. She can have three months if she's willing to go a month without pay. Any woman who suggests that a European model is healthier for the infant, for the mother, and for society is a scumwad pinko commie who wants higher taxes and to eat bonbons at the expense of the working man.

My breastfed infant will get sick less often. He and I will both have long term benefits that have accrued from nursing. If we only consider our lessened impact on health insurance premiums, we've given back to society the money it would have taken to pay me for a real maternity leave. If I'm spared the various cancers that breastfeeding wards off, society could have taken the money it would have spent on the treatments and given my husband another week to get to know his son.

Breast is not best - breast is the norm. And parenthood is not a fetish, it's a societal benefit.

Breastfeeding - Give It Thirty Days

To continue with a variation on a theme Rainy mentioned yesterday, allow me to provide for you the essence of no less than four books entirely about breastfeeding and easily three dozen books with chapters on breastfeeding. Here it is, stripped of the Madonna imagery, the propaganda, the drama, the guilt, and the science:

Try it for thirty days before you give up, because for a lot of people, it kind of sucks until then.

Oh, sure, there's a little more to it. For example, the basic latch. All the books emphasize how much of your dainty bits have to be shoved into the gaping maw of an infant, and you still won't do enough shoving without advice and help from either an experienced mama or a professional consultant. In the hospital I never ever fed him without calling a nurse to come check my latch. And afterwards I had Rainy help me, and I had 24/7 advice from another dear friend, and I still had trouble getting the hang of it.

And certainly the pain aspect gets underplayed. It hurts at first for a lot of people. It certainly hurt ME. The second week was the worst. He was constantly nursing in order to jack up my supply, but neither of us had the technique quite down, so I was chafed and tender and ready to sob whenever he wanted to eat. I DID sob more than once. Lanolin ointment helped, but not with the pain. He would take 20 minutes or more per side, and you know how the books say most new babies need to eat every three hours or more? That's measured from the start of one feeding to the start of the next. So if you feed the baby at 1 PM, he will again want to be fed at 3 or 4 PM. Never mind that he didn't detach until 2 PM.

Oh, and my good gracious, but the books are all so filled with lies about how fulfilling and romantic it is for every good mother. You can be a good mother but not feel like you've achieved bliss. I felt like a cow. A trapped milk cow, who had to sit in one posture in one place for most of my waking hours while an unappreciative unresponsive little squaller sucked my poor dainty bits into raw hamburger.

Because I have a job, I started using a pump relatively early so the baby would learn to take a bottle as well. That was week three. And I got darn little milk from it, with my sole consolation being that it hurt less than the baby's jaws of death.

This was all run of the mill breastfeeding stuff, too! I didn't get mastitis (like a virus with fever and pain, but for your boobs), I didn't have engorgement, I didn't have cracked or bleeding nipples, I didn't have supply problems either over or under. Once I had a plugged duct, but I just followed the advice in one of the books and it was clear in a day. Still, overall, I would have to say that on Day 28, I felt that breastfeeding sucked so hard it could have removed the paint from my car.

And the La Leche League people, well, they mean well, but with some of the groups, there's more than a little judging going on. And the last thing a new mom needs is judging. Also, their literature makes breastfeeding into a holy calling. I'm very suspicious of holy callings. Besides, no way could I make it to meetings in those first weeks. I couldn't figure out how to leave the house, let alone go to a meeting full of strangers. I was in pain, and tired of sitting up all night every night, and wondering why anyone would ever bother.

BUT THEN... Day 29 of the thirty day trial arrived.

I'm not kidding, Disney birds practically flew around us. He got big enough that we could nurse lying down, and Mama Cow suddenly started getting a lot more sleep at night. He got efficient enough to get a whole meal out of me in a few minutes, without my arms or behind getting numb. He figured out how to get the milk without gnawing, to the point that I see the pump now and cry because it hurts literally a million times more than he does. When I do pump I can get three or more ounces per side because my supply is so well established. We go anywhere, do anything with no fuss or muss or mess. He never has to wait for me to prepare his food, I just feed him the instant he's hungry. His food is free and I never worry about spoilage or bad ingredients. He's fat and healthy.

He smiles at me during feedings.

So... yeah. Give it thirty days. And get help from a woman who exclusively breastfeeds her baby. And if you give it thirty fair days, and decide that you want to use formula? It's not rat poison. Go for it. Save the guilty feelings for something really awful, like the fact that you're going to dress your baby in clothes too silly to put on a miniature poodle.

Feeding Time

I have to go on a business trip next Tuesday. I'm leaving on the 8 AM flight, returning on the 6 PM flight. I have a freezer full of wee milk bags. Daddy's taking the day to work from home. Everything will be fine, except for the part about my living heart ripping itself out and leaving its lurching, bleeding tracks on my pantsuit. Oh, and pumping milk in an airport bathroom.

We gave the boy a few bottles months ago in preparation for this day. We haven't done it since because I am so, so lazy. (Rainy is my hero in this regard. Before spawning, I read a lot of books. While immersed in Breastfeeding Propaganda, hearing all about the deep spiritual bond I would naturally form with my semi-divine offspring and how he would never weep and be a gazillion times more brilliant and eventually save the whales from all the empathy he would suck out of my nipples... while I was freaking myself out with all this pressure, Rainy calmly said, "I breastfeed because I'm lazy. I can't be bothered hauling around all that stuff or getting up in the middle of the night to mix things." I almost died from the sheer sanity of it all.)

But because I've been too lazy to pump more that what I needed to in order to build my freezer stash for the upcoming trip, he's had very few bottles since the introductory weeks. We decided we'd better make sure he still remembered how, after a panic a few weeks ago where he wouldn't take the fake nipple until he was really hungry. So, last night, I pumped right before he would normally feed, and Daddy administered the milk.

However, I forgot to warn the mate of certain... changes to the feeding routine.

Baby: (flips head around looking at the ceiling, the dog, and the bookshelf)

Daddy: (chasing baby's mouth around with the nipple)

Mama: Oh, that's normal.

Baby: (sucks frantically for two minutes, then pops off to complain)

Daddy: Son, what's wrong?

Mama: Oh, that's normal.

Baby: (sucks greedily, while emitting UHLUHLUHLUHLUHLUH noises)

Daddy: What the hell?

Mama: That's perfectly normal.

Baby: (digs tiny claws into stomach flesh)

Daddy: YEEARGH.

Mama: Yep, that's normal too.