Dear Julian,
I am visiting my sister in Montreal and we've been having a lot of discussions about discrimination against mothers who nurse their babies with formula. The message out there is
"breast is best" for babies...which you can't contest, but what happens when you have problems with breast feeding and can no longer nurse by breast? Or if you havfe to go back to work and struggle with the pumping, or your baby is allergic to your breastmilk to name a few reasons. I have had so many friends who have shared the shame they felt in having to pull out a bottle to feed their baby, even in spaces meant to be all supportive of mothers such as a mom's group I was a part of. They have managed to move on from this as strong women do, but I wonder how much of this shame is constructed by society and reinforced by our public health policies.
We were discussing the prevelance of post partum depression being highest in mom's who couldn't breastfeed and had to have a birth that wasn't part of their birth plan ie. c-section, next in prevlence are mom's who struggle with breastfeeding. It's like this feeling that your body is working against mother nature, that your body might not have been meant to be a mother. I know I shared these feelings when I had to have a c-section after my son wouldn't turn his breeched bum around, and to have added breast feeding challenges I would have been beside myself. So, why does the education that is disseminated to mothers feel so aggressive towards moms that have to formula feed. I heard the term "lactavist" recently and I thought that was a brillent term to identify the type of mom who will come up to your child in the grocery store and say something like "look at those beautiful breast feed cheeks," or "your son's eyes sparkle you must be breastfeeding" to then "oh they would sparkle so much more if you breastfed him dear" or every public health nurse who opens with "how is the breastfeeding going?"
Also, why is it that all my friends who needed to see lactation consultants felt unheard, misunderstand and unsupported? This happened in Vancouver, and now I am hearing it from Montreal. How can this be? I mean here a woman is at her most vulnerable, especially as a new mom, and she feels unsupported in the process by people trained to supposedly help her? I find it unbelievable. However we nurse our babies we are connecting to them through nurishment and security. Breast or bottle we are caring for our babies, meeting their needs and spending countless hours a day focused on meeting those needs. It is wonderful that the pendulum has swung in the direction of encouraging breast feeding as a first step in feeding your baby, taking the stigma of the breast out the feeding process and de-sexualizing the image of the breast in our society. However, the pendulum has swung too far in that we have aliented our own sisters who need to formula feed for whatever reason. This must change.
xoxo
