PROUD MAMMAL (The Breastfeeding Debate)

Member Name: MagdaDH

Product:	The Breastfeeding Debate
Date:	22/01/06 (998 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good for babies, cheap, handy

Disadvantages: ties you to the baby on a rather short leash; immense pressure applied if you express any interest

This topic has somehow become more popular recently here on dooyoo so I have been tempted to express (no pun intended) my views on it in, especially as it will become less theoretical and more realistic for me in few months time due to the fact that I am now pregnant with my second child.

I have always believed that breastfeeding is - medically and practically - preferable. When I was pregnant with my first child I fully intended to breastfeed. I also had seen my sister breastfeeding exclusively until her child was 18 months and saw all the advantages.

My daughter was full term but born by a caesarean section and my milk never 'came in'. I have breast fed exclusively for 3 or 4 days and each of these days she spent about 16-18 hours on my breast. Due to lack of servants at home I have switched to mixed feeding and I mix-fed until my daughter was 5 months old when the whole process came to some kind of natural end (she got bored?).

I still strongly believe that breastfeeding is the best way to feed and I do hope sincerely that this time round I will be able to breastfeed exclusively. I have tried to summarise the benefits and disadvantages as I see them as well as my main points of advice.

ADVANTAGES

First of all and most of all the medical ones: human breast milk is best for human babies; it's nutritionally perfect, provides the baby with antibodies protecting from illness, breast fed babies have much less stomach troubles (from serious infections to being constipated) etc, etc. Most of these apply also when you mix-feed. At about 5 weeks old my daughter was exposed to a truly nasty, high-fever flu I had and she didn't suffer a single sneeze. I believe this was due to the fact that I breastfed her throughout and thus immunised her to the bug. She was also an extremely healthy baby (I am not sure how much of it was due to breastfeeding). I would say it's ALWAYS worth the effort to get some breast milk into the baby even if it is getting top-ups with formula and even if it's only for first few months or weeks.

The psychological ones: it's nice to have your baby skin-to-skin, and although I am not sure about this whole 'bonding obsession' it can be good time to bond (if the feeding goes well and you are both happy about it). Breast is also a good comforter and often older children who hardly need the nutritious benefits of mother's milk use it like that. But of course you can have a cuddle and the skin to skin contact without feeding and the feeding part of it can give the whole experience a rather biological, animal-like slant so it all depends how happy you feel as a mammal. I was rather, but people have different attitudes and some women hate all the earth-motherly gooiness associated with breastfeeding. And even if you are happy in such a role, your partner might not be so and you might wish to indulge him.

Also on the medical side, it's much easier to lose weight when breastfeeding as the fat that most of women accumulated in pregnancy is so easily accumulated precisely for that purpose: to provide milk-making material.

Breast feeding is a contraceptive, though only when breast-feeding exclusively and even then not 100% - but as you are not supposed to use the normal pill anyway (you can still use the progesteron-only mini pill assuming it's not unrecommended for you for other reasons) as it could affect the milk production, breastfeeding could add reassurance to other methods like condoms.

Breast milk is free, so you don't spend money on formula. And you don't need to spend money on all the feeding paraphernalia from bottles to sterilises to whatever else the producers invent to keep us spending.

There is no hassle involved: bra down, boob out, baby on and here we go: the baby is feeding in no time, with no need to boil water, make up bottles or even open the cartons, warm anything up, wash or sterilise. It's always there ready at a few seconds notice. It can be done anytime and pretty much anywhere provided you wear suitable clothing (i.e. not to tight and skimpy). At night, if you sleep with your baby or if it's very near the feed can be done almost in your sleep without even getting up.

DISADVANTAGES

Exclusive breast feeding 'proper' ties you to the baby: you have to take it everywhere with you or you stay in with it. The way round it is to either express or mix-feed if you have any regularity in your routine. To be honest unless I had masses of milk that would take no time to express I would probably go for mix-feeding as expressing milk and then washing and sterilising the pump takes extra time while the formula feed can be dealt with by whoever is looking after the baby while you are not there. But of course the more formula the baby eats and the less of your milk the smaller your production will be, so a decision to cut out a feed or two shouldn't be taken lightly - you might find it very hard to get them back later if you wished.

Breast afflictions of different kinds. Due to tiny amount of milk I had I never experienced the engorged breasts/cracked nipples/mastitis/other mammary problems with my daughter but they can get pretty unpleasant. I have had a cracked nipple for last 3 weeks and that IS pretty painful, especially with a baby who feeeds for literally hours at the time! Not everybody would get them and most of them are pretty mild, though.

Expense of buying breast pads and nursing bras (not comparable to the cost of formula though). The bras are expensive but also tend to be of very decent quality, I still occasionally wear a black cotton Mothercare nursing bra which I bought 5 years ago when my daughter was about to be born.

The feeding breasts can be leaky and if you or your partner are put off by the messy aspect of our mammalian heritage which I mentioned before it can affect your own feelings, the relationship and/or sex life (it can also have a positive effect for some, of course).

You cannot drink alcohol in any serious way, are restricted in the drugs you can take (including the normal pill though you can still take the mini one) and sometimes babies are supposed to react badly to certain foodstuffs (though I am not sure how much of the last one is a pure superstition).

It can take a while (and I mean weeks rather than hours) to learn how to do it and stabilise your milk production. If your first few weeks of motherhood are fraught with other psychological, family, medical, logistical or financial problems it might be one extra thing you just can't cope with. Some babies latch on with no problems and some breasts cope immediately; in other cases it can take days and weeks. I would advise to try to get support and not only from midwives/breast feeding advisors but also, ideally, from breast feeding mothers. Also, experimenting with different holds is worth doing, I used a so called 'football hold' (or 'rugby hold' here in Scotland) when the baby lies under your arm and not across the belly advised to me I think because of caesarean and but also seemed to work better generally.

Breast fed babies would generally feed more often and I think it's harder to establish a clear routine: if you feed totally on demand it probably doesn't matter but if you want to start sticking to more regular hours and unbroken nights after a few months it probably would be harder with a breast-fed baby which might feed more often not only because of hunger but also thirst or need for comfort .

The pressure to breast-feed applied to anybody that shows the slightest bit of interest is immense and can drive a vulnerable first time mother (read: me 5 years ago) close to insane. I saw it in the hospital: the women who went straight to bottle were left alone and supplied with milk in a handy bottle, while women who were breastfeeding were relentlessly 'advised'; 'counselled' etc etc. I am not saying the advice is wrong (get advice, you WILL need it). But there is a kind of evangelical zeal some advisors show and my personal experience was of mixed messages, a guilt trip and a feeling of being totally incompetent. For example, I was told to not give my daughter bottle at all despite lack of my own milk as if she takes a bottle she will not want to take the breast (rubbish: she did take both happily for 5 months) and at the same time (by a different person) I was told to give her formula and water because she was too jaundiced and I was apparently risking her life by not giving her extra fluid (rubbish: she was fine and nobody can make such diagnosis without testing bilirubin levels anyway). Most annoyingly, I was told that every women had enough milk and that mine will eventually, one day 'come in' (it never did). And so on and so on.

Now with the second baby I have been breastfeeding exclusively for 3 weeks but despite latching on properly and being on the breast for close to 18 hours a day my son had not been gaining weight. You see, some women DO NOT produce enough milk (i.e. the leaflets tell well-meaning fibs!). I have a sensible health visitor who eventually advised me to top up a bit and since then he started to grow, so it looks like a case of mix-feeding for me again!

MY ADVICE

Overall, I would advise one thing: do what you feel is best for you and your baby. From the medical point of view, the human breast milk is ideal for human babies. But in real-life circumstances the best option might be be breast, expressing, mix feeding, and sometimes bottle.

Don't let others, especially affected Breast Feeding Advisors give you guilt trips under the guise of giving you support and help. After all millions of bonny babies have been raised on formula and it provides a perfectly good substitute for breastmilk.

Try to find a reliable source of information (ONE midwife, a paediatrician, your mother) and stick to it, pretty much ignoring what others say. It's never a question of life and death (unless you live in subsaharan Africa but then you wouldn't be reading this text) even though it might seem so at the time.

If you feel strongly about breastfeeding, definitely DO persevere for at least few weeks but if for whatever reason it's not working out don't get too hung up about it. I did and it didn't do me nor my family any good.

If for any reason you feel that you cannot manage to exclusively breastfeed do consider mix-feeding instead of just chucking it in completely - you will give at least some of the benfits to the baby.

If you decide that despite trying you can't manage or even if you simply intensely dislike breastfeeding DON'T feel like a failure.

*****

And finally, let me say a word about the 'feeding in public' controversy which - in my opinion - should not be a controversy at all.

Breastfeeding doesn't generally consist of getting your tits out for all and sundry to ogle while your baby gets its fill. In pretty much all instances of breastfeeding by other women that I have observed, including all-female gatherings and family circumstances, the glimpse of a nipple was hard to catch and the boob pretty much covered throughout. In other words, if you see a woman who is 'showing her boobs' while breastfeeding I would risk saying that she is being somewhat purposefully demonstrative. In fact the (often flabby but surely not particularly offensive) midriff is the body part that gets most exposure while breastfeeding. And thus I feel that the controversy is not about getting the tits out, is about performing the act itself in public.

I will go terribly feminist now and say that a large part of controversy about breastfeeding in public is due to the unease with the essentially biological, gooey, oozy, female nature of the process. People can feel uncomfortable with the idea that the breast, which is commonly presented as a lacy-bra-encased, basque-pushed-up, silicone-enhanced, sexual plaything removed from the realities of life and death is, actually, an organ primarily meant to produce milk necessary for babies to survive.

I would say that my practical rule of thumb was such that wherever I was happy to bottle-feed I would also consider it suitable for breast-feeding. Wherever I wouldn't bottle feed, I wouldn't also breast-feed. And the debate about where it's OK to feed babies, or more generally, where it's OK to take babies and children is a different and wider one and I will for now leave it untouched (though it does seem to provoke a lot of controversy).

Summary: That's what boobs are for, after all. But formula is OK too.