What would a bf culture look like?

[MoonFaceMama]

We live in an ff culture. How would you imagine the alternative to look?

I'll start with an obvious one.

It would be the norm for babies to be bf in public. There would be no snearing/leering because everyone would know that feeding babies are what boobs are for.

athrawes! I am so can i come live with you please? no doubt there are areas of the uk that are like that too, but i don't know them!

Imregular that you didn't get the support you needed. I picture bf culture just as you describe too.

Rainbow and at your story. I would actually complain about that. [gob-all emoticon]

Foxytocin told a similar story on the thread that sparked this one. I'll paraphrase but basically her 6yo dd asking if they could buy 2yo dd some toddler milk from the advert on telly. This despite dd2 being bf and dd1 tandem feeding till 5. Sorry for inaccuracies.

MFM just to clarify, it was type 1 diabetes I was referring to - it occurs in approx 1 in 400 - 500 people, according to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (jdrf.org). Multiple Sclerosis affects "one tenth of one percent" of the population, according to the MS Association of America (msassociation.org). By comparison, the 1% of women who physiologically can't produce milk (hypoplasia is only one reason for this, of course) is not such a small number of women. And again, 1% is the number typically accepted by bf advocates such as Dr. Jack Newman. Others put the estimate closer to 5%.

On the "support for those ff" thread there are four or five people who shared experiences which point to the symptoms of hypoplasia - from atypically shaped breasts, to no breast changes in pregnancy, no tenderness or change in size, no engorgement, leaking, etc. days or weeks after birth, no feeling of let-down when bf, no pain on stopping etc. etc. Most people with this condition are not diagnosed, which is why I think the 1% estimate is very conservative. Part of the reason why it goes undiagnosed, IMO, is because we don't live in a bf culture so many women who physically cannot bf move on to ff without investigating the possible medical reasons why it didn't work. Also, though, I think that many mums do feel a lot of pressure to bf (from themselves and from others) and when they then "fail" they are so emotionally and physically drained by the experience that they may just want to move on rather than undergo tests and meet with specialists to determine why exactly it happened.

Anyway, I am very pro-bf myself and would love to see bf become the cultural norm. I do think it's sad, though, that even on a thread about what we would envision as a better culture, you seem willing to accept people judging women for ff. For me this would be like saying I would like to live in a culture where it's the norm for women to be mens' equals in the workplace, and if the price to be paid for that is that SAHMs will be looked down upon, well, that's ok too. Unfortunate, but still worth the trade-off. It's a false choice. Is it so impossible to imagine a culture where bf is the norm but ff mums are neither scorned nor pitied?

I would like to live in a breastfeeding culture, sure, but also a compassionate one and one that is respectful of diversity and trusts women to know their bodies and their children's needs better than formula companies and judgemental bf advocates alike.

Well said, cloudydays :) I agree.

Additionally, I loved the thumbs up and congrats and well done remarks that I got while bf. It really helped me to keep going! Pathetic, I know, but it was really, really hard for me and to be feeding in a cafe or restaurant or park wherever and have that encouragement was such a boost! :)

"Is it so impossible to imagine a culture where bf is the norm but ff mums are neither scorned nor pitied?"

I don't think this is a zero-sum game. We already live in a society with huge diversity of accepted opinion, it seems highly unlikely we are headed for a dictatorship of the majority.

Plus I suspect that most people who aren't themselves mums of small children don't actually give a stuff either way

Thank you cloudy. That was very informative. is there much known about causes or any possible treatments?

I really do not want any culture that judges ff, though that is certainly what we have now. What i was trying to get at was that even if we could not change that aspect i would still want women to be enabled to bf. I certainly didn't mean that to come across as acceptance of ff judging, though i'm not great with words so can only apologise if that's the impression i gave. So while i can certainl imagine a culture where ff is neither scorned nor pitied, i fear one where some judgment remains may be what we get (if we get any change at all). Again i don't think i'm expressing myself very well.

I'm with you now, MFM, thanks for clarifying. I didn't mean to address that last post directly to you (though re-reading it I can see that I did), I was just responding to what I read in previous posts on this thread.

In the end, we're all on the same side here! :) I'm sorry to be a bit defensive, but obviously we all speak from our personal experience so sometimes these discussions feel a bit... personal, particularly when it seems the "really really wanted to but genuinely couldn't no matter what support we might have had" contingent is not being acknowledged.

I actually don't know too much about the causes or treatments of hypoplasia. It's a matter of the milk ducts not maturing during puberty, so I would imagine it has something to do with either structural or hormonal irregularities, though that's strictly a layperson's guess. Supplements like fenugreek can improve supply, but it's estimated that only about 40% of women with the condition will ever be able to ebf, and that's usually in second or subsequent children. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence (I've seen some on MN as well as other places) that each pregnancy and each bf child seems to stimulate some "late bloomer" milk ducts, so that the condition can improve significantly in some women.

If you google, though, you come up with references to the condition on many different websites on breast health or breastfeeding, but there's nowhere specific that I've found to go for a repository of information on this condition in particular.

One of the reasons it's not a well known and accepted condition, again in my opinion, is that we don't live in a bf culture and therefore there is little or no money spent on research or the development of treatments for women with hypoplasia or other conditions that affect the capacity to breastfeed.

There is a condition affecting men in which a part of their anatomy - not vital to their survival, but extremely important to their sense of manhood and fulfillment - doesn't work as it should. Consider the money and research hours that have been put into developing Viagara or any of the many other treatments for male sexual dysfunction.

Meanwhile at least one in every hundred women - probably considerably more - has a condition in which part of her anatomy - not vital to her survival, but extremely important to her sense of womanhood and fulfillment - doesn't work as it should. And because it doesn't work, her children will all get what is widely acknowledged by the medical community to be a "second best" start in life in regard to nourishment and immune defenses. Yet most people don't know the condition exists (I didn't until I realized I had it), there are no treatments offered and, as far as I'm aware, no research into how any treatments might be developed.

Says something about how the needs of women and children are valued in our society, doesn't it?

It does. Your post has brought tears to my eyes.

MFM this is a good and useful thread and I feel bad to have been the one to derail it!

So I will back off after this but just wanted to make a contribution to getting things back on track:

In a breastfeeding culture, medical research and treatment options for conditions that prevent or limit breastfeeding would be a priority. These conditions would be seen as serious and worthy of publicity and information. As a result, women who had trouble breastfeeding for physiological or biological reasons would no longer be met with indifference by the medical profession or scepticism by the breastfeeding community. Many of them would benefit from treatments and go on to successfully breastfeed exclusively.

:) MoonFaceMama thanks for the kind comments and for not taking my defensiveness personally. I'm glad we ended up on common ground.

cloudy, please don't feel bad. You have in no way derailed the thread. All of your points have been important, informative and original (to this thread at least). I'm really glad you contributed them as i'd worried that the thread might peeter out with out this issue being addressed. I for one am a bit better informed now. I wholeheartedly agree that there needs to be much greater awareness of, research into and treatment for these conditions.

Fwiw you didn't come across as defensive. Your posts struck me as balanced, eloquent and insightfull.

I'm glad we worked this out too.