"Breastfeeding is oppressing women" (from The Guardian)

[morningpaper]

Let the breastfeeding rebellion begin

"In the 70s, many women protested that they were shackled to domesticity by the unreasonably high bar set for housework. Now, some say, it's not the vacuum cleaner that's oppressing women, but another sucking sound ..."

But but but but

This is a depressing article.

A British academic wouldn't give her name "because she is concerned about attacks from the pro-breastfeeding lobby"

I also fidn it really annoying when people say "I really tried to breastfeed for six days and it didn't work" - By six days lots of women will be in agony. The message that if you haven't got it cracked by six days then it hasn't worked - is just wrong.

And if there is such enormous pressure to exclusively breastfeed then why are only 3% of mothers still doing it at 5 months?

Yes women will feel guilty if they don't breastfeed. Women have the chance to feel guilty if they don't do a million things that are 'optimal' for their children's health and wellbeing. We can all agree that women need more support in the transition to motherhood, by setting up this monster of a pro-breastfeeding lobby is utterly unhelpful.

Having children BLOWS for women - your fanjo is shot to pieces, your career goes down the shitter, you piss yourself every time you sneeze, you lose your pension rights, your brain turns to mush, you have no social standing, boys stop grinning at your in the street - but BREASTFEEDING IS STILL THE OPTIMAL WAY TO FEED YOUR BABIES. You can't un-do that boring fact. And handing women a bottle isn't going to make everything better.

LOL morningpaper. I know. I was just trying to pre-empt the anecdotal responses which say, "I/my child was f-fed, and I'm as thin as a rake". Sure. But the statistics (all controlled for, AFAIK, say the opposite.

My last point was rather flippant, but I do get annoyed with the sub-text of the "Breast is best" campaign. So counter-productive, and playing right into the formula companies' hands.

Frankly, it's no surprise to me that 100 years of market-driven factors should lead most people to feel that formula is the "normal" option, while breast is "best" (who needs to be best all the time? No-one. So obviously it's "ok", psychologically, to plump for formula).

Totally agree about the class issue. Totally.

I have to say that my doctor was tremendously supportive though. When I went to him in tears because I hated breastfeeding and being stuck on the couch all day soaked in milk with mastitus faring up he said that he'd rather I was happy and bottle feeding tahn depressed and breastfeeding. This is the right approach imo. Do what makes you happy as baby will benefit.
It did spur me on to keep going with the bf but I have been envious of some formula feding mums who manage to get out once a week because their babies will take a bottle.

flaring up

i was oout last night with my bfing pal cos her baby will take a bottle of ebm.

i don't really think that the happy mum = happy baby thing follows, personally, and it always got right on my tits when hps told me that they'd rather i give up bfing in order to be happy. not everything makes you happy. but yes, i know what you mean and it's horses for courses to a great extent.

"Do what makes you happy as baby will benefit."

That's not quite correct though poshsinglemum, though. It depends what you mean by benefit and what it is that is making the mother happy...

Morningpaper - you were right to jump on my first sentence - in my head I was saying that you are bound to find the occasional very extreme view even on mumsnet but it clearly isn't common - but my fingers obviously failed to keep up with my thoughts - which is odd, because it is usually the other way around and I am sitting here blankly trying to remember what on earth I wanted to say!!

I am worrying now about your misplaced vagina, though. Have you checked down the back of the sofa cushions? Or in that drawer in the kitchen that's full of elastic bands, receipts, batteries, torches and broken egg timers?

Should we perhaps start a new thread - the Where is Morningpapers vagina thread..... Though maybe a poster campaign might be a bit too.....

"Do whatever doesn't you making you fucking miserable" might be closer to the mark...

poshsinglemum, I think that the old "happy mum = happy baby" platitude is trotted out far too often where parental choices are concerned and especially with regard to BFing. Although I gave up BFing and my relationship with my DS changed after that point for the better, I was certainly less than happy about it.

You got the right support for you, but that isn't necessarily the right thing for everyone.

Breastfeeding ruined my life! I breastfed for a year and it was so isolating. I couldn't just sit having a conversation with family and friends, had to pop upstairs unless I was going to get my boobies out. Which I don't ever want to do in public. I couldn't just give ds a bottle on a long car journey with friends and family. Had to stop off , get out, go to one of those dirty smelly service stations to feed. So stopped going ANYWHERE. Oh the breastpump. Crap crapcrap. I had no guidance, no sleep, baby was never fully satisfied and never settled well and still can't settle himself to sleep. If I hadn't breastfed I could have had an hours break while my mum looked after ds. I lost everyone around me so that I could breastfeed. (We just don't get the boobies out in case anyone wants to say it's normal. Its not normal! not anymore. people stare) Why did I do it. I thought it would be best for ds. But what is best for my ds is a happy healthy mum, with a social circle and network of people who can help. Not one woman crazily breastfeeding on her own for a year. and the HV had not breastfed themselves so actually, I was doing everything they were advising on the leaflets, but didn't have any experience or proper guidance on weaning and settling. DS still won't drink cows milk and is now underdeveloped. Yes, he hasn't been ill for a year which I'm happy about. And he is too clingy. I had planned to go back to work. Couldn't do that because of the breastfeeding. He wouldn't take milk from anyone else when given breastmilk from a bottle. Yes, if you live in a cave and you have no life and you have one year to do nothing but breastfeed, then go for it. It's put me off anymore children so now ds won't have a sibling. But hey! he was breastfed.

The advice out there on BF is crap. sorry about the rant. another night of a clingy but bf-toddler

just wanted to concur, stayingsunny, that yours was a great post. i think what pisses me off is the fact that everything is presented as a fixed point in time. so sometimes i felt guilty, sometimes i lashed out at bfers (because i was jealous), sometimes i felt okay and then over time i felt more okay and less jealous and then... i felt okay. you could've had five different articles out of me, but i would only ever have been asked when i felt angry and jealous because that makes the best copy. it's not a truthful account, but no matter.

did you get any help with your confidence re showing your boobies, zahora? it does sound like being able to feed outside the home would have been a start.

did you have no friends from ante-natal classes who would visit and also feed? (that's my memory of the first few months after dd1 was born, eating cake surrounded by bfing women). or do you not even feed in front of other bfers?

zahora that you have had a terrible experience, but you must surely see that this is exceptional rather than the norm?

Zahora - That sounds awful. I'm sorry you had such a negative experience.

However, seen from another perspective, everything you describe is not about how breastfeeding is oppressive, but how society makes breastfeeding difficult. Society is oppressing b-feeding mothers, like yourself.

Gaaahh! What a completely stooopid article!
Are we to believe then that:

1. The huge majority of women who don't breastfeed are being made to feel guilty by the tiny minority who did.

2. The indisputible fact that artificial milk is inferior to bm makes people who had to / choose to ff makes them feel guilty and that is somehow the bfers fault.

3. None of the vast majority of ffers actually choose to ff because they thought it would be easier.

4. That there's no pressure on bfers to ff. Ummmm.... adverts, family, ignorant HCPs, societies obsession with boobies as a sexual thing, feeding rooms, the need for a law to protect against discrimination.

5. The bfers are just lucky to have been able to do it and didn't have to put in any effort at all.

6. All the non-bfers tried and for some reason were unable to do it.

ohhhh, I am

I remember my midwife saying to wait 6 weeks before giving a bottle of bm and I wish I hadn't listened

you get to 6 weeks and there is no way on god's earth that baby will take a bottle

so you end up being the only person who can feed the baby, all day, all night (ime)and that is a hard, hard slog

That's not everyone's experience though yappybluedog. My DS didn't care where the milk came from, how it was delivered or by whom, as long as it kept coming, and he didn't get a bottle of ebm until he was well past the six weeks mark!!

Zahora, I think you are being unfair about breastfeeding. Your previous posts have made it clear that it is not breastfeeding but having a child that has made you feel this way. And you are very brave to acknowledge that (lots wouldn't) but I don't think you've pinned your feelings on breastfeeding before... it is more motherhood. Is that fair, do you think?

Agree broadly with CanterburySnails. I certainly felt considerable external pressure to breastfeed (and I doubt this would have been the case if I had given birth 30 years ago). Obviously some sections of society are more responsive to this pressure than others, hence low feeding rates amongst younger mothers and those from lower socio-economic groups.

The big problem (and I know it has been said many times before on here) is that while a lot of effort has been directed towards telling women that breastfeeding is the right thing to do, relatively little effort has been put into taking the mechanics of it seriously, and a lot of women fall through the gap between the two. If feeding were taken as seriously as giving birth in maternity wards and ante-natal classes, then the "breast is best" message would be a whole lot less problematic. But as it is, too many pregnant women are encouraged to focus on how to get the baby out while being led to believe that breastfeeding will just somehow happen if they only have the right "attitude" about it. For a lot of women it just doesn't, and when you've received the message that it's easy/natural/every woman can do it, it can be unbelievably demoralising.

Agree with aitch.

I was the ONLY Bfeeder at the mummy groups. I was treated like an outsider and had to go off at some point and sit in a room to bfeed Plus, as soon as conversation would come up about bf, the mummies would get very defensive and go on about how they did it for a month or whatever and how their little darlings take a whole 4 ounce now and it's brilliant! Or that their dh gives them the bottle....oh it's great! I never shoved bfeeding down anyone elses throat or talked about it like it was best, just sort of thought it's a cultural difference, my family did it and hey, each to their own. But I got made to feel like I was going to extremes by bfeeding. In a group when hv would give everyone advice, I'd be given advice on my own afterwards. LOL.

I think the usual point of the article is:

MOTHERS - YOU ARE ALWAYS IN THE WRONG.

Only good point of these articles is the discussion that can follow, however think all mothers should be provided with a T-shirt after the birth of their first child that automatically thickens skin in order do deal with any crticism that comes from ANY corner.

Can't stand how people want to stir up supposed factions of mothers - to divide us and weaken us as a body perhaps?

did they insist that you went to another room? how rude. they don't sound very likeable, i wonder if another group, say at a bfing cafe, might have been more conducive?

what did your hv/gp have to say about the fact that you were isolating yourself in the house?

did you want to give up bfing?

Zahora, well I think you did bloody well to stick at it under such pressure. Having to go and sit on your own to feed at a mummies group, that's so sad.

It just shows that society is so mixed up re feeding - 'science' and, let's face it, facts telling us that bm is the correct food for babies but then society as a whole trotting out the happy mum = happy baby argument (which only seems to apply to feeding choices anyway) and being all weird about boobs for food but happy to see posters, music videos of teenage girls with their boobs out all over the place.

MOTHERS - YOU ARE ALWAYS IN THE WRONG.

lol, we should have that on a t shirt

zahora, im very sorry that you had such a bad experience, but i agree with Penthesileia, it wasn't bf to blame but a society that tuts when you nurse, one that makes a cats bum mouth and asks if its really appropriate. our society has normalised ff to the extent that bf is now seen as wierd lentil-weavery behaviour, or something that only middleclass women do rather than the NATURAL way to feed your child. yes, it can be hard, but thats partly because we no longer pass down bfing. children dont see their mothers nursing, the majority of modern women grew up in homes where children were ff as part of the great "lets reclaim our breasts" revolution. the problem is, by reclaiming our breasts from our children we have surrendered them to the "sun" culture, making getting our norks out uncomfortable. we are told that our breasts are sexual, but they also have a purpose. we are women, we can multi-task!