Breastfeeding, women's bodies and feminism

[Polynerd]

A male friend just posted a link on FB about breastfeeding reducing a woman's risk of stroke. I was surprised to see that he got a furious response from his (largely middle-class, middle-aged) female friends. We're fed up of being told what we should do with our bodies.
I fed all of my children and frankly I wish I had gone with the bottle. How are we supposed to get to a position where men and women have equal responsibility for children if women are harangued into being the sole provider during a child's early life?
If as much scientific effort was put into reproductive health research as is put into designing cars and phones, we would have better milks and measures to offset any risks to women's health arising from not feeding.

I have a six week old and I have to say I have been astonished at how completely breastfeeding has demolished the ideal of equal parenting I had. I thought we'd both get up in the night - by day 3 he was in the spare room because he couldn't actually do anything; I could make him more miserable by insisting he woke but I couldn't make my life easier! We've both been home for the baby's entire life (he's a teacher so happens to have been on holiday) and we've been trying to divide things, but it inevitably means him doing things around the house etc while I sit and feed - so 'baby care' is still predominantly mine because only I can do the most time-consuming thing a newborn needs. I hadn't appreciated at all how far breastfeeding will complicate my return to work (at which point he's taking shared parental leave) and how, realistically, likely it is that I will need to cease or significantly reduce breastfeeding then. I'm not saying that any of this is a reason not to breastfeed, and I haven't seriously thought about stopping. But it was a bit of a shock how badly my ideals of equal parenting fitted with biological reality.

Maybe more should be done to promote pumping so that it's easier for women to have breaks.

Just seen your post snuggy - I've started pumping as I'm terrified of the baby not taking a bottle when I go back to work at 5 months - it's really not a break, though! It's harder work and more tedious than just feeding the baby, and again I was totally naive about what a time commitment it is if you want to build up a supply. My husband suggested he spend a night giving expressed breast milk so I could have a night off and my first response was 'but what a waste of milk...'! Maybe I'll get more used to it but at the moment pumping really doesn't feel like my saviour.

for the medical professionals they come into contact with to give advice that undermines BFing or even to encourage them to give formula

Eh ? In the U.K.? Quite the opposite in my experience.

Talking to some older women they describe being made to feel that their own milk wasn't enough for their babies by the doctors and midwives. Formula can be a positive choice but not always

What do you mean by "older" I'm 59 and what I was told was the mantra of "breast is best, every woman can breast feed".
I hated breastfeeding- I hated it from day one. I think I struggled for about 3 months. It never got any better, hurt and made me feel physically sick.

I could not care less whether women like painting disapproves of my unfeminist choice to stop. My own mental and phyisical health was more important. Given my son is 28 and the last time he had to see any medical professional for anything was to get his MMR I am unconvinced I failed him by giving up.

Polynerds

Oh yes I agree. You'd have to control for social class and I think that would be difficult. I (white, MC) am the only person I know who never breastfed at all.

I see bf as a bit like vaginal delivery - let's emphasis the positive and play down the negatives. Women don't want the wool pulled over their eyes. They want to make informed decision-making and proper care

sorry 'emphasis the positives and play down the negatives' should have been in quotes.

Lass

That's what I was saying too. I am (sorry) not convinced that the way you feed is that important in the grand scheme of things. It's monumentally important when you are in the terribly vulnerable state post birth which is why it provokes such upset on MN

Maybe more should be done to promote pumping so that it's easier for women to have breaks

Not a bad idea. I pumped a lot with my first. It allowed me a bit of time away from her. Also it allowed dh to do the night feed from 7pm to midnight then I took over.

I didn’t pump with the second born. It was hard to organise the pumping with a toddler in tow.

But we are discussing ideal vs what we are confronted with now. And I do believe that a system that centred women would inmprove BF rates

I agree with the pp who said bf is part of gestation. Of course there are times when gestation needs intervention and support but where possible in a wanted pregnancy where the woman is desirous to do so, the woman’s body should be supported to maintain the pregnancy / infant.

Yes of course it’s shit only the woman can get pregnant and breastfeed. If my husband had been able to do pregnancy as well I think we would have approached the whole concept of reproducing differently.

But he can’t. So. That’s that. Same with breastfeeding.

What we need is more acknowledgement of the strain of pregnancy and breastfeeding. Not rushing back into pretending to be male - oh no, no inconvenient reproductive hormones, foetuses or babies here, now I can be taken SERIOUSLY - instead we need to totally revisit how we look at and value reproduction.

Currently there is this narrative that having children is a selfish choice, it’s the individuals role alone to have and support children (“people on benefits shouldn’t have kids!” Etc), which all feeds into the narrative that the female work involved in reproduction is essentially a vanity project that doesn’t really need support or care. Whereas in reality, a continuing society relies on young people as well as old.

I cannot see the bf / ff thing in isolation anymore since becoming a Mum. I just can’t. It’s part of a much, much bigger picture.

I also think - people who kick back about bf meaning it’s women who do most of the care for babies - why don’t they care so vehemently about formal childcare? Where are all the threads demanding that nursery workers should be 50/50 male female? Where are all the working parents bemoaning that of all the childcare choices, there are very few options where there is a male carer some or all of the time?

Feels like it’s just another stick to bash women with (oh those bf women who do the majority of the childcare / don’t work!) rather than a true consistent position (men should always provide 50% childcare).

Lass, older than 59, more like 70-80. Formula may well have been the right method but it wasn't much of a choice if they were told inaccurate things about breastfeeding.

As for pumping, I can't imagine finding time to build a proper supply. I do a bit in the morning and sometimes DH gives the odd bottle. I would like to see balanced information about the risks of nipple confusion and bottle refusal. I'm almost glad DD had to be bottle fed in hospital as she can feed both ways.

I agree with your postsLadybirds

we are now able to transcend biology using science

This is simply not true.

There has been so little study into the constituents of breast milk and function of breastfeeding - until pretty recently - that we're only now starting to discover the actual functions of breastfeeding, what the constituents in breast milk are. We still don't know what they all do. We don't fully understand how the body responds to the child and the environment to create antibodies tailored to them, and milk that differs depending on all sorts of things like time of day, temperature outside, frequency of feeding and - who knows what else effects it and how that then supports the child. We also don't yet understand how the physical act of breast feeding supports the child's development in other ways.

We simply haven't done enough research to know - but what has been done looks very interesting indeed.

Bottom line: breast feeding is not only food but also supports the developing immune system and the child in ways we're only just beginning to understand.

Formula is food. It does not support the immune system like breastfeeding does. And it can't do all the things that breast milk and breast feeding does because we don't even know what they all are.

I think it infantilises mothers to pretend that FF is the same as BFing, and that they shouldn't feel guilty because FF and BF are basically the same thing - because that's a lie, and like all lies it'll make people feel very vulnerable when they feel that lie being exposed.

However - mothers shouldn't feel guilty for FF. But for different reasons.

I know this is an emotive issue, but it's one that has been politicised because the interference of commercialism and because of changes to society that prioritised profit over the community and the needs of people. The cards are stacked against mothers and they really shouldn't feel guilty for not BFing - there is so much working against us to pressure to FF, the lack of support for BFing, the lack of community, families living so far apart etc etc - I could go on.

Mothers shouldn't feel guilty.

It's just one of many parenting choices we make that effects health. Very few of us grow up in optimum circumstances for the best possible health.

Anyone who lives in a city for example, is there because of prioritising something over health. I live in a town that's polluted, for example. We stay here because we have jobs, good schools and friends - as do many others here. I don't think about it day-to-day, but I do know that it's a risk, that - bottom line, pollution is a killer as well as contributing towards ill health such as respiratory diseases. Everyone in a city or large town (probably most of us on this thread) are making similar choices - but parents are not made to feel guilty about it in the same way as mothers are for FF. Why? Well, because we're mothers living in a patriarchy, of course (IMO).

Also, the very fact it's mothers who are made to feel guilty isn't in, IMO. Breastfeeding shouldn't be framed as an individual choice of a woman, and it's her "fault" if she makes the wrong choice.

If a mother stops BFing, for example, why isn't a father asked "didn't you support her well enough?" and made to feel guilty for that? (I'm not suggesting that we should aim for more guilt! But just thinking - why doesn't that happen?)

Not so long ago, it would have been practically impossibly for a woman to get to adulthood without seeing other women around her BFing all the time, and to have picked up on lots of knowledge about the realities of BFing without even trying. Now, it's not unusual for a mother to have never seen a baby breastfed up close until she has her own.

We used to live in communities, near our mothers and other women who would have helped us BFing - often by sharing their own milk before that became taboo.

Now, women are expected to BF, having never had any experience of other women BFing, while isolated in their own homes, cut off from support, with partners who go back to work at 2 weeks, with "support" from HCPs who have themselves grown up in a FF culture and have had crap training on BFing. No wonder women struggle, and if they don't manage to BF, then they should not feel guilty, the cards are stacked against them.

painted

I agree with your last three paragraphs.

X posts. I agree with all of what you say.

How are we supposed to get to a position where men and women have equal responsibility for children if women are harangued into being the sole provider during a child's early life?

By paying women for the labour they do by breastfeeding. By expecting fathers to do literally everything else in the home and for the baby, while the mother is freed up to concentrate on breastfeeding without guilt. By accepting that breastfeeding for many women, is the only form of labour they should be doing when their babies are young. By completely dismantling the male supremacist structures which demoted women to also-ran humans and characterised everything we do as less valuable than everything men do.

And everything Painted is saying.

(baby refuses formula & refuses bottles).

My extremely greedy baby would shriek and scream with frustration when I tried to give her an occasional bottle, I came to the conclusion that milk must gush out of the breast. I made ginormous holes in the bottle-nipple using red-hot darning needle, and she settled happily.

That's the sum total of my advice/knowledge about breast feeding 😁

I agree it’s incredibly irritating for a man to weigh in on the issue of breastfeeding on a public forum. It’s like men that love to lecture about the dangers of c sections (I’ve had this from a non medically trained alternative healer who had written a book about childbirth!!) However privately you can’t expect men to but out of feeding descisions for their own child? That said I’m not sure this

If as much scientific effort was put into reproductive health research as is put into designing cars and phones, we would have better milks and measures to offset any risks to women's health arising from not feeding.

Is really a possibility. Medical science is great but it can’t exactly counteract not following biological norms and any risks that arise from it. At least not at this time. Breastmilk will never be replicated artificially. Adult humans will always encounter some risk from not eating what we’re biologically programmed to survive on too. Medicine can help with the effects of this but not eradicate the risk.

Juells - my oldest was also extremely greedy and spent a lot of time crying. Luckily for me, he was as happy with a bottle as the breast. And I mix fed with breast milk and formula (attracting criticism from all angles). He still screamed though! I started weaning as early as possible and that's when he settled. Looking back with hindsight, I think he screamed because he was either still hungry or had drunk so much he had given himself a tummy ache. Then the youngest was just so easy. Could breast feed with no problem and he slept the day around. I thought youngest was a true bloody miracle after the nightmare of oldest!

I think whoever said that had a point though Nutkins.

don't think any medical research will ever be able to replicate breastmilk (what formula could adapt to recognise not just a member of a species, but an individual child within that species; not just an individual child, but what that child has been doing that day, what time it is, what else s/he's eaten, how much energy s/he's expended, whether s/he's about to come down with a virus so needs extra boosts of whatever nutrition might counter that virus etc. And then immediately recognise another child and immediately do all the same calculations and then produce exactly the right nutrition for that child at that time? Ain't ever gonna happen, however advanced the science.)

But I do think that there could be a hell of a lot more money put into making pregnancy and breastfeeding easier for women instead of stuff that men feel is a priority, like artificial wombs.

And yes, men weighing in on how women should use our bodies, is nearly always annoying. There may be occasions when it isn't, but I can't recall any time I've ever read a man weighing in, that hasn't caused me a frisson of irritation at the very least.

I am, incidentally, pumping right now! But facilitated by DH taking DS for a half hour walk in the pram while I do it. I'm really not sure how I'm going to keep it up when DH goes back to work - I can see how pumping works when you're away from the baby but it's hard to see how it works when you're doing it around actually caring for (and regularly feeding) a baby.

I agree with Painted 100%.

Agree 100% with everything you've written @paintedwingsandgiantrings.