Shame Filled Bottles Of formula

We have been so conditioned to believe that it is our fault, our bodies that failed, that we don't even consider the fact that breastfeeding is a two way relationship. 
Both the mother and the baby have certain factors that must be present in order to succeed. 

Yet our language, our cultural beliefs ignore this. 

How often do you hear a woman say "We tried to breastfeed but my baby just couldn't."

We tried to breastfeed, but my baby failed.

You don't. People don't say that. 

Yet in a lot of cases it would actually be far more accurate than saying that the mother failed, because the issue isn't a supply issue at all it's a transference issue. 

But we don't even have a decent way of testing which side of the dyad has underlying problems, so our society, so used to blaming women for everything, blames the woman. Our women, so conditioned to blame themselves for everything, blame themselves.  

When are women on a whole going to wake up to the fact that their bodies didn't let them down, the system let them down?!

It's world breastfeeding week, and once again all over the internet are mother's crying foul that they are being shamed, judged or made to feel guilty by the "anti-formula" "breast is best brigade"

I've got news for you

All this, "don't shame/judge me for bottle feeding, I didn't have a choice" "some women just can't" "my body didn't work" or "my baby would have died without it" stuff is absolute crap.

We are all so busy focusing on the" mummy wars" and "not judging/shaming" and defending what happened to us, that we can't see the real issue.
 
Why is it that 96% of Australian mothers want to breastfeed, but only 70% will be exclusively breastfeeding already at 1 month!!!!
​

Picture Credit: Growing Up In Australia - Breastfeeding

The actual percentage of women who are genuinely unable to breastfeed due to inherent issues with their physiology is around 2-5% 

There will also be women who have health conditions that are contraindicated, who have had mastectomies or other surgeries that mean they can not breastfeed. There will be sexual abuse survivors who can not bring themselves to go there. There will be adoptive and foster parents, or grandparent carers who just do not have the requierd parts/hormones, and there will be the extreemely rare babies who react to breastmilk. 

But even taking all those into account, it would be perfectly valid to assume that the number of women who cannot breastfeed for physical or emotional issues is around 10%

Yet, if you talk to mothers or read social media forums you would think the statistics are the other way around.  That 90% can not breastfeed.

Now contray to Dr Brian Symon's claims: this is not true!!!!!

We have been so conditioned to believe that it is our fault, our bodies that failed, that we don't even consider the fact that breastfeeding is a two way relationship. 
Both the mother and the baby have certain factors that must be present in order to succeed. 

Yet our language, our cultural beliefs ignore this. 

How often do you hear a woman say "We tried to breastfeed but my baby just couldn't."

We tried to breastfeed, but my baby failed.

You don't. People don't say that. 

Yet in a lot of cases it would actually be far more accurate than saying that the mother failed, because the issue isn't a supply issue at all it's a transference issue. 

But we don't even have a decent way of testing which side of the dyad has underlying problems, so our society, so used to blaming women for everything, blames the woman. Our women, so conditioned to blame themselves for everything, blame themselves.  

When are women on a whole going to wake up to the fact that their bodies didn't let them down, the system let them down?!  (This applies to birth too)
 
Your body did not let you down
Your body is not broken
You did not fail

Your "care providers" are the failures. 
The responsibility and the outcome lies with them and their shit system.

But I don't mean, "my LC gave me so much pressure to breastfeed. It was breast or nothing with her. I wish someone had just told me that it was ok to give a bottle sooner." 

96% of women go into motherhood wanting to breastfeed. 

At two months 30% of those still breastfeeding at all will be struggling to meet their goals. 
Another 15% have given up on breastfeeding altogether because it was such a struggle. 

Somewhere in those two months, most of them get gaslighted into believing that they were pressured to do something that was impossible for them to achieve. 

Imagine you're back at school. You have a maths test, you get into the exam, turn over the paper and find it's on Quadratic Equations. You have no idea what you are doing. 

Unsurprisingly you only score a few marks. 

If one or two people in the class have this experience, we could fairly accurately assume that those individuals simply hadn't studied or paid attention in class. They failed. They might try to place the blame on the teacher, claiming that they were not taught the material, or that the teacher "sux", but the experience of the majority would bear out the truth. 

If most of the class have that experience, we would rightly question the teacher's pedagogy, that is the way they taught the content, how in depth they went, how well they covered it, if they were regularly checking for understanding. The onus of failure would be on the teacher. The parents of that class would be demanding that the teacher receive professional development or some other sort of supervision until their teaching improved. Very few students in that class would feel like they had failed personally. 

If the entire cohort had that experience, there would be an awful lot of pissed off students and parents, asking why the students were being tested on something they clearly had not been taught. If it then came out that the school had filled all their Senior Maths teaching positions with teachers who had absolutely no training in maths, and yet told the parents and students that all their teacher's were experts in the fields they taught, then the school would be seen as having set the student's up for guaranteed failure. 

That is the scenario that we have with breastfeeding in the west. 

Your average GP/Paediatrician/Child Health Nurse or Midwife receives a total of 4hours of study on infant feeding (as a whole, not just breastfeeding) in their training. 

​The Royal Children's Hospital in Victoria's staff guidelines for the management of breastfeeding complications and slow weight gain, never even mention a Lactation Consultant. Issues that the midwife or nurse deems necessary of refrying up the chain of command go to the AUM - Associate Unit Manager. His/Her qualifications? Midwifery. 

Not Breastfeeding. Birth

It is perfectly appropriate for pregnancy and birth complications to be referred to the AUM. That's their specialty. But of the options given for consultation on the above chart, only one of those people is even an expert in food. But dieticians, are experts in adult food. 

The appropriate expert for babies is an IBCLC. 

The second best options being a standard LC or Speech Pathology, who at least are experts in the problems that can occur from baby's end due to weak facial musculature or high palates etc. 

The hospital admitting mothers and babies with breastfeeding complications, and claiming they can help, without having appropriately trained staff is no different to the school claiming that all it's teacher's are experts in their field when in reality they have Drama and History and Business teacher's teaching Senior Maths. 

Same goes for your GP or Paediatrician. 

They have no idea what they are talking about, yet they pretend to, give you bad advice, and misinformation, manhandle your boobs, dismiss your symptoms, claim that there's no such thing as tongue ties or that your baby must be allergic to your milk, and send you on your way. 

You believe that you have received professional advice and help. You've possibly even seen multiple doctors and gotten basically the same response from them all. So you believe them when they say that you just can't breastfeed. When hey tell you that formula is your best choice. 

There is a hubris problem in breastfeeding management. 

We would never accept our GP giving us diabetes or cancer or orthopaedic advice and treatment. We go to them with the expectation that they will give us a referral to someone who actually knows what they are talking about. 

Why is it different with breastfeeding? 

Those midwifes at the hospital that shoved your baby on and manhandled your breasts.

The GP or Peadiatrican who you went to for help, and instead of saying "you know what, I only have about 3hrs of training in breastfeeding, here's the number for an LC or the ABA hotline" said "hrrm, baby is loosing weight, you need to supplelemt". 

The child health nurse who ignored you and told you to toughen up when you said that it was hurting to feed. 

The seven different people who you saw, none of whom knew a damm iota about Tounge Tie, Lip Ties or Oral-Motor issues.

The "well meaning" family and friends who told you to give a bottle of formula before bed to make baby sleep.


The ridiculously immature family and freinds who want you to give a bottle so that they can "have a go" of feeding the baby.


The societal expectations that we can have a baby, go home 2 days later and then be respoonsible for the running of a household with no help or support, making us exhausted, issolated and stressed - which all interfere with bonding


The incredibly outdated hospital policies that stop babies and mums having an undisturbed first hour of skin to skin with baby self-attaching


The high numbers of drugged babies due to medicalised birth


The breastfeeding preparation courses that (where they exist at all) leave out vital
information or don't give women a real understanding of what to do.


The LCs and CHNs who only care about "the latch" and pay no attention to other issues


The doctors who only care about the growth charts, and use the ones for formula babies


Medical professionals who don't recognise that IV's in labour can artificially raise baby's weight, meaning that the baby has no chance of regaining their birth weight in a week.


Medical professionals and "well meaning" others who constanlty ask if your baby is sleeping through yet. 


Medical professionals and "well meaning" others who say, "he's a big baby, he needs more food than that" or "he's a small baby, he must need more food" or "is he eating again? maybe you aren't making enough milk/your milk isn't good enough" or "he's always so hungry, you should give him solids"

Those are the things that make 45% of mothers feel like failures by month 2. 

And all of those things are a direct result of the general lack of understanding that our culture has about normal baby physiology. The lack of understanding that our culture has about breastfeeding in general. The lack of quality information that mums-to-be recieve about the why and the how of breastfeeding, or who they should go to for help. And the lack of doctors who are prepared to say, "hey I don't really know what i'm talking about here, so i'm going to give you a referral to someone who does." 


Then there are the other cultural factors that even mothers who are lucky enough to have a good IBCLC still face. The hurdles they have to  overcome in order to be able to succeed at breastfeeding. 


The sexualisation of breast and the societal aversion to breastfeeding that means a large
majority of western mums-to-be will never see a baby being breastfeed before they give birth.


The sexualisation of breast and the societal aversion to breastfeeding that means that new mums, struggling to get feeding right are ashamed to feed in public and have to deal with the added sturggle of feeding under a cover.


The sexualisation of breast and the societal aversion to breastfeeding that means that people will tell you to go to the toilets or your car to feed your baby, and tell you that breastfeeding is weird and gross.


The sexualisation of breast and the societal aversion to breastfeeding that means there has to be legal protections in place to give babies the right to eat in public


The lack of availibility of milk banks


The lack of knowldge about and the uninformed "eww gross" responses to wet-nursing, cross-nursing and milk-sharing


The lack of maternity leave that means US mothers face returning to work at 6 weeks, if not before.  

The lack of decent parental leave and extended family/community support, that means mother's do not recieve the care and support they need to recover from birth, bond with their baby and truly establish feeding.


The free samples of formula that arrive on your doorstep in the US.


Workplaces that only pay lip service to tehir legal requirement to support breastfeeding mums.


A work climate that fails to understand the needs of any parent, let alone breastfeeding mums.


It is the "breast is best" mantra that everone pushes, but no one has the knowledge to back up with accurate and informative help.


The system makes it harder than it needs to be.


It doesn't have to be this hard!


It won't be super easy for everyone, we all have different bodies, different babies, different   touched-out thresholds and levels of comfort about feeding in public, but It's never been this hard in the whole history of the world. 


So, please, please, stop believing  your doctror's crap about your body failing you. That is just them (consciously or subconsciously) covering for their failures. Please consider that instead of complaining on soical media that all the LC's or Midwifes or CHNs pressured you to breastfeed, you could complain to their bosses that they need better training to be more effective in helping mothers to meet thier goals, and to be more empatheatic towards those who don't breastfeed. 


Get educated on what breastfeeding should and could be like, and then get angry at the system instead of at all the women (and men) who you think are fighting you, and shaming you, and claiming superiority over you.


Because they aren't.


They are fighting the system.
This isn't about you. It's about the system. 


Seriously. They are on your side. fighting for you. So that your daughters don't have the same shitty, experiences and sense of failure you had.


The future we "pro-breastfeeders" want is the one where our daughters know that they have the power and the agency to make the choice that is best for their circumstances based on the best possible unbiased evidence. We hope that they will expect and receive a respectful model of care where no one will feel like they are being bullied. We hope that they will see, everyday in the media and in life, that there are multiple ways a baby can be feed, and that none of them are "gross". We hope that they will recieve maternity leave instead of formula samples. That they will be actually informed before they ever give birth about the normal development of both breastfeed and formula fed babies.  


Sure we hope that with adequate education on the microbiome, and the hormonal/psychological as well as physical benefits of natural birth for both mum and baby, that most will choose to breastfeed because it is best practice, but in order for that to happen, we need to stop recieving substandard "help"


We want a future where no woman feels like a failure for not meeting their breastfeeding goals

Where no woman can be 'made to feel' like a failure by their doctors, their family, their friends, or some random stranger on the internet.


Whether they feed their baby via the breast, formula or donors - we want them to feel empowered, competent and respected.


So please start fighting with us, instead of believing that we are fighting you, because we will never see a world where every woman has the knowledge and expert help that she need to be able to meet her breastfeeding goals whilst we are too busy fighting amongst ourselves. 

And please, before you say "this is all well and good, but some women just can't breastfeed" or "another article guilting mums for formula feeding" or "these articles make me feel judged" ask- will my saying that be helping anyone? Will it help to create a culture where women don't have my experiences? 


Ps.




All of this applies to the natural birth crowd too.