Breastfeeding in public – one experience
Last Friday I took Miss C to the park to hang around with other homeschooled kids and their moms. Most of these moms have at least three kids. Some have more than six and they mostly breastfeed their babies. As my granddaughter sat there, one of the moms very naturally put her baby on the breast to nurse. No one said a thing because frankly, in that crowd, it’s no big deal. In the homeschool community, openly breastfeeding babies has become normalized. I can’t really remember the last time I saw a baby in my homeschool group get a bottle.
Miss C, being an only child, naturally asked me a lot of questions about that when we were driving home. She asked me what it was like. What did it feel like? Did it hurt? How long does a mommy make milk for her baby? She asked some really great questions for her age.
All the while I was thinking about the baby formula shortage. I know of moms who make up their minds before giving birth that they aren’t going to breastfeed. Somehow they have already made up their minds about that. Other moms are convinced that their babies aren’t getting enough to eat and they give up. Or they spend so much time pumping it doesn’t feel like they are getting enough time to actually hold and mother their babies.
My history of breastfeeding – Mother and daughter
I thought about all of this a lot this week. My mother always felt that she had failed me and my sister because she couldn’t breastfeed. The irony of that was she was that she had very large breasts that she was very self-conscious about. She felt that it was such a waste that her large mammary glands wouldn’t make enough milk to feed her babies. She even told me once that her doctor told her that I was starving and she had to put me on baby formula. I don’t think she even tried breastfeeding my sister 15 months later.
As I grew up in the 60s and 70s and even as an adult in the 80s, I didn’t see a lot of breastfeeding. I literally had to learn the hard way. Luckily I did have a great nurse’s aid to help me in the hospital with my first son. She had nursed a large family and was actually more helpful than the RNs. A nice lady from La Leche league come to my house and help me help my son get over the nipple confusion he picked up in the hospital. I read The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding and learned by doing. I wanted to succeed where my mother felt she had failed. It felt like correcting some generational curse and making it right again.
Years later, as I talked to my mother in detail about her experiences, I discovered that my mom had really been set up for failure. Her doctor told her not to hold me all of the time and to only nurse me at scheduled intervals. He apparently also told her that my demand for more food meant that I was starving. I wonder if mom had just nursed me on demand if we both would have been happier.
I nursed two more sons. When my third son was born, we were homeschooling, and homeschoolers, at least in my area, are also breastfeeders. Having such camaraderie and seeing breastfeeding happen just naturally gave me a lot of support and confidence. I breastfed my last three children as well.
Exclusive breastfeeding – what is it?
And when I say breastfed, I mean I exclusively breastfed all of them. There were only a couple of bottles in my house. We never bought formula. My baby was mostly always with me. I pumped a few times with the lousy pump I bought at the drug store, but I hated it. It was just easier to breastfeed and I never worried about if my child was eating enough. My babies also slept with us until they were big enough to sleep with a sibling. Honestly, by the time they were 12 to 18 months old they preferred hanging out with their brothers instead of sleeping with mom and dad. My biggest babies were ready for applesauce at around four months. By eight months they were eating soft table food.
The $50 billion baby formula industry
The baby formula shortage is indicative of where we are as a society. We have gone from a society where mothers either breastfed their children or knew how to nourish them via other means. We have ceded that responsibility over to a handful of companies. Today’s new moms may know how to sanitize bottles, mix a formula together, keep it at a safe temperature for storing, and then heat it before consumption, but we’re seeing that they don’t know what to do if they can’t get it anymore. The ancient art of nourishing infants is disappearing.
To be fair, the family doctor and most nurses don’t have a clue about how to help with this either. 50 years ago a doctor knew how to write up a homemade formula. That skill is lost as well.
And if you point any of this out on social media, the choir will remind you that not all mothers can breastfeed. The logic, apparently, is that one of our defining characteristics as mammals has been lost and is now dependent on the baby formula industry to the tune of $50 billion dollars.
I don’t believe that.
How did we get here?
Honestly? I think we can look back to 1968 and Humane Vitae. The lost art of baby feeding started with the separation of married love into recreation and procreation. Very quickly the culture accepted sex outside of marriage because the consequences could be avoided or eliminated. Inside of marriage, procreation and raising children became optional and the sexualization of the female breast outpaced the functionality of nurturing and feeding an infant. This was an attack on the family.
Family security was further eroded with the idea that women would be more fulfilled outside of the home. To make that happen, have the government step in to help with college loans, and voila! You now have generations of young women who may want to stay home but have to work because they have to pay off their student loans.
If moms are working they have to pump to keep giving their babies breastmilk, but if work isn’t conducive to that or if that becomes too much of a hassle (Thanks TSA!) then moms won’t breastfeed long at all. So when we hear that many women can’t breastfeed it’s not physiology we’re talking about – it’s cultural and societal.
What to do going forward.
Try not to panic. Human beings have always been able to nourish their babies somehow. During this crisis, it’s going to take some creativity.
- Here’s a video by a mom that has fed three boys on a goat milk formula that she makes.
- Research Homemade formulas from the 50s and 60s. Maybe your grandma or other relative might have old formulas stuffed in baby books or archives somewhere.
- Cow’s milk might be a good substitute for older babies who are also starting to experiment with soft solid food.
- If a mom has a breastfeeding friend that could share her breastmilk either by pumping or nursing, that would be ideal.
- One mom’s baby formula with ingredients.
- Organic baby formula
- Homemade emergency baby formula based on WHO recommendations.
- Going forward – don’t be dependent ever again.