Up on my high horse...

I've been reading a lot in the media of late about encouraging mothers to breastfeed longer, which then brings out a whole bunch of people saying, "I tried, but breastfeeding didn't work for me". The uppity-judgemental part of me can't help but say "slacker". While breastfeeding is such a natural action, it is challenging, but it shocked me to read that only 14% of babies are breastfed at six months. Fourteen percent!! Do people not understand how vital breastmilk is to their child?? How could anyone give their tiny baby something made in a lab instead of the wonderful nutritious milk your body was designed to give them??

So that's my judgemental side. I know every mother has her reasons for using formula, be it returning to work (valid), illness (valid), lack of education (read a pamphlet, bogan), or just pure laziness (see previous comment). I just can't believe more mothers aren't listening to the WHO breastfeeding recommendations. Crazy.

I've been breastfeeding Alex for over thirteen months now, and I do feel the pressure to wean him. People tell me I've done a "great job" to breastfeed as long as I have. That makes me wonder why it's such an achievement. I see it as a purely biological need that I provide for my son. I don't see it as anything special. Baby need food. I have breast that provides food. I give food to baby. That's not to say it hasn't been difficult to keep feeding him sometimes. The first six weeks sucked. I hated that I needed to use a nipple shield, and I guess if I didn't feel the importance of breastfeeding, I may have given up and given him formula. Actually, the thought of giving up never occurred to me, as much as I did end up in tears from time to time.

However after Alex and I both hit our stride, it was fine. We have had a down patch a while ago with the biting, but even that has passed now. I really do understand that some people need to use formula, and I really don't judge them (well, some of them), particularly after bubs are over six months. I just don't think I'm doing anything unusual by continuing to breastfeed.

A family friend (who had given up breastfeeding early and switched to formula) was trying to encourage me a while ago to go to formula so I could regain my independence. That left me thoroughly flummoxed. I gave birth to my child, I am wholly responsible for his well-being. People, including my darling husband, often tell me I should take a break from Alex occasionally. If I had wanted an accessory that I could pass off to someone whenever I was tired, bored, and whatever, I would have gotten a dog. My child's well-being is so much more important to me than my "independence".

My Mummy raised the three of us girls on farms with no family support, and complete isolation. She didn't have the option of "taking a break". While I appreciate the times when I can leave Alex with John or his grandparents, and go shopping by myself, or go out for a nice dinner, I don't see my son as a burden, and I never feel like I need a break from him. Taking care of him, and providing him breastmilk, is my job, and a job I love.

That being said, there does need to be more education for women before they have a child to prepare them for the hard slog that breastfeeding can be. I was chatting with a friend a while ago who is in the midst of research for her PhD on post-natal depression, who said that every single mother she has spoken to, some who had suffered PND and some not, felt like a failure at some point due to breastfeeding. We're led to believe that it is a "natural" process, so it really is shocking to discover it takes hard work, pain, dedication, bleeding nipples, a complete loss of dignity, and the ability to sort through the crap every single person tries to tell you about the "right way to breastfeed".

I think I was shown about fifty different ways to breastfeed before we'd even left the hospital, and none of them worked. I had, however, a sister who used to be a counsellor for the ABA, and who had had her own troubles establishing feeding, so I was pretty prepared for most of it, and knew if I could just get through the horrid phase, it would be okay. I was still in tears by the night we got home from the hospital, because I couldn't feed my son properly.

While I was prepared for the pain and discomfort, it was still disappointing that my body wouldn’t do what it was supposed to. Particularly when I developed mastitis when Alex was two weeks old. I almost felt like a failure that I was too sick to get up and look after my son, and felt the fact I had mastitis was my fault for not being able to breastfeed properly.

I have a little problem that I don’t like to be told how to do things. I like to get it right the first time, and I take it personally when someone gives me advice, however well-meaning it may be. I hence took it personally when the lactation specialist we were seeing gave me a pile of literature on mastitis, and reading through it, I was clearly doing a lot of the things one was not supposed to do. I couldn’t help but feel judged. Of course, one might argue that the information may have been handier before I started to develop the mastitis.

After all of that, I can imagine how easy it would be for someone to quit when the going gets tough. And of course there are people where breastfeeding is so traumatic that it is detrimental to their mental health. I just can’t help wondering that if only there was more education then breastfeeding for more than a few weeks or months wouldn’t be considered a rarity.