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rivkaI gave Alex two bottles of organic whole milk today, and she sucked them both down. So, God willing, I've bought my last-ever can of formula.
I've been looking forward to this transition lately, and looking back at her birth and the time that followed. So breastfeeding and formula have been much on my mind, both in general and in terms of our own failure.
I still grieve the loss of our breastfeeding relationship. Not every day, and not always intensely - but reminders do still make me sad. I very much believe that breastfeeding is best for both the mother and the baby, and in our case there were health factors (a strong family history of allergies and Crohn's disease) that especially indicated the importance of breastfeeding. It's what I always imagined doing. It's what my mother did. It's what all my friends do. It is what is considered normal and desirable in my social circle. I thought we were going to breastfeed. I never imagined that we wouldn't.
Sometimes when I read about nursing, my breasts ache.
I don't feel guilty. I look back at our situation: a poor suck, very large nipples, gastric reflux disease, antibiotic-resistant mastitis. No weight gain ever from unsupplemented nursing; eventually, no weight gain even when I supplemented with pumped milk. Significantly below her birth weight at one month old. Before-and-after-nursing weight checks showing an intake of less than half an ounce. A sick and miserable baby. A sick and miserable mother. The real threat that my mastitis would require surgery. The desperate horror with which I approached the baby scale. I don't know how we could have held out any longer. Honestly, I don't know how we held out as long as we did.
My only regret is that I didn't pursue one lactation consultant's suggestion of going to a speech pathologist. At the time, it didn't even make sense; subsequently I've learned that lactation consultants know a lot more about maternal problems with breastfeeding than they do about infant problems, and that speech pathologists do actually diagnose and treat sucking problems. But I don't know. I also remember that, at the time, the process of getting a referral from my pediatrician, convincing my insurance company to accept it, making and keeping appointments, and going through unknown new therapies seemed overwhelming.
My other regret is how ashamed I felt. How pulling out a bottle in public made me want to hide. How I felt obligated to justify myself to every breastfeeding mother I encountered. How I avoided social situations where I thought I would be likely to meet lactivists. How much I still look forward to the day when Alex drinks all of her liquids from a cup, and I can get rid of the damned bottles entirely and leave this whole issue behind me.
I still feel ashamed, although my shame is now mixed with anger. I think about how hard it will be for me to seek breastfeeding support with my next baby, because it will mean exposing myself to the awful, awful things that breastfeeding advocates say about formula and the women who feed it to their babies. And I think that there has to, there has to be a better way to promote and support breastfeeding, a way that doesn't make women like me feel unworthy of being mothers at all.
There has to be.
I'm not even talking about the extreme cases - the strangers in LJ communities shrieking about how formula is child abuse, formula is as bad as cocaine; the woman on mothering.com who posted that she refuses to allow children's books into her home if they have pictures of bottles. I'm talking about discovering, just as I began to supplement with formula, that two of my LJ friends belonged to a community whose userinfo declared that every breastfeeder was a better mother than any formula-feeder. Not "making a better feeding choice" - a better mother. I'm talking about the woman who left a comment in my journal comparing making mothers feel guilty about formula feeding to making them feel guilty about not using a carseat, and who then went back and posted in her own journal about how awful it was that my friends were telling me that Alex would be okay even if I couldn't breastfeed her.
There has to be a better way to promote and support breastfeeding.
Some lactivists are unapologetic about the fact that women like me are the eggs they need to break in order to make an omelet. Others insist that of course they support women who really can't nurse. But always implicit in that support is the right of the lactivist - or anyone, really - to judge whether you tried hard enough. Always implicit in that support is the responsibility of the formula feeder to justify herself, to make her case, to - if necessary, if it looks as though she's going to be found wanting - berate herself for mistakes and admit that she was wrong.
"Of course, if a woman really can't breastfeed - like if she's had a double mastectomy - " I saw one lactivist post. Another told a story about how she learned not to judge: she and her breastfeeding friends were talking to a new acquaintance at the playground, and when this mother pulled out a bottle, everyone got quiet and looked away. The new mother explained that she was the baby's aunt; the baby's mother had died of cancer shortly after birth; the bottle held donated breastmilk. The lactivist and her friends then realized that they had rushed to judgment. Implicit in this story: if the story had been any less tragic, they would have been perfectly justified in their shunning.
"We shouldn't say that formula is second best. We should say that formula is fourth best, after nursing, pumping and bottle feeding, and using a wet nurse or a milk bank." I tried to post back here about how awful that argument made me feel, but I wasn't really able to articulate why. Since then I've seen it brought out many, many more times, and my thoughts have coalesced.
Here's the thing: I did pump. I pumped ten times a day when I first started formula feeding, and then dropped back to five or six times a day as my mastitis finally cleared. I got up in the middle of the night to pump. And the most milk I ever pumped in one day was eight ounces - about a third of what Alex consumed at that age. Using a hospital-grade pump didn't make any difference. And my milk supply dried up when Alex was four months old.
I've since found out that my situation is far from unusual. Most women can't pump enough to feed their baby pumped milk exclusively, and many of the ones who can are boosting their supply by taking a non-FDA-approved drug illegally shipped in from Canada,which has severe depression as a common side effect. It's particularly unlikely that a woman who had nursing problems from the start, and therefore never established her milk supply, would be able to pump enough to exclusively feed her baby. Most pumpers supplement with formula - or supplement formula with small amounts of breastmilk.
A wet nurse, or milk banks: milk-bank milk is not availble without a prescription, and typically the prescription needs to specify that the baby cannot tolerate formula or has some heightened medical need for breastmilk, such as prematurity. And even then? It costs $3 an ounce. $3 an ounce. The least formula that Alex ever took, when she was exclusively bottle-fed, was 24 ounces a day. She got up to 36 ounces a day before switching over to mostly solid foods. So even if I had been able to get milk bank milk, it would have cost me $72 a day to feed my baby.
So the "formula is fourth best" argument tells women who can't breastfeed that their second- and third-best options are things which, in all likelihood, are completely impossible for them. I've since heard from other women who can't breastfeed that some lactivists include another better-than-formula option in the list: "chimpanzee or other primate milk," which, for Christ's sake, give me a fucking break! As far as I can tell, that one's just down there for extra smugness, to push formula further and further down towards the unacceptable bottom of the mothering barrel.
How do people say shit like this, and live with themselves? I found out. Here's another thing I saw endlessly quoted in lactivist circles: "guilt is a sign of awareness that you're doing the wrong thing." And its corollary: "No one can make you feel guilty unless you know you are wrong." There it is: permission to say the most godawful things imaginable to another mother, secure in the knowledge that if it hurts her, it's her own damned fault.
There has to be a better way to promote and support breastfeeding. There has to be.
I've been looking forward to this transition lately, and looking back at her birth and the time that followed. So breastfeeding and formula have been much on my mind, both in general and in terms of our own failure.
I still grieve the loss of our breastfeeding relationship. Not every day, and not always intensely - but reminders do still make me sad. I very much believe that breastfeeding is best for both the mother and the baby, and in our case there were health factors (a strong family history of allergies and Crohn's disease) that especially indicated the importance of breastfeeding. It's what I always imagined doing. It's what my mother did. It's what all my friends do. It is what is considered normal and desirable in my social circle. I thought we were going to breastfeed. I never imagined that we wouldn't.
Sometimes when I read about nursing, my breasts ache.
I don't feel guilty. I look back at our situation: a poor suck, very large nipples, gastric reflux disease, antibiotic-resistant mastitis. No weight gain ever from unsupplemented nursing; eventually, no weight gain even when I supplemented with pumped milk. Significantly below her birth weight at one month old. Before-and-after-nursing weight checks showing an intake of less than half an ounce. A sick and miserable baby. A sick and miserable mother. The real threat that my mastitis would require surgery. The desperate horror with which I approached the baby scale. I don't know how we could have held out any longer. Honestly, I don't know how we held out as long as we did.
My only regret is that I didn't pursue one lactation consultant's suggestion of going to a speech pathologist. At the time, it didn't even make sense; subsequently I've learned that lactation consultants know a lot more about maternal problems with breastfeeding than they do about infant problems, and that speech pathologists do actually diagnose and treat sucking problems. But I don't know. I also remember that, at the time, the process of getting a referral from my pediatrician, convincing my insurance company to accept it, making and keeping appointments, and going through unknown new therapies seemed overwhelming.
My other regret is how ashamed I felt. How pulling out a bottle in public made me want to hide. How I felt obligated to justify myself to every breastfeeding mother I encountered. How I avoided social situations where I thought I would be likely to meet lactivists. How much I still look forward to the day when Alex drinks all of her liquids from a cup, and I can get rid of the damned bottles entirely and leave this whole issue behind me.
I still feel ashamed, although my shame is now mixed with anger. I think about how hard it will be for me to seek breastfeeding support with my next baby, because it will mean exposing myself to the awful, awful things that breastfeeding advocates say about formula and the women who feed it to their babies. And I think that there has to, there has to be a better way to promote and support breastfeeding, a way that doesn't make women like me feel unworthy of being mothers at all.
There has to be.
I'm not even talking about the extreme cases - the strangers in LJ communities shrieking about how formula is child abuse, formula is as bad as cocaine; the woman on mothering.com who posted that she refuses to allow children's books into her home if they have pictures of bottles. I'm talking about discovering, just as I began to supplement with formula, that two of my LJ friends belonged to a community whose userinfo declared that every breastfeeder was a better mother than any formula-feeder. Not "making a better feeding choice" - a better mother. I'm talking about the woman who left a comment in my journal comparing making mothers feel guilty about formula feeding to making them feel guilty about not using a carseat, and who then went back and posted in her own journal about how awful it was that my friends were telling me that Alex would be okay even if I couldn't breastfeed her.
There has to be a better way to promote and support breastfeeding.
Some lactivists are unapologetic about the fact that women like me are the eggs they need to break in order to make an omelet. Others insist that of course they support women who really can't nurse. But always implicit in that support is the right of the lactivist - or anyone, really - to judge whether you tried hard enough. Always implicit in that support is the responsibility of the formula feeder to justify herself, to make her case, to - if necessary, if it looks as though she's going to be found wanting - berate herself for mistakes and admit that she was wrong.
"Of course, if a woman really can't breastfeed - like if she's had a double mastectomy - " I saw one lactivist post. Another told a story about how she learned not to judge: she and her breastfeeding friends were talking to a new acquaintance at the playground, and when this mother pulled out a bottle, everyone got quiet and looked away. The new mother explained that she was the baby's aunt; the baby's mother had died of cancer shortly after birth; the bottle held donated breastmilk. The lactivist and her friends then realized that they had rushed to judgment. Implicit in this story: if the story had been any less tragic, they would have been perfectly justified in their shunning.
"We shouldn't say that formula is second best. We should say that formula is fourth best, after nursing, pumping and bottle feeding, and using a wet nurse or a milk bank." I tried to post back here about how awful that argument made me feel, but I wasn't really able to articulate why. Since then I've seen it brought out many, many more times, and my thoughts have coalesced.
Here's the thing: I did pump. I pumped ten times a day when I first started formula feeding, and then dropped back to five or six times a day as my mastitis finally cleared. I got up in the middle of the night to pump. And the most milk I ever pumped in one day was eight ounces - about a third of what Alex consumed at that age. Using a hospital-grade pump didn't make any difference. And my milk supply dried up when Alex was four months old.
I've since found out that my situation is far from unusual. Most women can't pump enough to feed their baby pumped milk exclusively, and many of the ones who can are boosting their supply by taking a non-FDA-approved drug illegally shipped in from Canada,
A wet nurse, or milk banks: milk-bank milk is not availble without a prescription, and typically the prescription needs to specify that the baby cannot tolerate formula or has some heightened medical need for breastmilk, such as prematurity. And even then? It costs $3 an ounce. $3 an ounce. The least formula that Alex ever took, when she was exclusively bottle-fed, was 24 ounces a day. She got up to 36 ounces a day before switching over to mostly solid foods. So even if I had been able to get milk bank milk, it would have cost me $72 a day to feed my baby.
So the "formula is fourth best" argument tells women who can't breastfeed that their second- and third-best options are things which, in all likelihood, are completely impossible for them. I've since heard from other women who can't breastfeed that some lactivists include another better-than-formula option in the list: "chimpanzee or other primate milk," which, for Christ's sake, give me a fucking break! As far as I can tell, that one's just down there for extra smugness, to push formula further and further down towards the unacceptable bottom of the mothering barrel.
How do people say shit like this, and live with themselves? I found out. Here's another thing I saw endlessly quoted in lactivist circles: "guilt is a sign of awareness that you're doing the wrong thing." And its corollary: "No one can make you feel guilty unless you know you are wrong." There it is: permission to say the most godawful things imaginable to another mother, secure in the knowledge that if it hurts her, it's her own damned fault.
There has to be a better way to promote and support breastfeeding. There has to be.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-14 02:19 am (UTC)Is K still on medicine for reflux? (Alex weaned off at seven months.) And are you a UCC seminary student? I was raised in the UCC church, and converted to Unitarian-Universalism not because of discontent for my religious upbringing, but as a solution to a mixed marriage.
I do wonder if the lactivists know the effect they're having on many women who are struggling with breastfeeding. It doesn't surprise me that you didn't want to go to LLL, because I can't imagine going there with my next baby. I'm not willing to make a full confession of my sins and beg for forgiveness, which I expect is the only way I'd be accepted.
And I know what you mean about the awful "relationship" comments. You know what? It was bad for my relationship with Alex, and hers with mine, for us to spend the vast majority of our time together having me try to force her to do something she struggled with. I never got to enjoy her.
And I hate the way they talk about formula feeding as though there's no cuddling involved - as if we just prop a bottle in the kid's mouth and walk away. I know that some women do, but I'm sure that they're in the tiny minority.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-14 04:20 am (UTC)I would like to be a UCC seminary student; my goal is to get an MA in Theology and specialize in theological libraries. It's kind of a long story as to why I'm not - I was actually poised to enter a Master's program a few years ago when my mother was in a car accident and I wound up having to go home to take care of my father, who has Alzheimer's Disease, while she was in the hospital. Since then, it's been a combination of not being sure how long we'll be living here, dealing with my parents and childbearing that's kept me from trying to start again. I've taken some classes as a non-degree student, but at the moment, a baby is taking up all of my brainpower.
I think the article you wrote about is proof that many lactivists don't understand how they're perceived. I can't imagine many people being swayed by having formula fed babies described as sickly. We all know formula fed babies who most patently are not sickly (exhibit A: Alex), so trying to use that sort of language will just make people dismiss lactivists as out of touch with reality. As for the bottle-propping assumptions, sometimes I think there's something about being really devoted to a cause that sometimes makes people be a bit willfully stupid when considering the other side (there's any amount of political blogging I could point to to prove this point). I remember reading women in the LJ Pregnant community going on about how they wouldn't want to formula feed because they wouldn't want to go to all the work of preparing formula in the middle of the night, detailing all of the steps that practically started with milking the cow. Did they really not think of preparing the formula the night before and investing in a bottle warmer? They just didn't want to because it wouldn't make formula look as bad.
I know what you mean about how hard feeding difficulties can be on a relationship. Even with the reflux as under control as we could make it, K has always been hard to feed. She wants to eat small amounts often, and before she was on solids, it often wasn't enough that she merely be hungry - the stars and planets have to be in alignment as well for her to really drink a whole four ounces. It was hard not to get impatient, and it makes it hard to imagine feeding as a bonding experience (thankfully, things are a lot better since she started solids). It's not because of failure to latch that I gave up breastfeeding during the day, it's because she would only eat enough to sate her initial hunger and I just didn't have the patience to breastfeed every half hour (I do breastfeed for the night feeding I give her, because even if I have to feed her every hour and a half, at least I can do it lying down with my eyes closed instead of getting up to fix a bottle and pump. Even so, it can be a frustrating process). Thankfully, there are other ways to bond with your baby, and in all other areas of her life, K is a happy, mellow baby. So we haven't yet given into the urge to put her out on the curb next to the recycling. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-14 06:58 am (UTC)I agree wholeheartedly. My two kids were started on breastmilk but through various circumstances weaned fairly quickly to formula, and they both thrived. It's puzzled me so often why there is this perception of formula-fed kids as wheezing and sneezing their way through life. It's just not true, and anyone who really takes a good look around can see that it isn't. But maybe that just ties back in to your point about people being willfully stupid.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-14 10:34 am (UTC)Right - population risks are treated like individual certainties. Although you definitely see it from the other side as well - "I was formula fed and I turned out fine, so there's nothing wrong with formula." (Or - yeesh - "I gave my baby cereal at three months and she's fine, so I have no problem recommending that to others.")
But I have noticed, for example, that formula feeding mothers are OMG IRRESPONSIBLE because their babies have a higher risk of ear infections... but most lactivists don't have a problem with mothers putting their babies at higher risk of measles (or whatever) by not vaccinating. Measles is just a minor, benign childhood disease, you see, but ear infections mean that your kid is sickly.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-14 07:50 pm (UTC)I about died. I was like a chicken with its head cut off, calling my friend and calling my pediatrician, terrified that somehow my friend's baby could be harmed. A week later we found out it was nothing (or at least nothing compared to rubella), but I was amazed how blase some people were about it. These diseases are serious things. Sometimes I think the lack of exposure to them these past 50 years has made people forget how dangerous they once were.
slightly off-topic
Date: 2006-04-14 11:43 pm (UTC)Re: slightly off-topic
Date: 2006-04-15 09:30 pm (UTC)I had no idea. (I'm 26, and looking at having kids in the next three or four years.)
Thanks for the info!
Re: slightly off-topic
Date: 2006-04-15 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 08:14 pm (UTC)Amen. Take it from one of the oddballs who had Whooping Cough when she was 8, even though I actually HAD been vaccinated against it...These diseases are nothing to sneeze at. I spent 5 and a half miserable weeks coughing my lungs up (or feeling like it anyway) and struggling just to breathe, and I would have rather been in school the whole time. The fact they're so rare these days and can be treated with medication doesn't make them any less serious.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-14 02:22 pm (UTC)Yes, and they don't care - the lactivists you're talking about, anyway. I've seen them say "Well, someone that weak shouldn't be having a baby" and similar. Pissing in their own cornflakes... but dammit, they're my cornflakes too!
no subject
Date: 2006-04-14 06:08 pm (UTC)LLL meetings vary widely from place to place, so while I totally understand you not wanting to take the risk, it might not be the lion's den you fear. I went to an evening group for while, and the evening group tended towards working mothers, so there was lots of talk about pumping, etc. If you thought LLL might have something offer you, you could call the leader of your local group - a short conversation would probably be pretty revealing of the group culture.
I haven't commented to this post before, but I have been reading avidly, and appreciate the follow-up on your particular situation and the thoughtful analysis on the global problem. Knowing you, and knowing my neighbor Heather who had the experience of trying absolutely everything and still having to supplement with formula, has made me be much more temperate in my thinking about breastfeeding. Not that I was ever a hardcore lactivist, anyway. More of an advocate.
I'm looking for this thing I read once, that outlined the benefits of breastfeeding one day, one week, one month, etc. It's probably still a little too hardcore, but it's closer to acceptance of both/and than the boob/bottle false dichotomy. Can't find it yet.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-14 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-15 01:47 pm (UTC)