I didn't think that I would want to breast feed for more than a year. I talked with people and said, "yeah a year sounds good." I knew I wanted to breast feed for at least a year though. At least 6 months. Oh then there was all this breast feeding trouble and people started to tell me it was "ok to use formula" and "you haven't failed anything." I think a lot of mothers will understand when I say, I totally felt like a failure when I wasn't making enough milk and I thought I wouldn't be able to breast feed. When I told me friend she said, don't give up. She told me it took one of her friends 9 months to get it right. I found hope in this. I think most mothers will also understand that this was actually very important to me. My dad, who I love very much and is almost perfect in my eyes, did not understand. But how could he? How could any man understand except from seeing the motivation, longing or pain in the mothers eyes? Men will never have this experience and they will never have these problems. The most they can do is empathize, but when you can never ever experience a problem how can you really understand? I don't blame him, but I do wish he understood better or empathized more. I think to him it was like he saw me miserable because I was so tired and upset that it wasn't working and he thought we could just fix that by putting my daughter on formula and then I could get sleep and she would get fed.
I don't know what I would do without the lactation consultant at the hospital, and then following that, the support I've had from the LLL group that I go to on Tuesday mornings. The women in the group, all breast feeding or interested in breast feed, all have amazing stories and are so supportive and helpful. It inspired me, as well as I'm sure more lactation consultants have been originally inspired, to do something along the lines of starting a group and taking the steps to help women with breast feeding. It's amazing how much strength it has given me and how much I treasure it now. I still have supply issues and I am still struggling, but it is so important to me and I feel so connected to my baby. It makes me sick to think that women would choose formula over breastfeeding if they have a choice. Obviously there are so many situations that make breast feeding difficult or impossible if you have some medical problem or have had some operation that makes it impossible. But it also seems impossible to so many women because they have no one to help them or explain to them what is going on when things aren't going perfectly.
In South Africa, they have recently decided to promote breast feeding to all mothers, because of the infant mortality rate. Good and bad with this one though because they suggest it to all mothers, even those with HIV. And in a county where, in some places, the rate of infection is above 50% that is a bit dangerous. But think about poverty and how much formula costs anyway. So if you have a free source of food that is MORE nutritious and so helpful in other ways like giving your child immunities and keeping them from getting sick while they are young, or at least keeping their immune system strong, why would you not be utilizing this already? I don't have that answer because I think the campaign to get women to stop breast feeding happened before my time, but I can only imagine that it has something to do with making money and taking away women's power. Telling them that their natural ability to produce milk isn't good enough and 'here buy some of our expensive product.' I mean this for every country where they have done this.
In particular Nestle, which sold infant formula to many underdeveloped countries where there were no national standards, and this caused mass malnutrition and even death. Nestle claims that the instructions were not followed properly, but they were still instrumental in pushing a product above a mothers own milk, which in turn caused the death and sickness of many infants.
In the U.K. they have recently also started telling mothers to breast feed for at least six months, but tend to ignore the issues that many mothers have with breast feeding, especially as it has been lost as the natural way to feed your child and has become much less common. I was lucky to live in a place where they value breastfeeding there is a huge support network for breastfeeding mothers and breastfeeding awareness when I had my daughter, but most people, I would even guess the majority of people in the world, do not have this.
In the United States I do not know why we have such a high number of women who have problems with milk supply, but if you have ever been to a group online or in person, this is one of the biggest problems. I won't go into some of the causes but as for when you are doing everything right with the actual act but you still aren't producing enough, I think it boils down to diet. The people in this country are more obese than not. Even those who are not even fat, often are very unhealthy with their diets, and often lack enough nutrients to be at a low level of malnutrition. Several reasons for malnutrition and being overweight and all of the other problems have to do with our access to food, our knowledge of food and sadly, the food itself. The food we eat just does not have the nutrients in it that it should. Even organic food has these problems, but not nearly as severely as mass produced non-organic.
Women with Celiacs often have trouble conceiving, and also experience a higher level of miscarriage if they are getting gluten in their diet. I think the same can be true for breast milk production. There are foods that dry up breast milk, such as sage, spearmint, the list goes on, but what if there are allergies or intolerances that are specific to certain people that cause reduction in breast milk production?
This is just a brief look at what I feel about this issue. I am so grateful to my friend who gave me suggestions and helped me continue to breast feed even when I thought I would fail. I hope to help set up networks of people like this all over the world, but for now I'm going to have to wait to write more about this issue because I have to go be mom.
I would like to talk about how it should be more accepted in society and less of a burden on women and so much more but as I said I must go. Hopefully I will remember this for next time.
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