Breast is just Breast

Vicki Shenkin Kerr - 18 Mar 17

Written at 5am post second feeding of the night. Tiredness level 6.

It’s taken me two years to post this. Two years for my mind to clear the haze of sleepless nights and the feeling of ‘not-having-a-frickin-clue-what-i’m-doing’. To come to now – second child in and finally feeling like it’s okay to not have a clue. It’s okay to ask for help (still working on that one). And it’s okay to find it hard. Still.

Being one of the lucky ones who’s found breastfeeding relatively natural, I find myself at the receiving end of daggers from other new parents as I nonchalantly throw my wee one on my boob on the rush hour tube. Yes, it took time for them both to latch on and me in turn to catch on: the precise preparation of feeding pillow and support team of three additional pillows; a glass of water; muslin; timing app on phone (plus charger just in case); not to mention the sheer determination to suceed and desperation to stay awake. It wasn’t easy. But, as my grandma says, the ‘size of my kitchen’ has proved somewhat advantageous and 6 weeks on I can at least distance myself from that new mum feeling of awkwardness.

It’s only in this state of distanced accomplishment that I’ve again started to look around me at what appears to be an unhealthy obsession in the UK to promote breastfeeding to a maniacal stage. Breastfeeding has become the parental alternative to Catholic guilt. Should one dare not even attempt it…mon dieu!  The placards scream at us ‘Breast Is Best. Breast is Best.’ Yes breast is good. In fact, breast is great. But breast isn’t the be all and end all of baby feeding and the implication we must breastfeed our babies or we are setting them up to fail in life is where the mantra ultimately fails itself.

Formula milk is not something just concocted in a Willy-Wonka-style suburban garage.  It’s not the whim of a group of capitalist worker ants focused on profit engineering. Before I even considered procreating, I viewed formula as an invention for profit only, that took advantage of underprivileged societies in third world countries.  We all heard the Nestle horror tales of old. We all denounced the action that provided aid via formula to those in dire need in Africa, only to cease the supply and force those addicted to suffer the pain of withdrawal or beg/borrow/steal to feed their habit. Or child.

And so formula gets its bad reputation and the public lauds those who feed naturally. New parents in the clasp of hormonal imbalances and sleep deprived stupors lie to midwives and doctors – “oh yes I’m feeding myself.” And those mums that struggle ultimately suffer twice.  They suffer the self-inflicted feeling of failure should their child not take to their boob. They suffer the pain of perseverance in their raw, bleeding nipples. Frustration and tears after 2 hours of sitting alone with a crying, listless wean nuzzle and fuss intermittently only to repeat again less than one desperately watched circle of the clock later. They suffer the feeling of being unable to provide what should be a most natural guttural instinct.

And the babes in arms suffer too. I’ve watched friends nurse in desperation; their babies sucking hungrily at a tit that isn’t giving them any sustenance. The brainwashed insistence that “breast is best” a mantra to chant through their tears and a notion to grasp on to even when their child isn’t putting on weight after weeks of trying.

We’re starving our children with our obsession with feeding them. My sister had her first child  over 5 years ago. After two days in hospital she was discharged and like every new mum took her baby home with mixed feelings of excitement and fear. Five days later she was back in hospital, a milking cow, with pumps on either breast and the Mrs Trunchbull of midwives standing over her to see her produce 5ml of milk in 60 minutes. For 7 days she had been starving her baby. An impartial observer will say this is ridiculous. And yet the health professionals on hand seem to impart an obligation to promote The Boob, implying a Darwinian obsession that should the babymama not suceed…well, enough said.

The campaign for ‘Breast Is Best’ is on a par with ‘Smoking Kills’: a worthy declaration to an uneducated society. You’d think we’d know that by now. Just like we know we should eat 5 (or is it 10) portions of fruit and veg a day.  And we shouldn’t eat too much red meat. So why push it? No one looks down on you if you only eat 3 portions of veg a day. No one feels obliged to approach a stranger in the supermarket and query the ratio of beef in their trolley to fish. But British society denigrates those who don’t or can’t breastfeed. And the need for justification is exact symptom of our unhealthy obsession with it. It shouldn’t matter why we don’t breastfeed. It shouldn’t matter if it’s because no milk has been produced, or if our nipples are inflamed. It is no-one else’s business if we need more than two hour’s sleep to recharge our physical and mental batteries.  It’s the parents’ decision to return to work early; or feel uncomfortable feeding in public; or simply not want to do it. And no one has the right to pass judgement. Especially no one has the right to make a new parent feel like a failure. That stress alone is enough to dry up a lake of breastmilk.

Vicki Shenkin Kerr

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