Breastfeeding Moms Unite » Health Care System

Understanding Nutritionism And The Problem With Infant Formula

Melodie — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 03:57:55 +0000

Nutritionism is a new word for me, and I’ve decided I don’t like it. Not one little bit. I was just introduced to it this week upon reading a post at My World Edenwild called I don’t believe in Nutrionism anymore. Then I learned even more about it over at Food Renegade where, in her post From The Mouths of Babes, I watched Micheal Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, talk about nutritionism in a video she made as a part of her Real Food Nutrition and Health E-Course. It was like a light bulb going on in my head when she said “Food, NOT NUTRIENTS, is the fundamental unit in nutrition.” I had a “Duh, of course it is,” moment. So why isn’t this more widely understood?

1. The first premise of nutritionism, according to Michael Pollan, “is that the important thing about any food is the nutrients it contains. Food is essentially the sum of its nutrient parts.” So when we eat a bowl of Cheerios (my daughter’s favorite cereal by the way, nobody’s perfect over here), although the only real food ingredient it contains is whole grain oats we are supposed to feel good about eating it because it is “a good source of fibre.” The cereal has a number of other processed and biochemical ingredients in it to make the O’s hold together and taste good and serve as “nutrients” to give us sources of iron, Vitamin D, zinc, Vitamin B12, etc. So while Cheerios is barely real food, it is a delivery system for nutrients.

2. Since nutrients are the most important thing but we can’t see them, we need scientists and other experts to tell us what we should eat. This is a tricky one for me. I work in Mental Health And Addictions for the local Health Authority, and a part of my job is to help clients learn how to budget their money and eat healthier food. However, I am working with some clients who barely have enough motivation to get to the store, let alone create a healthy meal from scratch. Therefore, we often have to rely on the healthy, cheap versions of pre-made and easy-to-make meals. Oh, yes, and it is very important that we follow the Canada Food Guide, basically making my job an impossible task. But as long as I know that this is the “right” way to eat, we’re fine. “Not sure if she’s getting enough protein? Just look up the nutrients on the side of the packages.” (All those hard to read ingredients – just ignore those.)

3. Nutritionism divides the world into good and evil. Right now transfats is the devil. Omega-3 fatty acids are the angels. Of course the identity of these nutrients change over time, depending on food trends. Not long ago low fat was the ideal. Sometimes carbohydrates are “in” and sometimes they aren’t. For the non-vegetarians who don’t know actually know much about food, proteins are very important, and thus, as a vegetarian, I can’t be getting enough and am likely paving my personal road to hell. But see how we make the nutrients so much more important than the food we are eating? Why are we paying so much attention to the nutrients instead of the food?

Since the science of nutrients was introduced, obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes have risen. I am going to go out on a limb here and speculate that because science can make processed foods more “nutritious” than their real counterparts, people have stopped eating real food and have started relying on cheaper, scientifically crafted foods.

In learning all of this I couldn’t help but think of the relationship between breastfeeding and formula. Breastfeeding is real food for babies. Formula is its processed food counterpart. Over time science has almost perfected infant formula by packing it with the “same nutrient composition” as our breast milk. At times, society has been told that formula is just as nutritious, if not more so, than breast milk. This has sparked debates over the healthiest way to feed a baby, and while breast milk always comes out on top, formula feeding mothers can pretty much feel confident that their baby’s food is “just as good.”

But is it? Who read the article at Natural News called It’s not the bugs in Similac that make me sick – let’s recall the other ingredients? While the article itself has some finger pointing criticism that I don’t agree with it does bring the reader’s attention to the ingredients in a can of Similac, namely corn syrup solids, soy protein isolate, high oleic safflower oil, sugar (sucrose), soy oil and coconut oil. Would you feed these ingredients standing alone to your newborn baby? No, but because a team of scientists have fortified this concoction of oily sugar with a bunch of good sounding things called nutrients it’s suddenly “just as good.”

“But we/I turned out just fine” is something I hear from my mom’s generation a lot. Most of them were fed formula, BUT they also had the luxury of eating (for the most part) real whole foods. For certain, not all of them have turned out fine, and for others only time will tell. I believe that the children who were formula fed back in the 50′s and 60′s still grew up on mostly real foods, and I think that a healthy diet – post-infant formula – benefited their overall health.

Raw dairy stocked Canadian shelves until the pasteurization law was passed in the 1960′s. Cows and chickens were being grass fed, produce wasn’t being sprayed (or at least not as heavily), and nothing was genetically modified. In addition, most families ate home cooked meals every night. People didn’t go out to restaurants to eat as much as they do now. Processed foods were in their infant stages and had no where near the chemical additives and preservatives that they do now. According to the fabulous post over at Modern Alternative Mama … but WE turned out fine! up until 1990 when they switched to canola oil, McDonalds used beef tallow to deep fry with. Processed food companies used coconut oil in baked goods. Now they use vegetable oil and shortening.

Recently I remember hearing Jamie Oliver say that our children will live ten years younger than us because of the landscape of food we’ve built for them. I believe it’s time to save lives.

I believe it’s time to go back to real food. It’s time to question the ingredients that companies put in their foods. It’s time to ask why did the nutrients we’re consuming become more important than the food we’re eating? It’s time for our governments to put out money into breast milk banks instead of formula samples!

It’s time to toss away our guilt for the mistakes society has made under the power of the food corporations. Not the mistakes we as parents have made. Most of us don’t have anything to feel guilty about. We can’t all be expected to know everything all the time. No one is perfect, and we all do the best we can do with the information we have at the time. But we can expect that scientists know what they’re doing, and what corporations are doing when they tell us to buy their superior products.

Note: This post is not meant to make anyone feel guilty for choices they’ve made. It is meant for educational purposes only. Toss the guilt out the window and empower yourself for the future. And if you feel you’ve made an informed decision about any of what I’ve written about then more power to you. You have my respect. Sincerely, Melodie.

This post is a part of Real Food Wednesdays, Vegetarian Foodie Fridays, Fight Back Friday, and Food on Friday, Wholesome Whole Foods, Momtrends, and Hearth and Soul Blog Hop.

Yes, I Know It’s World Breastfeeding Week

Melodie — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 06:04:18 +0000

When these Breastfeeding Weeks come along, as they tend to do a few times a year depending on the country you’re living in, and the planet you are living on (Martians please note that planet Earth is having World Breastfeeding Week August 1-7), I feel huge pressure to contribute something super intelligent or meaningful. The thing is that lately what with the stress of moving and everything, I haven’t been feeling terribly inspired to create unique posts of art. Thanks a lot World Breastfeeding Week – your timing sucks! One of these days I’ll feel better and I will tell you all about “How ‘Mella’ Got her Groove Back.”

So what would I write about if I was feeling really superty-duperty Pollyanna-ish? (she says with a scary clown smile)

Well I’d definitely have a kick butt video to share with you for Ameda’s Why I Breastfeed campaign. Regardless of the fact my husband never wanted a video recorder on our computer and our real video camera broke a few years back (thus no vlogging for me!) Even though I won’t be counted, you, like Elita from Blacktating, can still contribute to this charitable campaign that for each 20 second video received will donate $5 to the Human Milk Banking Association of North America.

credit: My Baby Experts

I’d rant and rave about the fact that Shari Criso, the award winning author of the Simply Breastfeeding DVD has a brand new video website that will stream her entire Simply Breastfeeding DVD for FREE during World Breastfeeding Week. If you are unable to afford a breastfeeding class or Shari’s DVD, take advantage of this offer. I reviewed Simply Breastfeeding and highly recommend it to any new or seasoned mom who plans to breastfeed. Shari will help you commit to making it work! *If you know a friend who might benefit from Shari’s free video please share this with them via Facebook or twitter or email.

With World Breastfeeding Week comes concerned mothers who ask “what can I do to help?” Annie at PhD in Parenting has a good post to get you started. First, if you don’t already, start boycotting Nestlé. If you think that no longer buying Häagen-Dazs might ruin your life then you need to head over to her post Why I Boycott Nestlé’s Unethical Business Practices for an overview of how Nestlé ruins other people’s lives and make a full-on switch to Ben & Jerry’s like I did.

What else can you do? Well the theme of World breastfeeding Week this year is Just 10 Steps, the Baby-Friendly Way. If you live in British Columbia like I do, you may be just appalled as I am to learn that we only have two Baby-Friendly designated hospitals in our province. In Quesnel (huh?!) and Vancouver. All together, in Canada there are only about a dozen hospitals that have this status. So like Best for Babes says, If you are expecting or thinking of starting a family, the single most important thing you can do, long before you go to the hospital or maternity center, give birth at home, or waltz the Ten Steps, is to PREPARE.

That means educate yourself, Prepare for hospital booby traps (most doctors and nurses receive little if any breastfeeding education. See this post and this post for more details), commit to breastfeeding, gather up a supportive network of other breastfeeding moms, friends and family. If you are isolated, that’s okay. There are plenty of places on-line you can turn to. Kelly Mom is my favorite resource, and even if you are calling long distance, there is always a La Leche League leader you can speak to for free about any breastfeeding problems you are having. If you already breastfeed, and if you can, plan to breastfeed a little longer than you intended, or give breastfeeding in public a try. The more often the public sees breastfeeding and/or sees or hears about breastfeeding older children, the more normal it becomes.

So yes, I know it is World Breastfeeding Week and this is my post. The other thing I am doing this week today, which I am pretty proud of myself about, is FINALLY getting around to posting a “Nestlé free zone” image on my site. I wonder how many of my readers were thinking I was a big Stouffer’s fan? …… Yeah right. And as a result of this post I hope your IQ has jumped a few points and that you are now inspired to become the world’s most influential breastfeeding educator. I will now softly creep into my bed in hopes of not disrupting my nursling’s sleep and can pretty much bet you a breastfeeding-friendly chocolate bar that I’ll be nursing my three year old within half an hour.

Happy Breastfeeding Week Breastfeeding Moms!

The People Who Make My Baby Friendly Community

Melodie — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 06:03:35 +0000

Welcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!

This post was written as part of The Breastfeeding Cafe’s Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today’s post is about baby friendly communities. Please read the other blogs in today’s carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 18th through the 31st!

When I think of Baby Friendly Communities I think of strong community role models. In my community, which has one of the highest breastfeeding rates in our province with a 97% initiation rate, I think of the public health nurses who hold the annual Breastfeeding Challenge and hold the annual breastfeeding photo contest. I think of our amazing local midwives who make sure their moms are breastfeeding successfully before they leave them and then visit them at home to make sure it stays that way. I think of our local OB/GYN who works with moms instead of following her own agenda. I think of our local La Leche League chapter who helped make me who I am.

To start, I can’t speak for local doctors because I don’t know any of them. My GP is in the city and did not see me throughout my pregnancies except in the very begining when I found out I was pregnant. I sheepishly told her I wanted a midwife-assisted birth and she told me she didn’t even do obstetrics and encouraged me to have a midwife!

The midwives. Not only did I learn more about pregnancy and birth and the wonderous powers of my body than I ever thought was possible, I formed an intimate bond with my midwives. They came on my birth journey with us. They were the coaches on our team who helped me reach my birthing goals. And when I got drafted into motherhood they stayed with me. They crammed my brain full of breastfeeding and mothering wisdom, and once they had given me all they could they let me go. And it wasn’t just me. It wasn’t just my bond with them. Everyone I know who has had them has said the same thing. Those women change other women’s lives. They make this community of mothers wise, strong and powerful.

The OB/GYN. We are fortunate to have a highly respected and skilled OB/GYN in our community. Not only is she a woman, she has an excellent working relationship with the local midwives. In fact, having seen her for a consultation and then having her deliver my first baby via c-section, I can honestly say that she was everything I would want an OB/GYN to be. She was friendly and interested in me as a person, she informed me of my choices, she respected my opinions, decisions, and requests, and she did a good job of my surgery. Later for my second pregnancy when there was a discussion about my needing some medication in the third trimester, she respected that I was breastfeeding a two year old and worked with me to find the best medical solution. When your midwives have a friend in the medical community you know you’re in good hands.

The public health nurses. Our public health unit has mom and baby groups led by a Lactation Consultant. I didn’t learn that about her until only recently because it’s not the hat she wears as the group facilitator, but it is no surprise that she is a breastfeeding advocate and one of my favorite local breastfeeding allies. The information and encouragement she and the other nurses bestow to new moms is top notch. I remember at one group a new mom announced she was not breastfeeding her new baby and started talking nonsense about formula. At the break a nurse who’d been quietly informed of this came into the group and gently took this new mom aside to give her the facts about formula and breastfeeding and present her with informed choices. I was in awe of the how this nurse balanced graceful respect and confident assertiveness. I thought “If this is how they always do things, no wonder we’re doing so well.”

La Leche League. I found my local LLL when my first born was 3 months old. I joined because I wanted to breastfeed longer than standard, but I felt like I needed more support for my choice to do so. I cannot tell you how much I learned going to those weekly meetings! Honestly, those women are responsible for giving me the information about breastfeeding that turned me into a passionate lactivist and breastfeeding blogger.

The Online Community. Even though an online community isn’t the same as one’s local community, for an individual, it can be the best community of all. I love my breastfeeding bloggy and twitter friends. The support and like-minded and like-acted doings of this crowd have kept me breastfeeding even longer than I thought I would be. The continued cornucopia of information and shared experiences from different people every week really gives me that sense of a global community. No, it isn’t just me and a few of my local friends who think this way and do things this way. There are so so so many of us, and we are constantly teaching each other and reminding each other of why we do what we do and believe what we believe in.

Being a breastfeeding blogger has given me new friends, new insights and revelations, new books to read and new experiences. In fact, you can join me for another one tomorrow as I am a guest on Karen Angstadt’s A Labor of Love radio show online where we will be talking about nursing toddlers and the things we didn’t know in advance. Remember that guest post she did for me a few weeks ago Questions For You About Nursing Your Toddler? Well, we’re going to dissect some of your comments so make sure you listen in on Monday at 1 PM EST.

Here are more post by the Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival participants! Check back because more will be added throughout the day.

Emily @ Baby Dickey—Living in a baby friendly community
Sara @ The Covered Wagon—A Baby-Friendly Worship Community
Shary @ Mama Fish—A Community Fit For All Babies
Sylko @ Chaotic Mama—Breastfeeding Carnival: Baby Friendly Community
Claire @ The Adventures of Lactating Girl—Community is What You Make of It
Kimberly @ Fertility Flower—Baby Friendly Maternity Leave
Melodie @ Breastfeeding Moms Unite!—The People Who Make My Baby Friendly Community
Timbra @ Bosoms and Babes—Baby Friendly Community: Carnival Day 1
Claire @ Geeky Gaming Mama—Baby Friendly Community: What It Means To Me
Renee @ Just the 5 of us!—Baby friendly, one baby at a time

Do Nurses Learn about Breastfeeding in Nursing School?

Melodie — Wed, 12 May 2010 15:15:30 +0000

The following post is a guest post by Jennifer Johnson who writes on the topic of Nurse Practitioner schools. I asked her to write about this topic to give pregnant and breastfeeding moms, and those interested in pursuing a career in nursing, an idea of what nurses actually learn about breastfeeding in school. Thank you Jennifer for providing Breastfeeding Moms Unite! with this article. Disclosure: This is not a sponsored or paid post.

What nursing schools actually teach nurses about breastfeeding is limited in most nursing schools, unless, of course, the nursing student is studying to become a nurse-midwife at the master’s level. Chances are the best education a nursing student will receive about breastfeeding will be during their clinical rotations in obstetrics, and even that will depend on the type of initiative the nursing student takes, as well as what the RNs they encounter are willing to teach them.

Why? Because there’s so many other things to learn! In the classroom, BSN programs emphasize nursing procedures—nursing students learn general nursing techniques in learning labs, such as starting IVs, inserting catheters, dressing wounds, administering medications, patient assessment and checking vitals, and later apply them in real life during clinical training. Prior to procedural learning, nursing students take core courses in anatomy & physiology, pathology and pharmacology. Some nursing core courses cover breastfeeding, but only briefly. (emphasis mine).

The nurses I have encountered have said that the best information on the benefits of breastfeeding came not through nursing school but instead came through required continuing education (CE) courses they took either to maintain their nursing license or when it was required by the hospital when the nurse began working in a hospital’s neonatal unit. However, not every hospital makes CE courses on breastfeeding mandatory for nurses entering the neonatal unit.

That being said, some of the CE courses on breastfeeding are extremely informative! Check out this one I found titled “Breastfeeding: The Nurse’s Role” offered by South Dakota State University’s College of Nursing. The course is designed to educate nurses in how to explain the advantages of breastfeeding to a new mother, to emphasize the importance of breastfeeding immediately after birth, and even to demonstrate four positions to hold a baby for optimum breastfeeding. The first module even includes important information on the recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Dietetic Association that a mother should breastfeed exclusively for the first six months of a healthy infant’s life.

Another CE course I found for RNs was actually an in-depth Lactation Counselor Certificate Program offered through Healthy Children’s Center for Breastfeeding.

So what can we learn from this? We need to make our voices heard and push our local hospitals to require all nurses entering the neonatal unit to receive breastfeeding education training through continuing education. There needs to be a push for this practice to be written into hospital policy. Just remember that many hospitals already have this as a goal, but are having difficulty realizing the goal due to thin staffing models.

By-line:

This guest post is contributed by Jennifer Johnson, who writes on the topics of NP Schools. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: j.johnson19june@gmail.com.

Support for Breastfeeding Can Make All The Difference

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:42:16 +0000

The following post by Ruth Moss is #4 in my series on Mental Health and Breastfeeding. The other posts can be found here, here and here. Ruth was one of the first breastfeeding moms I made friends with on Twitter. Her talent for writing can be enjoyed all over the internet. For a list of the blogs she writes at see the bottom of this post.

A traumatic birth, which left me feeling powerless and unsupported by the people who were supposed to love me, got me off on the wrong foot when it came to breastfeeding. My baby’s “first feed”, documented in the “little red book” given to all new Mums in the UK by a health visitor, was “formula from cup”. Before I’d even recovered from the narcotics I’d taken in the false hope they’d ease the pain of an induced back labour, I already felt a failure.

The hospital was little to no help getting me started on breastfeeding, but thankfully my baby was hardwired to do this thing, despite one midwifetelling me at three in the morning, when I had tears streaming down my face, “some babies just aren’t meant to. Would it really destroy you to give him a bottle?” (Answer: yes, it almost did.) It didn’t come easy though, and I found myself in a huge amount of pain and with a constantly screaming, hungry baby. On the advice of the home-visiting midwife, I started supplementing his breastfeeds with formula. He refused a bottle, so it dribbled down his cheeks from a tiny open cup, while tears dribbled down my face.

If you know about breastfeeding, you’ll know what a vicious cycle this was in terms of supply and demand. And although the midwives and health visitors were no help (the script: “you’ve done so well, most Mums don’t make it to three weeks, no one would think badly of you if you gave up now”) I knew instinctively that supplementing was making it worse. I started to express milk to cup feed my baby when nursing became so painful even pure lanolin couldn’t stop my nipples from bleeding. His latch was shallow and painful and I knew that, but every midwife and health visitor insisted nothing was wrong, it was meant to hurt, it had hurt for them, this was why people stopped, this was why they’d stopped, this was why I should stop.

My then-husband’s family (I’m estranged from my own family) called me stubborn, they said I’d “give myself” postnatal depression, they attributed the mess the house was in to the fact I was constantly in tears and dealing with a sad, hungry baby, whereas if I’d just go to the doctor and get myself some meds, and quit with the breastfeeding and give him formula, everything would be better. And who knows, it might have been better for them. But I might have been dead.

Because yes, I did start to become incredibly depressed. I started having panic attacks that took me back to when I was separated from my baby in the hospital (he was taken into special care where I was not able to room in with him at first). I cried all the time. I started to wonder if there was much point me being alive at all; after all, anyone could bottle feed formula to my baby, and I was such a terrible Mum anyway he’d be better off without me. I contemplated suicide daily. I was terrified that I would have to stop breastfeeding. That was another thing that kept me awake at night, the thought that I might have to “put him on the bottle” like everyone told me to. I wanted a midwife or health visitor to tell me how to fix this, so I could be happy again. Instead they all told me the same; stop.

When my baby was just six weeks of age, my then-husband became so angry with me over the “stubborn refusal” to bottle feed and my unwillingness to go to the doctor regarding depression, that I went and stayed with my mother-in-law. Eventually he relented over the bottle feeding, but said he’d only have me back if I went to the doctor.

I did, but was very, very careful. I assumed that anti-depressants meant that I’d have to stop breastfeeding. Before taking the Edinburgh test, I asked her, “if I went onto anti-depressants, would I have to stop breastfeeding?” “Yes,” she replied immediately. Then she thought about it. “Well, there might be a way to get around it by pumping and dumping your milk, and taking care when you take tablets, but it would be a lot of effort and even then I’m not sure.”

So I faked the Edinburgh test. It’s really simple to fake. “I have suicidal feelings: a. all the time b. sometimes c. almost never d. what, me? I’m Ms Cheery McCheeryson me!” and so on. She diagnosed simple “baby blues” and pretty much sent me on my way. I was pleased I didn’t have to stop but still desperate for help and support. The local La Leche League group (not one run by a leader; a SureStart Children’s Centre group run by a Peer Supporter [who was also an employee of the centre], and not a particularly good one) was no help to me; but via sheer luck I learned about another group, one run by a midwife at the local hospital, a midwife who, despite her NHS training actually knew a lot about breastfeeding and would be able to help me. A group, incidentally, that not one of the Community Midwives or Health Visitors had told me about. So much for a joined-up service!

And help me she did. Using techniques like biological nurturing and altering the position in which I fed him from the “textbook” ones, to ones that were unique to me, as a woman with very large breasts and a small baby, suggesting we bedshare against FSIDs advice, giving me information about slings and babywearing to calm and soothe him; basically, by going against all the “advice” I’d received from the NHS and government-run SureStart employees, she saved my breastfeeding relationship, and might even have saved my life.

She also told me the doctor was wrong about anti-depressants and gave me information from the Breastfeeding Network on various SSRIs. I went to a different doctor, and armed with this information, I told the truth on the Edinburgh test and got prescribed Fluoxetine (Prozac) which, although it had various unwanted side effects, helped me a lot with the panic attacks. The constant crying resolved itself as I started to breastfeeding my baby without pain, and without his constant crying. His own, lively, happy personality started to come out as he started to put on weight and cry less and less. I fell madly and suddenly in love with this bright, cheeky, funny, curious baby in a way I hadn’t been able to prior to this.

Two and a half years after my baby was born, my mental health is still a long way away from what I’d like it to be. Aside from the early breastfeeding difficulties I still have flashbacks to the trauma of the birth; I do not deal well with any form of separation from my child and have a (hopefully irrational) fear that he will be taken from me. On the nights my ex-husband has our child, I really feel the lack of him and have to fight I the panic attacks that I still suffer, and depression is a constant in my life. But I can manage it, to an extent, and currently I’m managing it without the support of medication (for various reasons).

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d been given support with breastfeeding from day one. If in the front of my little red book it had said “first feed: breast” instead of what it says now. If the first midwife who’d looked at my baby’s latch had said “no, that’s not right, no wonder it hurts you poor thing!” and helped me to feed him. If I’d not had to deal with the constant crying and hunger in the early days and the feeling of utter worthlessness because I couldn’t make it better for my own child. If the doctor had referred me to the hospital’s breastfeeding support group straight away. I suspect the birth trauma and initial separation alone might have caused me some mental health problems, but I doubt they would be anywhere near as severe. I doubt I’d still be suffering the after effects now.

If doctors and health care professionals knew the difference breastfeeding could make to a mother’s mental health, wouldn’t their initial reaction be “fix the breastfeeding first, if that’s possible, and see what that does”?

And erroneously telling breastfeeding mothers that they must choose between breastfeeding and medication? You see, I don’t think that doctor did it out of spite. I think she did it because she had no knowledge and training on suitable medications in breastfeeding and made an incorrect assumption. But that assumption itself was made out of another assumption; the assumption that breastfeeding doesn’t matter, and that it isn’t related to postnatal depression at all. My relatives made the assumption that trying to breastfeed was making me ill, whereas in fact, trying to breastfeed without support was making me ill. The initial answer to all these things should be “fix the breastfeeding.” But it so rarely is.

Ruth blogs at:

http://leftofthepleiades.blogspot.com
http://allaboutbertie.blogspot.com
http://mossy.dreamwidth.org
http://normalparenting.wordpress.com
http://feministmums.wordpress.com
http://iblamethemother.wordpress.com

Breastfeeding, Formula Feeding and Social Oppression

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:22:54 +0000

Disclaimer: I’m about to get all social work-y and academic on you today. I’m playing student as I examine social oppression its relationship with breastfeeding and formula feeding in Canada.

Recent health promotion campaigns have encouraged people to adopt healthier lifestyles (quit smoking, breastfeed, eat well, etc.) but less attention has been given to promoting the physical and social environments that enhance our health and well being.

To increase breastfeeding rates…

At a macro (government) policy level we need:

Increased wages for entry-level jobs so families can better afford to have the mom stay at home for her full maternity leave (in Canada this is one year).
Increased mandatory breastfeeding education for all health care providers.
Increased government funding for quality child care -> decreased out-of-pocket cost for parents.
Increased media support for breastfeeding campaigns

At a mico (individual) level we need:

Increased accommodations for breastfeeding mothers at work. While it is more rare in Canada for a woman to return to work before her year-long maternity leave is over, some women have to return to work earlier. It is therefore necessary to at least have a workplace policy on breastfeeding. Our local health authority! does not have any policy on workplace accommodations for breastfeeding mothers which I find appalling.
Increased welcoming attitudes by breastfeeding support groups for Women of Colour, women with a disability, working mothers and other women of minority.
More businesses with policies that welcome breastfeeding mothers in their stores.
Increased public support of breastfeeding, especially past six months or one year.

Breastfeeding moms in North America have a legal right to breastfeed anytime, anywhere. We know this and would like everyone else who isn’t a breastfeeding mom to know this too. We are tired of fighting for the right to have our rights recognized and accepted by others. We are tired of hearing about another breastfeeding mom who was ridiculed for breastfeeding in public or asked to leave a public place or move to a restroom or private nursing room in order to feed her baby. We are tired of improper employer conduct based on outdated or non-existant policies. It’s 2009 and it’s time everyone got with the program. Breast milk is the best food for babies and boobs aren’t lewd, they’re food.

But aside from the need to improve breastfeeding rates and attitudes, are breastfeeding moms as a group oppressed? I don’t think so. In Canada, the prevalence of breastfeeding tends to rise with education and household income. Generally, breastfeeding mothers are educated, middle to upper class, over the age of 25, and partnered [Source]. While breastfeeding moms may get discriminated against, especially when nursing in public, discrimination is not oppression. And when a breastfeeding mom has difficulties, it is usually the more privileged mom who gets the help she needs and can continue on with breastfeeding.

When a woman has difficulty breastfeeding, this private trouble can go in one of two directions: Either she gets help and remedies the problem or she stops. Some of the barriers mothers experience in being able to successfully breastfeed from the start are found in the hospitals they deliver their baby in. Sometimes the blame is placed on an individual (mom couldn’t produce enough milk, partner wasn’t supportive, baby couldn’t latch, etc) but often the problem stems from larger problems in the health care system. At a macro level, government reductions to spending on health and social welfare mean staff cuts – less staff have to do more work and there just aren’t enough people to do a thorough job. Conservative trends support focus on less government support and more individual, family and community-based efforts (like LLL, new mom groups, public health). But if someone doesn’t refer the mom to any community-based program, this public issue - quality health care – becomes a private trouble when moms don’t get the help they need.

Now let’s take a look at formula feeding moms. A lot of people come down on moms for formula feeding. Some formula feeding moms come down on themselves. But if we take a structural approach to formula feeding and look at it as a public issue instead of a private one, we will soon see that a number of factors might influence formula use.

To look at choosing formula as only an individual choice is to ignore all other sources of the problem: media (advertising), health care system (cut backs and lack of breastfeeding education), economy (need to return to work early to make ends meet), social pressure (family, friends, society), the current conservative politics that drive all of the above and of course the invisible walls of patriarchy, and where applicable, ableism, racism and sexism. Or should I just say kyriarchy?

Poverty

Not all moms who use formula live in poverty or are even low-income, but generally speaking many are. When a person lives in poverty they lack the resources more privileged people do. They generally have less education. They are marginalized in their jobs. They often can’t afford to take off a full year’s maternity leave, that is if they get one at all. In Canada one must work an equivalent of six months full time work outside the home to be eligible for maternity leave benefits, and even then, if your employer doesn’t “top up” those benefits you only get a fraction of what you were making before you took time off. Women who work low-wage paying jobs are often in the kind of job where it isn’t very easy to pump on breaks. If a poor woman has breastfeeding difficulties she has even more barriers stacked against her. In Canada, with our universal health care system, many lactation consultants work for hospitals or public health provide free help to anyone who needs it. However, there is still cost. Transportation is a major issue for many low-income families. Many moms don’t own or have access to a computer so don’t have the online resources so many of us rely on nowadays. Therefore, it is usually the moms who can afford services and know they exist who get the help, fix their problem and go on to breastfeed.

Race

In the United States African-American mothers are less likely to even initiate breastfeeding than white mothers. In Canada women of colour also have lower breastfeeding rates. A recent collection of anecdotal evidence in my area has shown that breastfeeding rates among local First Nations groups are declining.

Age

Mothers under 20 are also less likely to initiate breastfeeding.

Internalized Oppression

Internalized oppression is when individuals internalize positive messages about a dominant group and negative messages about themselves and their cultural group. This integration of negative stereotypes results in feelings of inferiority, shame, and self-hate, which then underlie the development of patterns of self-destructive behaviour [Link]. When a nurse unconsciously but discriminatingly assumes a woman of colour will formula feed and the patient assumes that’s what she should do because that’s what everyone else does, regardless of what is best or her curiosity, if she doesn’t speak out, this is internalized oppression.

Internalized Dominance is when people in the dominant culture come to see the effects of colonization as normal or natural and are unable to see their privilege. They assume that everyone shares their view of the order of things, including stereotypes of colonized peoples and the view of history as written by the colonizers. Health care professionals can have internalized dominance over patients. Inappropriate hospital practices and the promotion of formula are a form of violence towards women. Violations of a woman’s right to breastfeed, including not receiving her permission to give her infant formula or giving her false information can be seen as a violating of a woman’s human rights. To read more about the feminist approach to equality for breastfeeding, please see this post.

So are moms who formula feed oppressed?

What do you think?

I Never Went Back: On Psychiatric Ignorance of Breastfeeding

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:39:12 +0000

This is Post #3 in my Breastfeeding and Mental Health series. Today I am honoured to have a guest post from Arwyn at Raising My Boychick who shares her experience of a meeting with her psychiatrist when she was considering having a baby and breastfeeding. The other posts in this series can be found here, here and here.

I Never Went Back

I don’t know how to tell this story. On the surface, it doesn’t seem so bad — just another case of an ignorant douchebag doctor being an ignorant douchebag; no especial reason for me to have wound up sitting on the floor of my mother’s office, sobbing into her skirts. No real reason I should still be carrying around this pain, which clenches around my heart when I think about it. Certainly to an outsider, it must seem like “not a big deal”. And yes, my reaction was extreme, a symptom of my instability at the time. And yet, that’s the point, isn’t it? If it isn’t safe to be crazy around a psychiatrist, then who can we be vulnerable around? Psych workers should be held to higher standards, and they need to understand how seemingly “small” remarks can have a large, lasting impact on those they work with. This is why my story — my small, seemingly insignificant story — is worth sharing.

I had been seeing this psychiatrist friend of my mom for a couple years, since I first sought help for my bipolar disorder. As a fellow physician, he offered her the “professional courtesy” of seeing me without out of pocket costs, even when I had no insurance. He’d even given me several months’ worth of “samples” of my medication, which would have cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars full-price at a pharmacy. I liked him well enough, and trusted him well enough — even if he didn’t get the full truth, because some things I could only say out loud very recently. I had no more defenses against him than I did against myself (which is to say, some, but none I would admit to at that point). I had no reason to expect anything but professionalism. I had excepted to be respected. I had expected to be safe.

Which is why, when I talked to him about my oh-so-tentative plans for pregnancy and breastfeeding and attempted to discuss options for medication management through that time, I wasn’t expecting to be told “Oh, I wouldn’t have you breastfeeding on anything. Formula is fine, and we don’t know what these drugs do to developing brains.” I wasn’t expecting the fight-or-flight adrenaline spike sitting there in that quiet room; I wasn’t expecting the panic attack as I realized I was in a room with an enemy, not an ally. I wasn’t expecting to know more than the supposedly-educated man sitting across from me; I wasn’t expecting to have my knowledge so blithely, casually dismissed. I was expecting a rational discussion of what my options might be, of how best to balance my medication needs and the potential risks to my maybe-baby; I wasn’t expecting that.

I still don’t remember how I got out of there. I don’t remember what I said; I’m fairly sure I did not say what was going through my head, because I didn’t start yelling and raving until later. I must have gone into fully walled-off protection mode, and probably smiled, and nodded, and mouthed whatever I thought he wanted to hear. Somehow, I walked out, trust and sanity in tatters, dignity and pride tied around me, holding me together. Somehow, I walked out; I never returned. I rode the elevator down the single flight to my mother’s group office; I found her talking with her colleagues; I went back to her office and waited for her. There, just ten feet below where I had been ambushed, attacked so unknowingly, the ropes unraveled and I fell apart. I cried — great gulping sobs, fluid falling everywhere, halting, hiccup-interrupted explanations bawled into my concerned mother’s lap.

I was so angry. Hurt, yes; shocked, shaky, unstable, yes; but angry. I was angry at his ignorance — in fact, we know formula causes harm to developing brains, and immune systems, and so much else, and we don’t know if most mood-stabilizers do anything but give babies saner mothers. I was angry that I was so easily dismissed, that he didn’t question his own assumptions, that he was so arrogant he couldn’t consider I might have a point, that I might know things he didn’t. I was angry that instead of being treated with respect as an equal, a person, I was just being treated, like a patient — like a thing.

I never went back. For the next many months, I went without med management of any kind. My dosage wasn’t great, but it was — almost — good enough. I might have done better on another dose, or another drug altogether, but I didn’t know, and had no one to tell me. I might have gone into liver failure, because I wasn’t getting my levels checked, and had no one to order the lab tests for me.

I eventually got stable — mostly through my own hard work — and found someone to oversee my weaning off the medications. In the end, I was able to go through pregnancy and breastfeeding without any of the drugs the doctor who had betrayed me said he would deny me. But if I had needed pharmaceutical assistance — or, to be more honest, if I had admitted I needed more help than I had — I had no one to turn to. I would have had to start anew, and overcome the aversion I learned on that day years before, try to learn to trust again while struggling with postpartum neurology and new life with a neonate. And all because of an off-hand assertion by a psychiatrist ignorant of normal physiology and human development, of the risks of formula and the damage of denying a woman’s right to breastfeed.

I’ve been med-free for almost five years, and breastfeeding for just over half that. I have been lucky that I have been able to avoid the psychomedical complex almost entirely since that day, but I am still angry that one physician’s ignorance and arrogance has alienated me for so long – and I’m angry at myself, no matter how nonsensical it is, for not standing up to him that day. I always wonder: how many other women and babies has he harmed with his ignorance on lactation and medication? How many other women didn’t know as much as I, and didn’t walk out, and didn’t breastfeed their babies? How many other women did walk out, and were alienated, left alone, but weren’t as lucky as I? How many needed medication they were unable to acquire for risk of being bullied into weaning?

How many of us need to speak out before there is change?

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