Breast really is best. So why do we make breastfeeding so difficult?
Suppose a pharmaceutical giant develops an infant health supplement that protects babies from ENT, chest and gut infections and a whole range of other diseases, improves their digestion, reduces their risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease, enhances speech development and even can be linked to higher IQ. Let us call this supplement Magic Potion. The pharmaceutical giant works out that if all new mothers in the UK alone gave it to their babies, it could save the NHS £50 million a year in improved infant health, and who knows what in future benefits.
In no time, due to public demand, we would see this valuable product issued free to all new mothers not only by our own but by all developed governments…perhaps even the United States. Society would place a high value on Magic Potion once it had been proved to make such a significant contribution to public health. The global pharmaceutical company which developed it would be making billions of dollars.
Magic Potion, of course, already exists. It’s called breast-milk. It has all the benefits for baby I’ve listed above and also many for mum too. And we think of it as “free”. But this is a lie. Unless your job allows you to carry your baby close to your body all day, breast-milk is anything but free.
We also think of ourselves as being aware that “breast is best” and we believe hospitals, doctors and midwives are trained to get mothers to breastfeed. We are wrong. Nobody makes a profit from promoting breastfeeding. Nobody gets to be a global multinational power from breastfeeding. It’s very hard to monetise. Breast pumps and special bras, that’s about it. No disrespect, Medela, but you aren’t Nestle.
Because even in countries with generous maternity rights, breastfeeding comes at immense economic cost to the mother. However cheerfully New Zealand’s PM Jacinda Ardern may brandish her breastfeeding baby at cabinet meetings, she’s exerting a control over her own working life which few women can afford to do. Nobody can give a woman back the months of career time which she devotes to breastfeeding.
In the UK, 34% of mothers are mixed-feeding at 6 months, and only 1% are exclusively breastfeeding. Many don’t plan it that way. Most women I meet as an antenatal teacher, doula and sleep consultant would like, ideally, to breastfeed exclusively for about six months, and then taper off to a once-a-day feed, a late-night bedtime cuddle. But in expressing this dream, they use defeatist language such as “if I can”, “if it goes OK,” “If I can manage it”, as though failure were almost inevitable.
Life intervenes. A few weeks in, Dad and Granny offer helpfully to share the burden. Mum wants to feel “normal” (because breastfeeding isn’t really normal), so out comes the breast pump, which is never quite as efficient as a healthy baby at emptying the breast. So the breast gets mixed messages as to what the baby’s needs are. Breastfeeding gets harder…or it hurts (because nobody showed her how to make sure it didn’t) so in comes the tin of formula.
There is a feeling that successful breastfeeding is not something a woman should feel proud of – because that would make them part of the “Breastapo”, “the breast police”, the “breastfeeding Nazis”. If they can breastfeed for more than few weeks they’re “lucky” and should be “grateful”. BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour is featuring infant feeding next week and the presenter was at pains to stress, in flagging up the item, that breastfeeding and bottle feeding were both “options”. As though everybody had a choice, and both choices were equal.
Even now, the exclusive breastfeeding mother is shunned as a weird hippy, the butt of TV comedy and the object of hatred. I read far, far more articles in women-targeted media complaining about the “miseries” of breastfeeding than about bottle feeding, even though the latter is by no means risk free (as anyone who has carefully followed the NHS’s guidelines on preparing bottles will be painfully aware). These articles are normally written by very busy women trying to juggle responsibilities and keep their careers moving forwards. Breastfeeding was never meant to fit in with all that.
Manufacturers of formula milk do much good with their money, funding research and conferences. Last week the British Journal of Midwifery, the academic journal of midwives, had to issue a statement explaining how it would continue to receive “unrestricted” sponsorship of study days from formula companies on the understanding that the sponsors do not have any input into the study day content, and that the formula company advertisements – liberally displayed all over the conference venue – will always “include the statement that ‘breastfeeding is best’”.
Experts such as Professor Amy Brown, author of “Breastfeeding Uncovered”, were not impressed. They know that the formula manufacturers know that just by having their pastel-shaded, life-affirming billboards dotted around a midwifery conference they’ve bought themselves a ton of goodwill, whatever face-saving disclaimer is in the small print at the bottom. They’ve bought themselves into the position of being the norm, happily elbowing boring, messy old Mother Nature aside.
If we really believe that breastfeeding is best, why don’t we act on our belief, by training more professionals to support women, by being frank about how much better breast-milk is and above all giving women time to do the work? Why don’t we stop trying to pretend that the cost of tins of formula is in any way equivalent to the massive luxury of setting aside hours a day to sit, feed, and love?
