Milk
posted by Sarah Waldeck
Last week the New York Times had an article about the challenges of traveling for breast-feeding mothers. The piece is consistent with the patterns noted in a recent New Yorker, where Jill Lepore observed that companies are increasingly rated as mother-friendly solely because they accommodate breast pumping, instead of because they permit long maternity leaves or otherwise allow mothers to spend time with their babies. (Chimène Keitner blogged about the article here.) The Times article is mostly consistent with this pattern. It discusses, for example, how Ernst & Young provides free kits that enable traveling mothers to ship milk home. Much of the Times piece talked about the perils of getting milk through airport security, because individual Transportation Security Agents determine what constitutes the “reasonable quantity” of milk permitted under TSA rules.
There is a distinction between pumping milk while away from home and transporting milk home so that it can be consumed. Pumping milk while away is essential, both to relieve physical discomfort and to maintain the milk supply. Transporting the milk back home is not essential, at least not if you are willing to supplement breast-milk with formula. This point leads to two larger observations.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I think that some breastfeeding advocates would like to keep mothers at least partially in the dark about the primary benefit of formula: its ease. Most women who choose breastmilk have at least read about the convenience of formula, but that’s different than actually experiencing the delight of having an infant sleep for five hours because formula has made her feel full, or the freedom of leaving for work without the breast pump. Some of the recommendations in parenting books— like having hospital nurses wake a mother whenever her newborn is hungry—strike me as partly about preventing mothers from getting a taste of how convenient formula can be, lest they begin the slippery slide towards the Gerber Baby.
For mothers who do eschew formula or at least resist the slippery slope, breastfeeding is sometimes about more than “just” infant and maternal health. We (rightly) hail the benefits of equal parenting. But once society has tumbled to the conclusion that a baby is fine so long as its caregiver is providing loving attention, some women may feel the value of “mother” erode. For some, breast-feeding is a means of staking out a special place. The difficulty, as Lepore observes, is that a woman can make her unique contribution by hooking herself up to a contraption that is reminiscent of a dairy farm or my favorite scene from Witness. To compound matters, it’s much easier to talk about the benefits of breast-milk (which is so indisputably scientifically good) than about touchy-feeling topics like mother-child relationships. So we laud policies that are aimed at getting milk to babies, even when those policies sometimes distract us from the issues that many mothers care about most: getting more of themselves to the child.
February 17, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Posted in: Feminism and Gender
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Responses (3)
Brett Bellmore - February 18, 2009 at 6:53 am
Sheesh, if may be convenient, my wife gets to sleep through the night while I feed the baby, (And I don’t mind doing that, I get back to sleep a lot faster than her.) but formula is freaking *expensive*. Feeding the baby is costing as much as feeding the two of us combined!
Christie - February 18, 2009 at 11:35 pm
I guess whenever I saw family members carting around the various items needed when feeding their babies with formula, I never considered it as the easy option. Is there anything easier or more convenient than just opening up your shirt and letting the baby latch on to eat? Admittedly pumping is a hassle, but when you consider the benefits of breastfeeding your child versus the potential for problems with formula (various allergies, upset tummies, the expense, etc.) it was a no-brainer for me. Also, formula fed babies might sleep slightly better because it takes their bodies longer to digest the formula but it is unlikely a baby, particularly a newborn, is going to sleep through the night with formula. That baby is just going to have a slightly longer period between feedings – so instead of waking up every 2-3 hours to breastfeed your baby, you’re getting up every 3-4 hours.
Piper - February 25, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Formula is way too convenient. If a mother allows her newborn to take formula in the hospital her milk will not come in and her baby will not learn to suck– then both mother and baby will be stuck with formula. Nursing involves a powerful, yet easily disrupted, feedback system– the breasts will only produce milk if stimulated by nursing (or pumping). The baby will only nurse if not stupefied by a formula feeding. Babies become accustomed to the ease of taking formula from a bottle very quickly and routinely refuse to suck afterwards. (It is likely that the sensitivity of breasts to nursing in the first few hours-to-days after parturition is nature’s way of keeping mothers’ bodies from wasting energy producing milk for stillborn or early-perished infants.)
Choosing the “convenience” of formula right after childbirth is tantamount to deciding the baby will never nurse.
First-time moms are often in poor shape to make such a decision. Unless the mother has made a positive decision to feed her baby only formula before childbirth, family members and hospital staff should strongly encourage nursing. Once a mother’s milk has come in and her infant has nursed for a few days, the mother can make a more informed decision about feeding formula.
Yes, this plan deprecates the new mother’s judgment. In this case that is justified– the stakes are very high, the inescapable physical fact is that new mothers often experience a period of diminished mental capacity (due to fatigue, drastic hormone changes, postpartum depression, etc.) and these legitimate medical concerns justify some external pressure on her to act in ways which will keep options open for her and, very importantly, her infant.
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