Jane writes:
When someone has real issues and must breastfeed, why shame them further -
even if that is not the intention. It's like shaming my nephew because he
is wheel-chair bound.
~~ See, this is where it gets so tricky trying to make comparisons and find
metaphors that work. ( I know you meant "must formula feed"...:) Everyone
knows that wheelchairs are for people who for whatever reason cannot
ambulate on their own and need the assist. When we see someone in a wheelchair,
we know there is a reason they are in there. We don't wonder whether or not
someone's mother was simply not interested in encouraging the biological
norm of bipedal ambulation or whether this child and family worked with PTs
and other professionals to try and achieve the norm but they just couldn't
do it and this provides this child with some ability to get around or be
pushed around depending on the severity of the challenge. This and other
devices are called Assistive Devices. Our problem is that culturally, the same
is not true for breastfeeding as a skill or formula as an item, or the
assistive feeding devices ( or supplementary devices) mothers use when a baby
cannot functionally feed at breast. Mothers can actually choose to skip the
norm and go right for the assistive device and the artificial substitute.
For some women this is their norm, for others it would be an extreme
disappointment even a source of despair or, as has been said, shame, which should
NEVER be the case. As has been said, it is mostly known that
breastfeeding is "optimal", or "natural" or "best" but these are all problematic
because there is too much of modern life which doesn't have to be optimal ( like
our diets or our activity levels), or natural ( like our clothing fibers)
or best ( since good is good enough.) for us. So we are stuck, living in a
time and place ( where I live, not where many of you live) where
breastfeeding is optimal and natural and best and in the end none of that is very
persuasive because other factors intervene. Despite cars and trains and buses
and bikes, most people would still argue that the ability to ambulate on
two legs is a human norm worth working toward for everyone. This is what we
need accepted about a baby and its breastfeeding. Then people would be less
likely to decide not to breastfeed or abandon it for any number of reasons
that support and education might have affected. The US business style, that
old rugged individualism, the mixing of medicine and business monies and
ideas, and the entrenchment of artificial feeding is deep and wide here....
well it's still a trek uphill... I do like the idea of a label, not to
shame, but to let people now what the norm is, not the optimum, and what the
consequences could be if the norm is abandoned. Someone wrote a label that
sounded good - I would just take the word "optimum" off.
Peace,
Judy, sweating in humid, off an on rainy Brooklyn .
Judy LeVan Fram, PT, IBCLC, LLLL
Brooklyn, NY, USA
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