Not breastfeeding, not guilty
I have often been asked "Do you think you could be making mothers feel guilty by being such an advocate of breastfeeding?"
Yes, I am pretty committed to supporting and promoting breastfeeding – I am an internationally certified lactation consultant (this requires thousands of documented hours helping mothers breastfeed in clinical settings, study hours, and a stringent, internationally scheduled exam). I also breastfed my own five babies for a total of more than 20 years.
However, I beg to disagree that promoting and supporting breastfeeding also means promoting guilt.
Although I encourage parents to explore options and make choices that are right for each parent and their particular child, I don't see artificial feeding as simply an 'option', like so many other aspects of preparing to nurture a baby. Parents are making choices on their child's behalf. The person most affected by the parents' choice of infant feeding is the child. As a parent, you are your child's advocate.
As a lactation consultant, though, I know how hard it can be for many women to breastfeed or to breastfeed as long as they want to. I see women who are working against huge odds to give their baby the nutrition and health protection that breastfeeding conveys. Many of these women have received unhelpful advice from everyone around them, including health professionals. I have seen babies who are upset every time they go near a breast because they have been handled roughly by hospital staff (mothers' breasts have been grabbed, and their baby shoved onto them); I have seen women who have been told they don't have enough milk or their 'milk isn't strong enough' (this is never true); women who have been advised to give their babies a top-up bottle, only to have the baby find the fast milk flow easier so weaning begins before breastfeeding even becomes established.
I have seen women struggling to feed the baby, then pump (when they have finally settled the baby) around the clock when, for that particular woman, this can be an unsustainably stressful experience; I have seen women with wrecked nipples that cause toe-curling pain at the very thought of a baby coming near them, often because of undiagnosed issues such as a baby with tongue tie.
There is also enormous pressure from some so-called 'experts' to implement rigid feeding routines (with the promise of a good night's sleep). Unfortunately, this isn't compatible with the physiology of breastfeeding and can also result in premature weaning.
Then there are women who are battling against medical conditions that make breastfeeding challenging despite their best efforts. These include polycystic ovarian syndrome, diabetes, postpartum haemorrhage, fragments of retained placenta (which fools the body into thinking it is still pregnant, so affects levels of breastfeeding hormones), and, rarely, insufficient glandular tissue ('red flags' are a lack of breast development during puberty and pregnancy).
There are also mothers who may need to take medications that aren't compatible with breastfeeding because they have adverse effects when passed through milk (the choice here is obvious if there is no suitable alternative medication – your baby needs a healthy mother!).
As for promoting guilt, when we pussyfoot around about making women feel guilty, we are patronising them. How can anyone make an informed choice if information is deliberately withheld? In any other circumstances, if we deliberately withheld information, we would be considered dishonest or even negligent. When we are prescribed any medication or medical treatment, if we are sensible, we will ask, "What are the risks? Are there any side effects?" We expect to make informed choices, and give informed consent about health care – and isn't breastfeeding the optimum preventative health care?
I don't believe the emotions felt by mothers who don't breastfeed or who wean early are as simple as 'guilt'. When we really examine mothers' feelings about things gone wrong, it is rarely guilt they are expressing, especially about breastfeeding as long or as completely as they would have liked to: well informed mothers who reach for the bottle after a struggle with breastfeeding know they have done the best they could with the resources they had at the time. These mothers may feel sad and disappointed but they don't feel guilty.
Mothers who later discover they were given inappropriate information or had a lack of support (for instance, women who have inadequate maternity leave to establish breastfeeding) are likely to feel angry or betrayed. These mothers don't feel guilty either.
A mother who gives up on breastfeeding because she was talked into something else is likely to find that her self image as a competent mother is compromised. It's perfectly normal for a mother to feel she would do anything to protect her baby – and most mothers would! So when mothers give in to external pressures to wean their babies, they lose confidence in their ability to protect their young.
Guilt is only legitimate if we have let another person down – if we haven't honestly done all that we could have or should have. And nobody can make us feel guilty without our permission. Feelings of guilt may be triggered by external factors, like an overzealous health professional telling us about the hazards of artificial feeding, but these are OUR feelings. This is our own internal value system at work. We each need to decide whether this guilt is legitimate or not – or whether it is, in fact, guilt or some other feeling, and how we will act on this feeling.
For the sake of your relationship with your baby, it's important to differentiate between feelings of guilt and other emotions – or those unrealistic expectations that create guilt whenever we don't live up to our own standards of what we feel a 'good' mother does. To help work out what we are feeling, we can ask ourselves:
• "Where is this feeling coming from?"
• "Is this the best I can do for now? Or am I really letting my child down?"
• "What are my responsibilities?"
• "What can I change?"
• "Where can I find support?"
The positive thing about guilt is that we CAN act on it: If we feel guilty about the choices we are making, we can use these feelings to motivate us to make better choices. There is a vast difference between guilt and regret. We can act on guilt. The sad thing about regret is that it is too late.
If we offer understanding, mothers are more likely to work through their feelings, to be open to trying to breastfeed with a subsequent baby – and to seek all the support they will need to make breastfeeding happen.
As well as acknowledging breastfeeding as the perfect infant food, we must also acknowledge that breastfeeding is more than just a method of feeding – breastfeeding is an intimate relationship and an intrinsic aspect of our biology. When the breastfeeding relationship is ended prematurely, rather than guilt, most mothers feel a deep sense of loss. This emotion is grief – not guilt!
And while we offer mothers platitudes like "you have given him a good start" in the hope of alleviating guilt, we are not giving them permission to mourn the loss of this intimate relationship. We are dismissing their very real feelings of grief.
But breastfeeding promotion is not about promoting guilt. It should never involve persecution of mothers who make other choices. If a mother has made an informed choice not to breastfeed, that is her right. If a mother has given up breastfeeding due to overwhelming challenges or a health problem, she will need extra support.
source by: http://www.essentialbaby.com.au/baby/breastfeeding/not-breastfeeding-not-guilty-20151026-gkicqd.html
