katy x

The “formula should be prescription only” argument has been put forward many times. I can honestly say, with the amount of ignorance I have seen from doctors regarding breastfeeding, there is no way I would trust a doctor to make that call. (Also, what really? I know a lot of very organised people who have run out of important medication because of the way the appointment/prescription/repeat/appointment cycle goes. So it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that someone would run out of formula. What should they give their baby then, at midnight? Oh, that’s right, cow milk, because that’s all that’s available. If you think how sick formula milk can make a baby, just think how sick pure cow milk will make them).

And yes, I do channel my anger into something useful, thanks very much; I support women to breastfeed, women who want to. I don’t spend my time berating the women who – for whatever reason, whether that’s misinformation regarding the difficulty of it, bullying from their partner (you have no idea, I imagine, how many women don’t breastfeed because they are in abusive relationships with partners who won’t “let” them. Then again, perhaps you’re the kind of person who thinks “it’s their own fault they should leave him it actually is that easy to do that”), whether it’s fear of breastfeeding in public – decide not to breastfeed.

I say, leave them to it, most of the time it isn’t actually “laziness” it’s lack of education, it’s messages from society, it’s all kinds of things, and those 25%, well, that’s their call and right at the moment I am much more concerned with increasing continuation rates than initiation rates.

Because honestly? I’d rather live in a world where the 75% of women who start breastfeeding are still doing it at six months, a year, six years, than live in a world where 100% of women start breastfeeding out of fear of the law, or of other women’s opinions, but 2% of them are still breastfeeding at six months.

Here’s an idea for you. Instead of channelling that anger you have at the minority of women who “don’t even try” to breastfeed (25% is about the number, in the UK at least) why not channel the anger at the kind of society that means that those 25% “don’t even try”. Why not try to change society, rather than shouting at other mothers?

Do you also wonder why those 25% are often poor, working class, mothers, often mothers of colour, young mothers, mothers who are already disadvantaged and discriminated against by society? Have you stopped to think at all that there might be a link? That perhaps the same things that disadvantage them are stopping them breastfeeding? That working against the system rather than berating them might be a better thing to do?

And, seriously, have you looked at Sweden and why they have such high initiation and continuation rates without resorting to blaming the mothers who don’t breastfeed?

But it’s so much easier to blame other women. If we start to blame the society instead, then we might actually have to do some real activism, rather than “lactivism” which these days seems much more about trying to control other women. I thought we were better than the formula companies (whose job is to, well, control women in order to make a profit) but it seems we’re trying to use the same bullying and silencing tactics as them.

Instead of blaming the “lazy” women who “don’t even try”, FGS, why not blame the formula companies who spread the message that they shouldn’t even try because it will be too hard and that their product is pretty much the same anyway?

This is why I do not call myself a “lactivist” but rather a “breastfeeding supporter”. I don’t want to be lumped in with the “prescription only” brigade or the “there should be a law” brigade. You may have less money and resources than the formula companies, but “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” as Audre Lorde said.