Breastfeeding is such an emotive issue. I’ve been nursing for over a decade now (have had three children in that time) with only one gap of a few months not breastfeeding, and have been a breastfeeding counsellor in the voluntary charitable sector for half of it. I have been taken aback by the incredibly strong feelings I have met with concerning this most basic and fundamental of acts.
Whenever the media discusses breastfeeding, no matter what the angle may be, it provokes a vehement response and inevitably resorts to the breast versus bottle debate.
I am a firm advocate for breastfeeding and while I believe it is a mother’s right to choose how and what she feeds her own baby, I believe she needs accurate and independent information before she makes that choice.
Breastfeeding usually appears in the popular press either when famous beautiful women decide to take it up or when it can cause a sensation: for instance the mother who nurses her child for years rather than the culturally acceptable few months or who chooses to nurse someone else’s baby. Kate Garraway’s photograph in which she is apparently breastfeeding a calf provides a powerful image that might well provoke some to reconsider the normality of feeding our young the milk of another species. I am sceptical, however, whether it will lead to any useful debate because the focus of the upcoming TV programme will be the ‘weird’ mothers who cross nurse or have a wet nurse and not the composition of artificial baby milk.
The producers are stirring it up for entertainment not for education. Digging up enough mothers to make this programme wasn’t journalism. Cross nursing and wet nursing are still highly unusual practices whatever you feel about them. The TV people bombarded the voluntary breastfeeding organisations with repeated requests for contacts of cross-nursing and wet nursing mums, just like they have done when sniffing out mums breastfeeding seven year olds. (I recently jumped on that bandwagon for a nice cheque by selling my story of ‘long term’ breastfeeding to Bella, and appeared under the title ‘Extreme Mums’ along with a mother who carried her baby (shock horror) and another who didn’t use nappies. You have to laugh …
Mothers have a hard enough time trying to find out about breastfeeding without all this. Breastfeeding certainly isn’t a common sight unless you hang out with La Leche League mums. Breastfeeding is a practice shrouded in myth. The misconceptions abound and are perpetuated by those whom most mothers turn to for the information to get started: the health professionals and the mainstream media.
It’s so easy to touch a raw nerve in any discussion about breastfeeding. You think I’d have learnt my lesson after the treatment I received on netmums following the Nescafe sponsorship, when I equated formula milk and junk food…) Any comments section following an article that even mentions breastfeeding has strongly worded responses from mothers who have not managed to breastfeed. Rather than expressing anger at the system that has failed to provide them with the correct information and help they needed to establish pain-free feeding, they are defensive about their ‘choice’ to bottle feed and often hostile towards breastfeeding advocates, at whom they hurl abuse of the breastfeeding ‘mafia’, ‘nazi’, ‘zealot’, ‘dairy cow’ variety.
Kate Garraway’s comments about what she has learned while making this TV programme reveal that she is a thinking person but this doesn’t get past the fact that the programme is entertainment. Cross-nursing and wet nursing are challenging ideas for any mother, no matter how she feeds her baby.
I hope the photo of breastfeeding the calf will make folk think about the unsuitability of giving our babies milk designed for a different species but I doubt it. Because nursing another mum’s baby is such an intimate act, I think it will probably provoke a ‘how disgusting’ or ‘how bizarre’ reaction. Perhaps there will be a return to wet nursing? Nice work too! Though I’d rather see exploded the myth that breastfeeding is a chore and that working mothers aren’t able to do it.
The UK Association for Milk Banking is doing a great job of providing human milk to premature and poorly babies and deserves to be funded to extend the valuable service they offer. Read about this excellent work in LLLGB’s Breastfeeding Matters mag in the July/Aug issue available here http://www.lllgbbooks.co.uk/go_shopping/lllgb_magazines/
I don’t choose to share the feeding of my baby with anyone else, not even her father, but I refuse to pass judgement on mothers who do nurse each others’ babies. Were I in an accident and unable to nurse my baby, I’d be comforted to know another mother would put my child to her breast. I’d also interpret it as an act of generosity if a friend felt inclined to care for my baby in this way; though the opportunity would never arise as I go everywhere with my baby.
A mother’s milk is uniquely designed for her baby: she produces antibodies straightaway to pass through her milk to her baby when coming into contact with illness. The composition of her milk changes from day to day and even from feed to feed within a matter of hours to meet her individual baby’s needs. If her baby is born prematurely her milk has more protein than it would were the baby born full term. You can’t replicate that sort of design system with milk from a can or even from another mother.
By giving your baby to another woman to nurse you are missing out on that oxytocin hit that helps bonding, and allowing another to share in a special relationship that many mothers relish as a part of their own particular role. Mothers who cross-nurse claim this is egotism. I believe it is simply human nature to want to occupy the role of mother oneself. It is supremely fulfilling to grow a baby, give birth and then nurture it at your breast. In my case there is no room for a third party in this relationship of unconditional giving and trust building. I don’t want to give up my privileges as nurturer to another. Nor do I want to forgo the physical advantages – I’m decreasing the likelihood I’ll suffer from breast and ovarian cancer, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis to name but a few.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that human milk is always best for human babies. Formula should be a last resort. If you can’t or won’t breastfeed your baby, then milk from another human mother is preferable to the milk of another species. Cows’ milk is higher in fat and protein than human milk because calves need to grow fast, whereas humans need a higher concentration of lactose, the sugar that feeds our big brains and that is what human milk provides.
There will always be a place for artificial baby milk but it should be in the medicine cabinet for emergencies and a lot further down the list of alternatives than it currently is.
Barbara Higham
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