mamafelix
17-12-2004, 14:58
I really liked this article so I thought I'd share!
It's from: http://www.naturalparenting.com.au/articles/issue9/challengesofbreastfeeding.htm
The Challenges of Breastfeeding
by Lil Deverell
> Subscribe to Natural Parenting Magazine
> Order This Issue
Breastmilk is the best food a baby can have – a customised mix of nutrients and antibodies served fresh at every meal. Easily digested, it is available around the clock in an infinite variety of flavours. The temperature is always right, the packaging reusable.
As a food, it sounds ideal. All the research supports this, so why doesn’t everyone breastfeed their child?
Well, this perfect food does not come out of a clinically tested, homogenised environment. There is no use-by date, batch number and list of ingredients clearly stated on the label. Instead it comes from the heart of motherhood - quality assured, but with all the complications of human relationships.
It can seem to the outsider that when the cord is cut after birth, the baby becomes a separate entity - as if his mother’s role in his life is somehow optional from that time on. This attitude can lead an onlooker to make limiting assumptions about how often and how long a baby should feed for, where and when. The fact is that breastfeeding takes a colossal commitment of time and energy and self. It is an embodied activity, and through breastfeeding, the baby continues to depend on his mother to enfold, to nourish and sustain him, just as he did in the womb. Breastfeeding enables mother and baby to watch one another, to learn about each other in a symbiotic rhythm of giving and receiving.
Zooming in, breastfeeding would seem to be all about nipples and mouths. Certainly attachment is central to the mechanics of breastfeeding, but panning out gives us a much fuller picture. We see that the mouth belongs to a baby who has never done this before, who is discovering life on the outside, who is swamped by sensations previously unfelt and profound changes to his security arrangements. In utero, he was fed continuously in a warm wet embrace. Outside the womb, the lights are brighter, the sounds sharper, the temperatures more extreme and the physical contact intermittent. Breastfeeding connects him back to his life source.
The nipple belongs to a woman with a woman’s body, a woman’s mind, her own history, her place, her family, her work, her life experience. Her dreams about what might be are often on a collision course with what is. Her mind is rich with voices from both past and present giving opinion and direction to her breastfeeding efforts. These voices frame her expectations: “‘I won’t be able to feed because mum couldn’t”, “It sounds too painful” or “Of course I’ll breastfeed – it’s what babies need.”
Her partner, family and friends add their voices to the mix: “I’ll do the dishes so you can sit and feed” or “I’ll make a few calls and see if I can get you some help.” Others see the awkwardness or hear the crying and offer to go for bottles and formula, thereby overriding her efforts.
Questions about her body’s value can seriously undermine a woman’s attempts to breastfeed: “Maybe my baby won’t like me, my smell, my shape”, “I’m really uncoordinated – I can’t do this” or “I don’t want anyone this close into my body-space.” Breastfeeding requires a commitment to repeated intimacy which is very confronting to some mothers.
Advice is offered freely and frequently by people who are not necessarily in a position to know: “He can’t be hungry again” or “You’ll never make enough milk to feed such a big baby.” It can be difficult to distinguish between the facts and the furphies. Breastfeeding rarely crops up on TV or in the movies, perhaps because it is difficult to fake in the soapies, but more likely because it is one of the invisible tasks that make up women’s work.
Thankfully, babies don’t read the parenting manuals and are not swayed by the media. They are born with one mum – the best mum in the world for them. A mother’s job is to sift all the information she receives, including the messages her baby gives her, and make the best decisions she can for herself and her child. The right advice is the advice which works, and she will only know that for sure in hindsight.
A baby’s ability to breastfeed will depend on many things – his wellbeing at birth, his sucking reflex (or lack of), the size and shape of his mouth, his weight, muscle tone and coordination, his personality, his level of comfort or pain tolerance. There are countless unknowns.
At first, crying is the only way a baby has of communicating that something is wrong. When crying is persistent, the value and efficacy of breastfeeding are the first things to be questioned. Our culture holds so much doubt and misinformation about breastfeeding. The persistent marketing of breastmilk substitutes reassures mothers that other feeding options are available, without actually offering solutions to their breastfeeding difficulties. This has a cumulatively negative effect on breastfeeding confidence in the wider community. The best way to combat the gloom is to surround ourselves with women who have breastfed their children, and people who support our every effort to breastfeed.
The transition from competence in paid employment to the unknown work of early mothering can have the impact of a stun gun. When the new baby arrives, we shift to a 24 hour, on-call timetable. Our lives are packed with unfamiliar tasks linked together by phases of dazedness and enchantment. The impact tends to be a little less staggering if the birth went smoothly, the baby is well, knows how to suck and takes to breastfeeding without fuss. But when a new mum is in pain, knit together with stitches and bruising, feeling exhausted and vulnerable, she has minimal energy for newness. Add to this a baby who won’t attach to the breast correctly or who doesn’t know how to suck, and the stress of mothering rises exponentially.
What is the way through this daze-maze? Unfortunately breastfeeding solutions don’t come in standardised take-home packs. A new mum who is too tired to screen the competing voices needs a breastfeeding friendly person she trusts to do this for her - her mum, her partner, a friend, a breastfeeding specialist. Technical remedies are only the tip of the iceberg and a ten minute appointment is never enough time to address breastfeeding concerns in context. Breastfeeding is more than the giving of a miracle food. The gift is embedded in the blossoming relationship between a mother and her child and advice which ignores this relationship will always be inadequate. Support takes hours, not minutes and will be needed time and time again.
A lot of women wean their baby early because they don’t know what questions to ask, or who to go to for advice. A quick decision to wean can leave a woman with a great deal of unresolved emotion about her value as a mother, about her body’s worthiness for parenting and her ability to do all this again. It is always worth discussing the issues with two or three breastfeeding experts before making the decision to wean. Seeking resolution to breastfeeding concerns is important even after weaning. If solutions are not found, the unknowing about breastfeeding is carried over to the next baby and the next generation.
The World Health Organisation recommends that we breastfeed exclusively for six months and continue to breastfeed to two years and beyond. This is not intended to be an icon of perfection to be achieved at all costs. Rather, it is a very affirming statement about the value of breastmilk and the relationship between a mother and her child. It presents an enormous challenge to our culture which accepts breastmilk as food only for little babies, and expects a mother to vie with child care workers, health care professionals, law enforcement and educational experts in making decisions about the wellbeing of her child. The Australian Breastfeeding Association affirms that each mother needs to work out with her own baby how their breastfeeding relationship will unfold.
For some women, breastfeeding just falls into place with little effort or hassle. Asking these women about their experience can result in a quick conversation, a shrug of the shoulders and a sense that breastfeeding will take care of itself.
Others discover that breastfeeding can be a tricky business. Learning to breastfeed takes time, and it is great to know there are solutions to most breastfeeding problems. Not always quick fix solutions, but experimental shifts in style and understanding. These changes enable painful, awkward inadequacy to be transformed into rewarding, sustainable abundance.
Breastfeeding is integral to mothering, regardless of whether or not women choose to do it. Women’s bodies are physically primed during pregnancy to breastfeed the newborn. With this readying goes a wondering about the child to come, and about the role of motherhood. New mums need a safe place to unveil and address the voices which taunt them, to air their concerns about breastfeeding and mothering, to sit with the discomfort of unknowing and to feel the way forward with their new baby.
Thankfully we don’t need to go it alone. We can draw from the wisdom of women who have gone before us and who companion us on our journey into motherhood. Our challenge is first to find these women, then later, to become one of these women.
Lil Deverell is a community educator with the Australian Breastfeeding Association, and co-editor of Learning to Breastfeed: Women’s stories about boobs, babes and being a mum. She lives in Melbourne with her husband and two daughters and works as a mobility instructor with vision-impaired children.
Visit Lil's website > http://learningtobreastfeed.deverell.net
It's from: http://www.naturalparenting.com.au/articles/issue9/challengesofbreastfeeding.htm
The Challenges of Breastfeeding
by Lil Deverell
> Subscribe to Natural Parenting Magazine
> Order This Issue
Breastmilk is the best food a baby can have – a customised mix of nutrients and antibodies served fresh at every meal. Easily digested, it is available around the clock in an infinite variety of flavours. The temperature is always right, the packaging reusable.
As a food, it sounds ideal. All the research supports this, so why doesn’t everyone breastfeed their child?
Well, this perfect food does not come out of a clinically tested, homogenised environment. There is no use-by date, batch number and list of ingredients clearly stated on the label. Instead it comes from the heart of motherhood - quality assured, but with all the complications of human relationships.
It can seem to the outsider that when the cord is cut after birth, the baby becomes a separate entity - as if his mother’s role in his life is somehow optional from that time on. This attitude can lead an onlooker to make limiting assumptions about how often and how long a baby should feed for, where and when. The fact is that breastfeeding takes a colossal commitment of time and energy and self. It is an embodied activity, and through breastfeeding, the baby continues to depend on his mother to enfold, to nourish and sustain him, just as he did in the womb. Breastfeeding enables mother and baby to watch one another, to learn about each other in a symbiotic rhythm of giving and receiving.
Zooming in, breastfeeding would seem to be all about nipples and mouths. Certainly attachment is central to the mechanics of breastfeeding, but panning out gives us a much fuller picture. We see that the mouth belongs to a baby who has never done this before, who is discovering life on the outside, who is swamped by sensations previously unfelt and profound changes to his security arrangements. In utero, he was fed continuously in a warm wet embrace. Outside the womb, the lights are brighter, the sounds sharper, the temperatures more extreme and the physical contact intermittent. Breastfeeding connects him back to his life source.
The nipple belongs to a woman with a woman’s body, a woman’s mind, her own history, her place, her family, her work, her life experience. Her dreams about what might be are often on a collision course with what is. Her mind is rich with voices from both past and present giving opinion and direction to her breastfeeding efforts. These voices frame her expectations: “‘I won’t be able to feed because mum couldn’t”, “It sounds too painful” or “Of course I’ll breastfeed – it’s what babies need.”
Her partner, family and friends add their voices to the mix: “I’ll do the dishes so you can sit and feed” or “I’ll make a few calls and see if I can get you some help.” Others see the awkwardness or hear the crying and offer to go for bottles and formula, thereby overriding her efforts.
Questions about her body’s value can seriously undermine a woman’s attempts to breastfeed: “Maybe my baby won’t like me, my smell, my shape”, “I’m really uncoordinated – I can’t do this” or “I don’t want anyone this close into my body-space.” Breastfeeding requires a commitment to repeated intimacy which is very confronting to some mothers.
Advice is offered freely and frequently by people who are not necessarily in a position to know: “He can’t be hungry again” or “You’ll never make enough milk to feed such a big baby.” It can be difficult to distinguish between the facts and the furphies. Breastfeeding rarely crops up on TV or in the movies, perhaps because it is difficult to fake in the soapies, but more likely because it is one of the invisible tasks that make up women’s work.
Thankfully, babies don’t read the parenting manuals and are not swayed by the media. They are born with one mum – the best mum in the world for them. A mother’s job is to sift all the information she receives, including the messages her baby gives her, and make the best decisions she can for herself and her child. The right advice is the advice which works, and she will only know that for sure in hindsight.
A baby’s ability to breastfeed will depend on many things – his wellbeing at birth, his sucking reflex (or lack of), the size and shape of his mouth, his weight, muscle tone and coordination, his personality, his level of comfort or pain tolerance. There are countless unknowns.
At first, crying is the only way a baby has of communicating that something is wrong. When crying is persistent, the value and efficacy of breastfeeding are the first things to be questioned. Our culture holds so much doubt and misinformation about breastfeeding. The persistent marketing of breastmilk substitutes reassures mothers that other feeding options are available, without actually offering solutions to their breastfeeding difficulties. This has a cumulatively negative effect on breastfeeding confidence in the wider community. The best way to combat the gloom is to surround ourselves with women who have breastfed their children, and people who support our every effort to breastfeed.
The transition from competence in paid employment to the unknown work of early mothering can have the impact of a stun gun. When the new baby arrives, we shift to a 24 hour, on-call timetable. Our lives are packed with unfamiliar tasks linked together by phases of dazedness and enchantment. The impact tends to be a little less staggering if the birth went smoothly, the baby is well, knows how to suck and takes to breastfeeding without fuss. But when a new mum is in pain, knit together with stitches and bruising, feeling exhausted and vulnerable, she has minimal energy for newness. Add to this a baby who won’t attach to the breast correctly or who doesn’t know how to suck, and the stress of mothering rises exponentially.
What is the way through this daze-maze? Unfortunately breastfeeding solutions don’t come in standardised take-home packs. A new mum who is too tired to screen the competing voices needs a breastfeeding friendly person she trusts to do this for her - her mum, her partner, a friend, a breastfeeding specialist. Technical remedies are only the tip of the iceberg and a ten minute appointment is never enough time to address breastfeeding concerns in context. Breastfeeding is more than the giving of a miracle food. The gift is embedded in the blossoming relationship between a mother and her child and advice which ignores this relationship will always be inadequate. Support takes hours, not minutes and will be needed time and time again.
A lot of women wean their baby early because they don’t know what questions to ask, or who to go to for advice. A quick decision to wean can leave a woman with a great deal of unresolved emotion about her value as a mother, about her body’s worthiness for parenting and her ability to do all this again. It is always worth discussing the issues with two or three breastfeeding experts before making the decision to wean. Seeking resolution to breastfeeding concerns is important even after weaning. If solutions are not found, the unknowing about breastfeeding is carried over to the next baby and the next generation.
The World Health Organisation recommends that we breastfeed exclusively for six months and continue to breastfeed to two years and beyond. This is not intended to be an icon of perfection to be achieved at all costs. Rather, it is a very affirming statement about the value of breastmilk and the relationship between a mother and her child. It presents an enormous challenge to our culture which accepts breastmilk as food only for little babies, and expects a mother to vie with child care workers, health care professionals, law enforcement and educational experts in making decisions about the wellbeing of her child. The Australian Breastfeeding Association affirms that each mother needs to work out with her own baby how their breastfeeding relationship will unfold.
For some women, breastfeeding just falls into place with little effort or hassle. Asking these women about their experience can result in a quick conversation, a shrug of the shoulders and a sense that breastfeeding will take care of itself.
Others discover that breastfeeding can be a tricky business. Learning to breastfeed takes time, and it is great to know there are solutions to most breastfeeding problems. Not always quick fix solutions, but experimental shifts in style and understanding. These changes enable painful, awkward inadequacy to be transformed into rewarding, sustainable abundance.
Breastfeeding is integral to mothering, regardless of whether or not women choose to do it. Women’s bodies are physically primed during pregnancy to breastfeed the newborn. With this readying goes a wondering about the child to come, and about the role of motherhood. New mums need a safe place to unveil and address the voices which taunt them, to air their concerns about breastfeeding and mothering, to sit with the discomfort of unknowing and to feel the way forward with their new baby.
Thankfully we don’t need to go it alone. We can draw from the wisdom of women who have gone before us and who companion us on our journey into motherhood. Our challenge is first to find these women, then later, to become one of these women.
Lil Deverell is a community educator with the Australian Breastfeeding Association, and co-editor of Learning to Breastfeed: Women’s stories about boobs, babes and being a mum. She lives in Melbourne with her husband and two daughters and works as a mobility instructor with vision-impaired children.
Visit Lil's website > http://learningtobreastfeed.deverell.net