I want to preface this post by saying I exclusively breastfed both of my daughters for 18 months. When Ren was five months old I had to have an MRI which meant I couldn’t nurse for a week. I spent the next month pumping, nursing, eating godawful stuff (barley … blech) to get my milk back.
So know that I say this with love:
Breast is not best. That is a total lie and I wish they would stop feeding it to all the exhausted, exhilarated, beat-up new mothers of the world. I’ve watched it reduce so many great moms to tears of self-recrimination and doubt. I’ve talked to friends whose first days, weeks, months of motherhood were ruined by the hours they spent torturing themselves with pumps, pills, meetings, gadgets, gizmos and endless tears.
I know women whose worst doubts about themselves were realized at the hands of callous lactation consultants so single-minded in their mission to promote breastfeeding that they totally abandoned the greater cause of nurturing babies by nurturing new mothers.
Yes, the science is irrefutable: breastfed babies have stronger immune systems, slightly higher IQ’s*, and are less prone to obesity. Even the most modern, well-developed of infant formulas can’t do what this magic stuff can do. Breastmilk evolves over the course of baby’s infancy to provide the right balance of fat, sugar, water and protein at each stage. A nursing baby doesn’t get dehydrated or constipated and is protected from a myriad of infections. All but the sickest babies will nurse through fever and stomach bugs, making Mama more powerful than Motrin and Pedialyte combined.
Breastfeeding can be a beautiful experience, continuing the bond of the womb, a special closeness between mother and child. There is nothing more tender than a pair of wide trusting eyes peering up, a hand resting on Mama’s skin, baby totally in love and totally secure.
There is no doubt breastfeeding is one of the greatest gifts that a mother can give her child.
But it isn’t the greatest. It isn’t best.
The best thing a baby can have is happy, satisfied, secure parents. A mother who feels inadequate in the face of her child starts to resent her child. A mother who feels forced, every two hours, to engage in an act she finds excruciating, or degrading or just plain distasteful is going to associate those feelings with her baby. For those women and their babies, breastfeeding is bad.
Far better a mother who has surrendered — to her own humanity, to the love of her child, to the realities of her own life. Far better the mother who prepares a bottle and feels good about it than the mother who struggles for weeks or months to do something that brings her misery.
It’s not that I don’t think mothers should try. I think every mother should be told how good it can be and encouraged to give it her best shot — for just one day, one week, one month, whatever she can stand to do.
And then she should be left the hell alone to sort out how best to nurture herself and her child, as will be her job for the next 18 years.
I am grateful to have had the happy luck of being a mother for whom breastfeeding was successful. I worked hard at it, it’s true, but I also happened to draw the cards that made it work. (For the record, the blissful Natural Birth cards did not make their way anywhere near my hand.) I am convinced that some women don’t make enough milk no matter what they do. Even if that’s not true, it’s not the point. There is a limit to what any new mother should be expected to stand. When it’s too much, it’s too much, and only the new mother can know when that is.
The bottom line is that millions of formula-fed babies go on to be perfectly lovely Americans who can’t be distinguished from their breastfed counterparts in any significant way. Certainly, no way significant enough to justify giving over those precious first weeks and months to misery.
So if you are considering breastfeeding and have stumbled across this page in search of perspectives, here’s mine: the best thing you can do for your baby is provide a loving, nurturing home. Please give breastfeeding your best shot, because it has great benefits if you can make it work. But don’t let it get in the way of your top priority, which is a happy mom and baby.
Breast is good, but it’s not best.
*Seriously, honestly … do you think anyone actually misses a point or two of IQ?
