I'm getting tired of being different, you know?

[jenn_unplugged]

It seems like there is some sort of organized campaign against breastfeeding these days. There are always the asshats who think it's gross and perverted to feed your baby the way God/nature intended, but in this case, the effort seems to have been spearheaded by women who breastfed their babies and somehow found it a miserable experience.

Okay, I get that BFing isn't for everyone, I really do. But why belittle those of us who not only BF, but who went out of our way to make it work by pumping to start or maintain our supplies? Why mock us for that commitment? Clearly Judith Warner had major issues with her own role as a BFing and pumping mom. Fine, whatever.

But if it weren't for the pump, I would never have been able to nurse Carter. At all. Ever. Breastmilk is more than just "best" for preemies; it saves their lives. In the city I live in, if the mother of a preemie doesn't pump, the doctors write prescriptions to get donated breastmilk for the babies. Since they started doing this, NO preemie here has died of intestinal infection -- and there are 5 NICUs in the area.

I was PROUD to pump for my baby, because it was the ONE thing I could do for him while he was hooked up to machines and living in a heated plastic box. It helped me heal from the devastation that is an unexpected premature birth. It helped me cope with almost 8 weeks of visiting my baby in the hospital before he could finally come home. It made me feel like a real mother, something I desperately needed.

So pumping was and is really, really important to me. Clearly Judith Warner has no idea what it's like to walk in my shoes. She makes good points about society needing to support working BFing moms more, but the idea that a breast pump is some sort of torture device that should be relegated to a horror museum (yes, she basically says that) demonstrates not only ignorance of situations like mine, but also the opposite of the point she thinks she is making.

But you know, things like this just highlight to me yet again how abnormal my parenting journey has been. That is often a source of pride for me, but sometimes it just makes me wonder how people can take their fertility, their health, and their ability to bring a baby into the world for granted like that. If you have no trouble getting pregnant, have a healthy, full-term pregnancy, and then go on to nurse your baby for years with no major difficulties, good for you. But remember that some of us didn't get to do it that way, and be grateful.

Comments

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Hello! Visiting from Mockingbird's journal.

I saw her article from a very different perspective. While she does say she'd be happy to see pumps disappear entirely, I read that as hyperbole. What she seemed to really be arguing against was the way feeding breastmilk has been prioritized above having mothers spend time with their babies. The problem is not the breastfeeding - it's with the way mothers are guilted into pumping at the office, after they go back to work.

When I became a parent, I breastfed. I supplemented a bit when there were problems that took a while to solve, but I breastfed. It was a huge shock to me when I started hanging out in Mommy forums and realized that there were women in North America who had to go back to work when their babies were only a few weeks old. You see, I live in Canada, where I could access Unemployment Insurance for a maternity leave that lasted until my babies were ten months old. So the idea of a pump in a workplace was totally foreign to me. I've never, ever seen a woman pump at work in Canada. Not once. They don't need to, because they're home with their babies during those first crucial months.

I think getting pumps out of the office/workplace would be a fabulous thing, if it were done by making sure that every woman who wanted to give breastmilk to her baby was at home for those first six months to a year. And on that level, I think this article was right on track: it's absurd to think that pumping at the office is a reasonable substitute for being home and nursing your baby. It's not. It's not even close.

Pumping in situations where baby is having trouble eating for whatever reason is not in the same category. I can see how her imagery would be offensive to someone in your position, but she's not really talking about someone in your position. She's talking about the mothers who go back to work at eight weeks and leave their perfectly-healthy babies with a sitter, and have to take an hour and a half of extra breaks to pump food for their babies during the day.

Pumping should be an interim measure until breastfeeding can be well-established or baby's health stabilized enough to allow for normal breastfeeding, or a stop-gap measure so Mom can get out of the house for a few hours without baby. It should not be the way caregivers get milk for healthy infants of working mothers - because healthy infants of working mothers deserve to have their mothers at home with them.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I agree that the hook on which she chose to hang her good observations was perhaps not well-chosen, and that pumping does have its place in the world. I just didn't see the article as an attack on the attempt to provide breastmilk - only on the practice of forcing moms to provide it in a bottle because they are required by economic necessity to be elsewhere.