Boob politics.... Mia Freedman article. A must-read.
This is one of the best articles I've read in a long time.
Love or hate Mia Freedman, this is a must read.
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THERE are two big breast fights going on at the moment and I'm nestled snugly between them. In the cleavage.
Yes, even as you read this, people are waging war over boobs. The most public battlefront is on Facebook, where discreet images of breastfeeding have been deemed too offensive to remain on the world's biggest social networking site. Wait, let me check the calendar - nobody told me a leap year means we leaped back to 1953.
Facebook, your ban is bollocks. Look, I know Mark Zuckerberg is really young and everything but it seems he doesn't yet know the difference between "breastfeeding" and "topless".
Because unlike, say, flashing your boobs on a hen's night, the only bit of breast visible at feeding is a modest glimpse of skin. It's barely even breast. More like chest. And it's far less than you'd see on display in the average food court. Unless your norks are enormous or your baby teeny tiny, their head obscures most of the action. So come on, Facebook. Pull yourself together and lift your ban. Honestly!
When it comes to bosoms, you couldn't get two organisations more philosophically opposed than Facebook and the Breast Feeding Association. They don't like each other one bit. Do you know what else the Breast Feeding Association doesn't like? Formula.
I remembered this last week during a visit with a friend's new baby when I was drafted into another breast battle, this one far stealthier. Before I explain, you should know this: I've breastfed three babies. Two successfully and one disastrously. I say this to establish my credentials as someone who has both loved and hated breastfeeding, who has felt like a legend and a failure, who has used formula at times and who is well versed in the complex politics of The Boob As Food Source.
My friend's baby was four weeks premature, had lost some weight and was a little jaundiced. Nothing serious but still anxiety-inducing for a vulnerable new mother mainlining hormones and sleep deprivation. Before I arrived, the paediatrition had instructed my friend to give her son a top-up with formula "even if it's just for 24 hours until your milk comes in". She cried.
Tears are a typical new-mother response to most things ("Tea? Coffee? Why are you crying?") but especially to the idea of formula. We feel like we've failed. Guilty. We fear our child will end up living in a cardboard box with no shoes and a pet rat and it will be OUR FAULT BECAUSE WE FED HIM SOME FORMULA!
Groups like the Breast Feeding Association have done a bang-up job at publicising the benefits of breastfeeding, and I'm not being sarcastic. Is there a woman in the Western world who doesn't know breast is best? Message received and clearly understood.
But, in some cases, the pendulum has swung too far, from positive encouragement to negative pressure and borderline bullying.
It happens. It happened to my friend. When I arrived she was quietly seething, having requested formula from a midwife. The woman's expression suggested my friend had asked for a gram of coke and a naked male Twilight star to snort it off. Ah, a Lactivist. These are the lactation "activists" who believe so fervently in breastfeeding that formula is their f-word.
Incensed that my friend had been made to feel so bad about following her doctor's advice, I went to the nurses' station to ask myself. "Hey! Um, would it be possible to have some formula for my friend in room 48? She has to top up her baby after his BREASTfeed." They blinked.
"Doctor's orders," I added sweetly. Finally, a kindly midwife nodded and quickly ushered me into a locked room where she checked my friend's chart and frowned. "Can she wait a few minutes because I need to get two midwives to sign out any formula and the shift is just changing.," she said.
Two midwives? Signatures?
When I collect my son from pre-school, only one signature is required. No medical qualifications necessary.
And he's an actual person, not a small jar of liquid.
When the midwife finally brought the formula - maybe 100ml - to my friend's room, I probed her a bit further about the signing out. Were we feeding a baby or negotiating a hostage situation?
She winced sheepishly and explained that the hospital was in the process of applying for accreditation from the Breast Feeding Association.
And what did this mean, I asked. Well, formula was never displayed anywhere - it was hidden - and so were bottles. NO VISIBLE BOTTLES. She stumbled over the word "bottles" and looked fearful it had slipped from her mouth. Were the lactation SAS going to bust in and haul her away for re-education?
To be fair, this midwife wasn't a hardcore Lactivist (thankfully, most aren't). While she was at pains to point out breastfeeding should be promoted as the first and best choice, she also acknowledged sometimes it just wasn't possible for mothers to breastfeed or do it exclusively.
True, that.
So the moral of the story this week is simple: Let's chill out about breasts. They're not dangerous weapons that must be hidden from vulnerable onlookers, half of whom have a pair of their own. And they're not always a fountain of nutritious love for a baby because sometimes the breasts - or the baby - have other ideas. And Facebook? Stop being a boob.
