Breastfeeding Today — Challenging Fallacy with Fact

Breastfeeding — this most natural act in the world — wasn’t always surrounded by myth and fallacy. While its benefits are undeniable, the fact remains that the act of breastfeeding is under constant scrutiny politically and culturally. What is the truth that lies hidden behind the veil of so many agendas?

The milk, the touch, the suckling, the eye contact and cradling — breastfeeding is more than the sum of its parts. It is a miraculous symbiotic system geared to ensure the emotional, intellectual and spiritual wellbeing of a species. To wean or not to wean? How often? Breast or bottle? How long? Understanding the facts behind our choices is essential.

Breastmilk or formula?

The decision to breastfeed or bottlefeed is not simply a matter of personal preference. The two are not equally good. Mother’s milk alone promotes optimal health.

Every kind of milk has what is called biological specificity. This means every species of mammal formulates a milk that is specifically adapted for the needs and capabilities of that species. For example, the blue whale gives birth to enormous newborns with tremendous caloric needs. Because the newborn whale cannot hold its breath for long while suckling underwater, the mother has evolved a rich milk (over 50% fat) and a very powerful letdown reflex that literally pumps milk into the baby’s mouth in enormous squirts. Similarly, human milk is best suited to the nutritional needs of human babies.

Human milk is rich in the nutrients needed for brain development. There are approximately 400 nutrients in breast milk that are not present in artificial formulas. And miraculously, or naturally (take your choice), the amount of fats and other nutrients in mother’s milk changes as baby’s needs change. One of the prime factors in breast milk that cannot be duplicated in formulas is the presence of a large number of maternal antibodies that help to fight infections in the infant. Furthermore, breastfed infants have lower incidences of allergies, and breastfeeding may help prevent obesity (one-quarter to one-third of all US adults are obese and very few were breastfed).

Nature has formulated human milk to be very low in fat, so that the infant often needs to suckle several times an hour. This brings the infant into mother’s field of vision, where the regular eye contact deepens the bond between the two. While baby feels nurtured and secure, snuggled into the warmth of mother’s breast, the breastfeeding mother produces prolactin, oxytocin, and other hormones that further promote a physiologic bonding between the two.

Mutual benefits

It is impossible to clearly separate a mother and baby; they are a symbiotic pair, two separate organisms living together as one in a mutually beneficial relationship. Even in terms of basic physiology it is not easy to say when a mother and baby are truly separate. Breastfeeding mothers and their babies, for example, have been found to have the same REM patterns, while mothers and babies who are formula feeding do not. Babies, like all young mammals, do best with milk from their own species. Artificial formulas cannot duplicate nature’s formula. Mother’s milk protects the infant against illness for as long as nursing continues.

Mothers benefit physically and emotionally from breastfeeding in a multitude of ways. A baby’s breastfeeding contracts the mother’s womb, and helps her entire body return to its prebirth state. Breastfeeding also causes a woman’s body to produce hormones that calm her. Mothers experience lower breast cancer rates (rates drop proportionately with the length of time the mother breastfeeds), and less osteoporosis in later life. Breastfeeding generally lengthens the time before menstrual periods recommence.

More than milk

There are actually two components to breastfeeding: the milk itself, and what happens in the process of an infant suckling at its mother’s breast. While we may like to believe otherwise, bottlefeeding mothers can rarely capture a similarly warm feeding relationship. While I do not want to add to any guilt or distress that mothers who do not breastfeed may feel, I do believe it is important that we do not pretend that it is the same. Bottlefeeding doesn’t require much — or any — human contact. While initial intentions may be good, convenience-in-the-moment usually wins out; the bottlefed baby generally receives less stroking, caressing, and rocking than the breastfed baby. He is talked to less often and spends more time in the crib. In all likelihood, the baby, when able to hold his own bottle, will be responsible for feeding himself.

The affectional bonding that occurs from the touch and eye contact during breastfeeding translates into increased emotional and psychological wellbeing for the child in his later years. Interfering with this close, intimate, skin-to-skin contact prevents a vital exchange of sensory experiences, nutrients and information required for normal and healthy brain development.

A baby is actively involved in breastfeeding; the amount of suckling determines the amount of milk produced in mother’s breast for the next feeding. Baby’s jaw and mouth muscles are fully involved and active in suckling ensuring the proper development of the jaw and airway. Artificial nipples and pacifiers actually achieve the opposite, resulting in increased incidence of ear infections. And there is a strong association between exclusive bottlefeeding and malocclusion.

Cultural influences on breastfeeding

Expectant moms often hear of women who tried to nurse but failed: the milk dried up, wasn’t rich enough, baby decided she wanted a bottle … or maybe they believed that because nursing is natural, it must come easily and doubt their decision to breastfeed if challenges arise. Today, half those who start out nursing their babies give up within the first six weeks. The reason is rarely an inability to produce enough milk. Typically it is because the mother knows little about breastfeeding, has little or no guidance, and experienced pain and frustration in her early efforts. This simply need not be so. Mothers can breastfeed their baby even in the intensive care unit, although they may need to express their milk if the baby is being tube-fed.

Each generation of babies learns how to breastfeed by suckling at their mothers’ breasts, by following what she shows them to do. Mothers learn how to breastfeed successfully by having been breastfed, by seeing it all around them as part of their culture and by having the baby itself as her body’s teacher. The main reason why so many women today are not breastfeeding is that we are preceded by nearly three generations where bottlefeeding was the norm. People have come to believe that bottle is as good as breast (a belief formula companies spend millions of dollars a year promoting).

Separating mothers and babies in the first hours and days after birth, neglecting to nurture them with the care, and support needed, plus running feedings by the clock, is destroying the likelihood of breastfeeding for countless numbers. Another major factor is the drugs many babies have in their systems from their mother’s labour. These drugs inhibit their sensory motor skills, affecting their ability to suckle.

Women who give birth with the support of a midwife rarely encounter problems with breastfeeding. Midwives respect breastfeeding as an intrinsic part of the birthing experience, and understand the need for privacy both in labour and in establishing good breastfeeding.

Convenience

Which is more convenient, breast or bottle? Whereas formula-feeding mothers feel they are less ‘tied down,’ most nursing mothers are grateful they don’t have to shop for formula and prepare bottles. Can climbing out of bed in the middle of the night to fix a bottle be more convenient than drawing the baby to the breast and dozing off together? Normally, women find breastfeeding comfortable and pleasurable. With experience, nursing in the presence of others can be discreet and comfortable. Outings don’t require bottles and nipples. When baby must be left behind, mother can leave milk for him.

While encouraging mothers to delay the return to work as long as possible, the reality is that many mothers will return to work sooner rather than later, and this is a common reason women decide against breastfeeding — or wean prematurely.

Yet studies show that breastfeeding can be one of the best things a working mother can do for herself and her baby. Breastfeeding makes daily separation from baby less painful: nursing is a loving reunion. And working mothers who nurse are better employees: breastfed babies are sick less often.

What is full-term breastfeeding?

The practice of nursing beyond 12 months of age is known as ‘full-term’ breastfeeding. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends one year ‘and beyond’; the World Health Organisation recommends two or more years, and the best anthropologic evidence indicates that humans were designed for weaning anywhere from age four to seven. Sadly, the present norm of breastfeeding is only up to six months.

When we recognise that breastfeeding is more than just giving milk, but also an entire optimal neuro-developmental system that ensures emotional and physical wellbeing, then breastfeeding for as long as mutually desired by mother and child is seen as a wise practice.

Many people use the term ‘extended breastfeeding’ to describe full term nursing, but I believe this term to be misleading. It is an example of how semantics are used to make a certain practice sound extreme, when in truth it is the current norm that is the aberration. It is more accurate to refer to the current norm as ‘abbreviated’ breastfeeding and the two plus years ‘full term’ breastfeeding!

What is normal?

From its very beginnings, the human species has nurtured its infants by breastfeeding. It was not until 1800 that popular English writings on childcare recommended weaning as young as 12 months. In ancient times and in many cultures around the world today, breastfeeding until the age of three, four, even five years, is considered normal. And in these cultures the young are more content, independent, and cooperative than we today consider ‘normal’. Weaning by one year is an unusual thing. Yet in Western society breastfeeding is usually considered in terms of weeks or months — despite conclusive evidence that while a baby can be healthy on formula, nursing has medical and psychological advantages for the baby and the mother.

The myth that breastfeeding children have difficulty becoming independent is not true. Babies not weaned before their time grow to be more independent, separate more easily from their mothers, move into new relationships with more stability, and require less discipline. Nursing offers comfort and a home base for healing hurts. When able to be as close to us as they need to be (and this includes nursing) children usually behave better and can give more attention to growing and learning. Pushing away does not teach independence, but rather fear and clinging.

While many children at the older ages are weaned and happy about it, others are only nursing to fall asleep or upon awakening. Some may use it to get over emotional rough spots during the day. 

Coping with criticism

The most difficult problems mothers face in nursing beyond infancy results from criticism from others. As few one-year-olds understand explanations and delays, it’s easier, more peaceful, and kinder to simply nurse whenever the child needs, and deal as pleasantly as possible with questions or criticisms as they arise. As Bumgarner asserts, ‘Too bad we must cope with something so unnatural as widespread belief we should not nurse our babies, and that our one-year-olds are not babies anyway.’

A long and happy beginning at the breast is invaluable not only for our child’s growth and wellbeing, but also for our wellbeing as mothers. It is therefore our collective responsibility to challenge fallacy with fact, and spread the message that breastfeeding is so vital to our collective wellbeing that it should be supported and nurtured.

 

References:

Norma Jean Bumgarner, Mothering Your Nursing Toddler, La Leche League International

Suzanne Arms, The Immaculate Deception II, Celestial Arts

Kathleen Huggins, The Nursing Mother’s Companion, Harvard Common Press

Gale Pryor, Nursing Mother, Working Mother, Harvard Common Press

Published in byronchild/Kindred, issue 15, September 05

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