Apr 30 2009
Why Women Fail to Breastfeed
Humans as a species have been breastfeeding for nearly half a million years. Today it is not uncommon to hear women MANY women feeling that they couldn’t physically produce enough milk to sustain their infants and therefore opted for formula to meet their infants needs. Unfortunetly that is not the common case. Nearly all women – around 99% – can breastfeed successfully and make enough milk for their babies to not simply grow, but to thrive. Mismangement, lack of support & accurate information of these doubts and issues we come across in our breastfeeding relationships all too often results in the end of them.
With encouragement, support and help, almost all women are willing to initiate breastfeeding, but the drop-off rates are alarming: 90% of women who give up in the first 6 weeks say that they would like to have continued. And it seems highly likely that long-term exclusive breastfeeding rates can be improved if consistent support were available, and if approval within the family and the wider community for breastfeeding, both at home and in public, were more obvious and widespread.
Clearly, this social support isn’t there, and the bigger picture of breastfeeding vs bottlefeeding suggests that there is, in addition, a confluence of complex factors – medical, socioeconomic, cultural and political – that regularly undermine women’s confidence, while reinforcing the notion that feeding their children artificially is about lifestyle rather than health, and that the modern woman’s body is simply not up to the task of producing enough milk for its offspring. Which is simply a blatant untruth.
It has only been in the last 60 years or so that we have begun to so non chalantly without hesitation given our babies the HIGHLY processed convenience food we call formula. Health consequences include twice the risk of death in the first 6 weeks of life, 5 times the risk of gastroeteritis, twice the risk of developing eczema and diabetes and up to 8 times the risk of developing lymphatic cancer.
Infant formulas were never intended to be consumed on the widespread basis that they are today. They were conceived in the late 1800s as a means of providing necessary sustenance for foundlings and orphans who would otherwise have starved. In this narrow context – where no other food was available – formula was a lifesaver.
For years, it was believed that the risks of illness and death from bottlefeeding were largely confined to children in developing countries, where the clean water necessary to make up formula is sometimes scarceand where poverty-stricken mothers may feel obliged to dilute formula to make it stretch further, thus risking waterborne illnesses such as diarrhoea and cholera as well as malnutrition in their babies. But newer data from the West clearly show that babies in otherwise affluent societies are also falling ill and dying due to an early diet of infant convenience food. Because it is not nutritionally complete, because it does not contain the immune-boosting properties of breastmilk and because it is being consumed by growing babies with vast, ever-changing nutritional needs – and not meeting those needs – the health effects of sucking down formula day after day early in life can be devastating in both the short and long term.
Before bottles became the norm, breastfeeding was an activity of daily living based on mimicry, and learning within the family and community. Women became their own experts through the trial and error of the experience itself. But today, what should come more or less naturally has become extraordinarily complicated – the focus of global marketing strategies and politics, lawmaking, lobbying support groups, activists and the interference of a wellintentioned, but occasionally ineffective, cult of experts.
I think we are too focused on “taking sides” and quick to create “cliques” where we pit breastfeeding mothers against formula feeding mothers, arguing over accusing each other about bad parenting because babies are formula fed and mothers who become racked with guilt when they feel they have no other options.
What we need to do is throw that to the side and once again form a sisterhood, bond together and provide help, support, assistance when it come to solving our breastfeeding issues. The common reasons as to why women quit & give up can more often than not be solved if identified and treated early avoiding the frustration of a prolonged and worsening issue.
Its a sad fact that our culture isn’t breastfeeding friendly enough. Until we can put aside the conflict and risk of making mothers feel guilty we cannot fix the true issues at hand that end up making women feel resentful and resistant towards attempting to breastfeed again.
Absolutely!!!