On the boob

I was not breastfed as a baby. Ditto for my older brother and younger sister. We were all born in the early 1970s, the era of the earth mother. I'd have expected breastfeeding rates in the U.S to be quite high then, along with the affinity for bra burning and macramé.

In fact, breastfeeding hit an all-time low in the U.S. in 1971, at just 25% for babies at birth. In contrast, the highest breastfeeding rate to date, since records were kept, is now, with an estimated 74% of newborns breastfed at birth.

This made me wonder - what happened in the 1960s and 1970s that led to such a low rate of breastfeeding? Why didn't my mom, a hippie herself, breastfeed her children?

She tried with my brother. She had little to no support. The doctors and nurses in her hospital were not actively in favor of it. Formula companies touted the benefits of formula over breastmilk in ads on TV, and no authoritative voice stepped in to correct the record. So when she encountered latch problems and then a bout of thrush, as so many new breastfeeding moms do, she just gave up. And she never tried it to pick it up again with her next two children.

I think that lack of support for my mom when her breastfeeding troubles began was key. Despite how natural and instinctual breastfeeding seems from the outside, the reality is that it is damned hard. To do it successfully, the mom and her partner need to be really committed to it, as do her doctors and nurses. And some sort of lactation support needs to be available to help when problems arise, like painful latching, infections like thrush or mastitis, or just general frustration with being "tied down."

I am now eleven weeks into exclusively breastfeeding Isaac. In the beginning, I was breastfeeding him about 50 hours per week. It was exhausting, and it hurt. But I enjoyed the quiet time we had alone together, and the closeness we experienced with each feeding. The most difficult period came about two weeks into it, when we both developed a mild case of thrush, which took a few weeks and a lot of work to get rid of. We've also worked through Isaac's outright refusal to take a bottle of pumped breastmilk, painful nipple vasospasm, and my baby's shortened frenulum contributing to a shallow latch.

But I've had an incredible support system. I live in King County, Washington, which has the highest rate of breastfeeding of any county in the country. We took a class on breastfeeding. All of my nurses in the hospital were lactation consultants. My neighborhood in Seattle has its own La Leche League chapter. And of course, these days, we all have Kellymom.com.

It's been really neat to share my experiences breastfeeding Isaac with my mom. She thinks it is wonderful that I am sticking with it. It's weird though... I don't at all feel like I was cheated by not being breastfed (though I do wonder if my infant bout with bronchitis could have been prevented had I been.) But I think my mother was cheated out of the experience of breastfeeding her children, and giving us, and herself, the benefits that exclusive breastfeeding provide. If only she'd have had a little support to get her over those initial, common breastfeeding humps...