Saturday, February 19, 2011

Attack of the Ignorant Bimbos

OK, first, some disclosure: I think the Tea Party folks are off their rockers. Oh, and my contempt for Sarah Palin is reinforced every time she opens her uninformed mouth. And then, would you look at that! Sarah is being upstaged by a elected cutie just as birdbrained as Ms. Palin herself.

This morning, right after my first slurp of coffee, I read this article in the Wall Street Journal. Rep. Michele Bachmann, (R., Minn.) came out against a statement by the First Lady which encouraged mothers to breastfeed, as this practice can reduce the incident of obesity later in life.  Rep. Bachmann complained that encouragement by the government like this will surely give rise to a "nanny state".  (Mrs Obama's comments were made in the context of her Let's Move initiative.)  Ms. Palin, never one to miss an opportunity to display her shallowness, promptly chimed in with a crack about the high price of milk.  Yeah, that's Michelle Obama's doing, right there.....

Look, I'm not one of those New Millennium, back-to-what's-natural, nutty-crunchy California mothers who insist on organic foods and "breast is best!" Yes, breastfeeding has some distinct advantages. To feed your infant, just whip out a breast; you always have them with you! No mixing, no stirring, no paying for pricey formula! Breastfeeding also conveys immunities from mother to child. It's a perfect food, designed by Mother Nature specifically for a human infant. But! (and this is a big but) some women aren't able to breastfeed. Like me.

My twins were born 6 weeks early, by C-section. I was in a hospital bed, and my babies were in the NICU. The day after, I was visited by a lactation advisor, given a breast pump and some instruction, then advised to get crackin'. I followed orders and got busy with my breast pump. I had photos of my girls taped to the side rails of my bed, provided by one of the saintly maternity nurses, on the theory it would assist in the let-down reflex. Didn't help.

I managed to produce some colostrum and a very small amount of milk, all of which were given to the babies. Then, I was sent home, and my girls stayed in the NICU. I saw a lactation specialist, who gently encouraged me and even organized a group of her clients who were mothers to multiples, all of whom with having difficulties breastfeeding.

After my babies came home, I would bottle feed them, change 'em and then get them back to sleep, which took about a hour and a half.  Next I would get with the breast pump for another 45 minutes to an hour, with very little in the way of results. Which gave me about a half an hour to rest before the girls needed feeding again. All while recovering from major surgery and awash in hormones and feelings of abject failure.

After 3 weeks of this routine, my lactation specialist took me by the hand and told me that I hadn't failed, any breast milk is better than no breast milk. She also told me she was looking at a woman who was exhausted and not taking care of her own urgent need to rest and heal. This lovely lady told me formula was just fine. After all, we all were fed formula, and today's formulas were much better than those of generations past.

What a relief that was! It didn't alleviate all the guilt, but I was able to get past it and get little more sleep. Still, I would have much preferred to breastfeed my girls. I felt guilty that I was secretly relieved that, as I wasn't breastfeeding, anyone could feed a baby, any time. The pressure had been enormous.

All that said, for Rep. Bachmann and Ms. Palin to criticize the First Lady for encouraging healthy behavior, for political reasons, is ludicrous. That's not to say we should buy into the dogma of the breastfeeding nazis that only breast milk is appropriate food for an infant. But if you can breast feed, you probably should breast feed. Do your best to give your child a good start for a healthy life.

And ignore uninformed and self-serving politicians who try to convince you otherwise.

5 comments:

  1. Can you believe that to this day (Cal is 11, as you know) women still ask me if she was bottle or breastfed. When I tell them she was formula fed, I sometimes get a silent stare. Um....

    It's awesome to feel guilt for something that I was really tormented over anyway...I didn't produce enough milk, I couldn't figuring out latching...I was EXHAUSTED...a multitude of reasons led me to formula feed.

    I say, if people are going to give me grief, try going after other things, like the time I left my baby at the doctors. Yeah, that could be a good one.

    Thanks for writing this.

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  2. Jen,
    First of all Michelle Bachman is referred to in our family as the "Bat Shit crazy Congresswoman from Minnesota. No offense to people from Minnesota, my Aunt Diane is from there and I love her to pieces.

    Second, You said everything so well about your experience with breast feeding. I to had great difficulties with my first child, Shannon. There came a point when my lactation specialist took me aside and told me that quality time is all time well spent, not just breast feeding. Fortunately, I breast fed the next three kids well. I was a cow! The point is you are a present parent. So, don't let that BAT SHIT CRAZY make you upset! LOL

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  3. Elizabeth - Really? Still you're being asked about that? Huh. Weird. I ain't been asked about that in years. Hopefully, you told such intrusive and judgmental folks to go pound sand.

    Steph - "Bat Shit Crazy"! I love it! Totally gonna steal that line.....

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  4. Yep. It seems that Palin and Bachman are in some kind of competition to see who can out loonie the other one.

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  5. well, Jen, you KNOW how i feel about all this and i couldn't have written about it any better.

    just one question: where was your and Stephanie's lactation specialist when i needed to hear those exact same words? (mine was such a dear and i still love her to this day ... but she never had the guts to tell me as directly as i needed to hear it ... and i needed to hear it from HER) ... because pumping while adoringly looking at a photo of Lucie while driving on the 5 South to school in a snowstorm to finish my master's degree ... was INSANE. and clearly, so was I.

    love ya'!

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