The Natural Way. Or is it?
Nov 27 '00
Recently my wife and I had our first baby. It was a boy. She had decided long ago that she would breastfeed and I wholeheartedly supported her. However we had no idea that this "natural" way of feeding our baby, would be a learning experience. This tale is one anecdote among many that neither sides with or against breastfeeding, but points to some of the assumptions that make this debate even more heated.
My wife , a type II diabetic had to give birth caesarean and was unable to hold our new baby for several hours after the surgery. The baby had to be observed for several days on an ongoing basis and we had to struggle to see him. Despite the fact that I asked continually to have the baby come in and breastfeed, the nurses bottle fed him. Because we were new and tired we gave into the bottle feeding, hoping to start the breastfeeding at home. Along with this the caesarean surgery made it painful to breastfeed. The nurses each had their own advice, much which contradicted each other. With all these things our son Andrew refused to latch.
By the second day my wife began expressing the milk using a breast pump and we fed the boy using a finger tube. This went on for several weeks, with limited success. Finally after seven weeks we switched from the tube to bottles in hopes that he would rather take to the breast as opposed to the bottle, which would be new to him, however, at the breast he still remained angry and would not take it. Through this whole time my wife had a public health nurse in and she went to see a specialist in order to solve the problem. Despite all these efforts she was unsuccessful at breastfeeding.
As we are entering into the third month we have finally decided to give up on breastfeeding and expressing breastmilk. (My wife has had to work twice as hard as someone who has breastfed.) We have been able to give him breastmilk for three months. We do not regret what we did anything we did. Both my wife and I believe breastmilk and breastfeeding is the preferred way. We were glad (now we can say that) that we could give our son the unique benefits of breastmilk. But despite these efforts my wife feels a guilt or an inferiority about not being able to breastfeed. Have we given less to our child than someone who breastfed? Many would think so.
This is a story that is not that uncommon. Actually, when we asked the specialist, he said only about 1% of women have no difficulty breastfeeding. Those problems may include poor latching, infections, inverted nipples and so on. Why is it that such a natural way is so difficult? I think there are two answers to this question. Firstly, socially North Americans have lost a generation of breastfeeding experience. There was a time ( 60's and 70's) that breastfeeding was not as common. Today, mothers of new mothers may not be able to help or support breastfeeding, because of their unfamiliarity with it.
Secondly and more important is the fact that because it is seen as natural, people (medical professionals, parents, the public) forget that there is considerable learning involved, both for baby and mother. Although breastfeeding is promoted and there are many clinics and doctors that help support new mothers when they have problems, there is little promotion of the difficulties and learning that must go on for breastfeeding to be successful. The nurse at our birthing class told us that everyone can breastfeed and those that failed to breastfeed simply have a bad latch.
In the last few months we have realized that it is not how you feed you baby, although there are obvious benefits in breastfeeding. The real key to a healthy child is how you talk to your baby, comfort your baby, touch your baby, love your baby. The struggle to give our baby the best has made us more aware of our amazing love for our son and that one "failure" will not be the end of that.
To finish: I am a school teacher and work with nine and ten year olds every day. Despite trying, I cannot tell if those children were breastfed or not. All I see are children, who are reflections of their parents love and support.
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Epinions.com ID:
billchamp
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Member: Bill Champ
Location: Toronto, Ont
Reviews written: 19
Trusted by: 9 members
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