Breastfeeding is one of the most polarising chapters to be found in the motherhood booklet. The subject could cause wars. Blood could be shed. And the enemy with bayonets in their hands poking you to death if you don’t agree, adhere or do as they do? Other women.
I am going to be writing a series of posts around SHAME. I am a mother of 3 boys aged 12, 10 and 7. I am nearly 14 years qualified (if we include gestation) as a mother. Back in those early first months of mothering, I wouldn’t have dared air my view. Did I even have a view? All I had was love for my son, a desperate wish to nourish him as he needed and a thirst to be accepted by others, to be told I was doing a good job.
What is so harsh about breastfeeding in the journey of parenting is that it comes at you FIRST. Before any other job as a mother, before you can even stop for breath to comprehend the new world you lie within, breastfeeding is upon you. Yes, you know about it, yes, you read about it, but you don’t have any concept of it until you first try to latch your new-born onto your breast. And in juxtaposition with that very first latch attempt, come the OPINIONS. And the JUDGMENT. FROM WOMEN.
I had a female friend (not a mother so no experience) pontificate to me about breastfeeding my unborn first child at one dinner party. She got very irate as I just sat there not knowing what to say. Afterwards, I just felt so overwhelmed and scared of my future baby. I had family members spouting their breastfeeding success stories at me. I was handed a competition on a plate by other women before I’d even given birth. And so, I went into motherhood deciding not to breastfeed, because people had freaked me out before I’d even laid eyes on my child. How sad is that?
When I did hold my first baby Noah, and successfully got him to latch, I was lost for words. Everything I had been told was wrong. Because no one else knows your storyline. Your storyline is yours alone. The midwives were amazingly supportive, teaching me about different feeding positions, about colostrum, but also, telling me how formula was GOOD. I remember one night being in tears with exhaustion after vomiting and fainting post caesarean. I tried to feed, and my baby was fractious, because he was picking up on me no doubt. The midwife swooped in and told me to lie down and that she’d prepare me a bottle of formula. She said: “What is good for mother is good for baby.” I listened, fed my baby a bottle and continued breastfeeding the following feed. That midwife’s words were what kept me sane in the ensuing months.
I breastfed my first baby for 4 months with one bottle of formula during the night. I breastfed my 2nd baby for 3 months with one formula feed. I fed my 3rd baby for only two weeks because I had a breast abscess. He would feed and just end up vomiting up puss and blood. It was so distressing. The health visitor told me to feed through, even though I was constantly in tears and just so at a loss with what do. But still she seemed adamant I fed through. When she left, my husband turned to me and said:
“Fuck that? This is our 3rd. Do what will make you and him happy. He is our treat, potentially our last. You are meant to be joyful, not made to feel like criminal.” And he was SO right – I was made to feel criminal for not carrying on feeding.
I had friends who were very aggressive with me about how breastfeeding was best. I would sit there listening thinking:
“I never said it wasn’t just because I couldn’t do it for as long as you?”
I had one family member sit down beside me whilst I was breastfeeding my baby with a muslin covering him for privacy. This individual lifted up the muslin, exposed my entire breast to all the people in the room and said:
“Can he breathe under there?” It took all my might not to fight back mortified tears. Now I might say:
“What the actual F are you doing?!”
But hindsight is a beautiful thing…
There were also the passive aggressive put downs of my choices once I had stopped breastfeeding. I would arrive on park playdates or to people’s houses with my bag of sterilised bottles, formula measured out and would be met with comments like:
“God, I couldn’t be doing with all that faff? I’m way too lazy to bother with all that. Plus! The boob is free!”
What they were really saying was this: ”
“You’re so neurotic? You’re so manic? I am so accomplished to be able to just feed my baby. I’m succeeding. Yu are failing.”
And if you read this and feel perhaps, I am being oversensitive, then tell me this? Why didn’t these women, my supposed allies, just say:
“God look at you, well done, you are coping and doing the best you can for YOU.” The truth – women seemed to be so competitive about how they fed their babies, they didn’t care who they burnt in the process. And me being unwilling to call them out, let it happen, time and time again.
An easy option is to say it was jealousy that caused any mean comment. But I find that a weak argument. Not every bitchy remark or action is down to jealousy. I believe when it comes to women in packs all striving to project that they are winning as mothers, we are looking more at a Lord of The Flies vibe. With that first baby comes too walls of your own castle. Turrets and drawbridges burst from the soil at your feet. And then you are expected to park your castle and precious treasure beside rows and rows of other castles containing mothers and babies. And you communicate and drink coffee and share experience and woes. Maybe some castle complexes can be kind. But mine was more like a Brexit negotiation than like a scene from Anne of Green Gables full of kindred spirits. In those early days, I felt speared and judged with every gnashing false smile I received from other mothers.
The truth is, whilst I ended up being able to breastfeed, and I enjoyed the connecting bond of looking down at my babies as they fed and grappled with my enormous breast (they were a double G when I was postpartum, I could fit my head in one cup!), I didn’t ever see it as my defining maternal moment. Yes, I loved looking at them feeding, but I loved looking at them feeding from a bottle too. I didn’t love feeling pregnant still 4 months post-partum. I didn’t enjoy attaching myself to a medela breast pump in the few precious moments I did have whilst my babies slept to pump more milk. I didn’t enjoy feeling so milky, of retaining body fat, of just generally feeling totally owned still by birth. I felt guilty, ashamed, tired, confused, overwhelmed by all the voices in my head. My mother hadn’t ever breastfed me and I was ok? But yet, the world told me it wasn’t ok.
Somehow though, I stopped when I stopped. And within a week each time, I felt more even mentally, lighter physically and just so much more mobile. I was never comfortable “whipping my boob out” in public. I had enormous breasts and I just didn’t ever adjust to it. And before the breastfeeding generals start shouting that I felt uncomfortable because “the patriarchy made me feel that way” I will say that is BULLSHIT. I felt uncomfortable because I felt uncomfortable. Why is it that people felt they could tell me what I thought during those days? I was a happier, freer more magnificent mother when I stopped breastfeeding. And all three of my boys thrived. So far, none of them have 3 heads or missing genitals or are falling behind in school. So far, I don’t see any glaring defects due to not breastfeeding past 4 months. But even as I write that, I feel slightly anxious. Do you know, up until a few years ago, I used to lie about the length of time I breastfed, because it was easier than getting into a debate.
People who feel passionately about breastfeeding are SO entitled to do so. It is a wonderful thing and yes there are so many health benefits. But this is 2021. Formula is also a good option. And we know so much about maternal mental health now. Pressure and irate non-negotiable opinions can ravage some vulnerable mothers who are tired and totally overwhelmed. And groups of new mothers all discussing their babies sleep, feeding and general demeanour is often more unhelpful than helpful. I remember reading about the red tent in India whilst pregnant with my first, about how in Indian villages a woman is moved into a red tent a month before she gives birth. She is massaged, cooked for, fed by other women in the village and stays in the tent for the first 3 months post partum. Men are not allowed to interfere. All a new mother has to do is feed her baby and sleep. In modern Wester culture, women are often alone immediately after birth. They can live far from family and be expected to run the entire home life as well as cope with new motherhood. No wonder many find it hard. And this is another reason why if breastfeeding is too much, there is no shame in it.
I wanted to write this as a piece of armour for any new mothers reading this. Or even any mothers with their third, fourth or even fifth child. Every baby is different. I hate it when mothers of more than one child are written off as “she’s a dab hand, she’s a pro.” Why? Are we not allowed to struggle third time? We fucking are! Anyone stressing or agonising over any aspect of parenting a baby and their feeding must never feel pressured. I once visited a friend with her first baby. I had had all 3 of mine. She was struggling. And, like me, women were weighing in with fists of opinion. I took a deep breath and gave my own, tentatively:
“You know you don’t have to breastfeed, don’t you?” And I swear, she looked as if I’d given her oxygen after a lifetime of not being able to breathe. It makes me so angry still to think she was ever made to feel her choice was not her own or her view was invalid.
How to finish…to let anyone reading know, having read a lot of books and undergone therapy myself, i now know those with vicious opinions are the ones who have an issue. You are aggravating some deep-rooted need in them to validate their own life. Perhaps a woman who succeeds in breastfeeding must shit on you because this is the first time, she’s felt she’s doing better than you? Perhaps your relationship seems more supportive than hers, so she feels the urge to lash out in some way to tarnish? Perhaps she senses you love your child easier than she loves her own, maybe she is terrified deep down that elusive bond will never come? Whatever the reason for cruel put downs in life, fear is usually at the core of the perpetrator. And I am old enough and war-torn enough to know this now. When other women make sweeping statements at me about current pressures, like secondary school, whether or not to move out of London, my career, I just let them gnash at me. And I try to feel pity as opposed to wild-eyed fear at their words.
I just wish for my 26-year-old self that other women had been kinder and more vulnerable. I wish breastfeeding hadn’t been brandished like a taser. Because all new mothers need is kindness, someone to tell them they are doing the best they can. And that their gut instinct is what is right for them. No one else matters. No one else sits within your castle, your heart, has ownership over the love you harness for the life you grew.
Thankfully, I found an incredible bunch of women over time. Some during preschool years and the rest in the primary school playground. These women are my soundboard, my reality check, the honesty I need. I can say anything to them. They’ve seen me at my most tired, at my lowest ebb. They’ve seen me when I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see me, and they’ve picked me up. I’ve been there for them at their hardest moments too, through divorce, through illness, through the death of a loved one. I have no greater respect than I do for the women I met thanks to becoming a mother. They have given me a deeper understanding of life, an honesty and realness that my life pre motherhood lacked. I never would have discovered the power of therapy if it hadn’t have been for watching friends themselves transform as a result of their own experience. So I want anyone reading this who is alone or suffering with unkindness from other women to know that you will find your women, it just takes time. Stay strong and know that it is lonelier sometimes in a sea of women who just aren’t for you than it is to stand amongst blossom alone in a park with your baby. Trust me on this one. Stay true and firm. And the magic will find you…
Anna xxx
