Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding was easily the one thing I wish I had learned more about before Isaac's birth. I had multiple prenatal classes on this subject, but for the first week or two, I still felt I had been woefully unprepared.

By the time I had Isaac in my hands, I didn't know whether the latch was good or not. Perhaps more direly, for the first few days, I didn't even know the latches were so bad that despite 2+ hours sucking on my breasts (and causing my nipples to crack), he probably didn't get to eat anything.

If you thought the nurses in the hospital would make sure you know how to breastfeed before you are discharged--I have heard that from the prenatal classes--well, I was out of luck. Although the nurses did check the feedings, none spotted the (now I know) bad latch. Like me, they saw Isaac sucking hard and they thought it was fine.

After we were home, we could count on two home visits, one from St. Elizabeth (who pointed up my latch was so bad that Isaac wasn't eating much, if at all), another from Toronto Public Health (who, due to unfortunate timing, didn't visit until well after Isaac was discharged from paediatric ward of the hospital and breastfeeding was going on fairly well).

For additional help, we were given a list of breastfeeding clinic in and around town. All of them have rather short hours, and most are by appointment only. Toronto East General Hospital was the only notable exception, which operates for a few hours 7 days a week and allows walk-in.

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Talk to many first-time moms, and you'd notice a lot of them experienced problems on breastfeeding of varying degrees. Many had to visit lactation consultants multiple times, sometimes paying for them out of their own pocket.

If breastfeeding is as vital to the health of the baby as advertised by everyone, why doesn't the government, bearer of health care costs, provide more extensive postpartum support? Or better yet, free prenatal education on breastfeeding?

Why is the breastfeeding clinic of a local, world-renowned doctor on the subject, Dr. Jack Newman, not even publicly funded?

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Maybe my woes with breastfeeding has something to do with us watching too much National Geographic channel. I thought there must be some innate ability--for both the mother and the baby--that makes breastfeeding a snap, like all the animals do. After all, feeding is the most important task for taking care of a baby. Not changing diapers, not bathing the baby, not child-proofing the house: babies can probably survive at least a few weeks without any of these.

How wrong we were.

Apparently, as human become more civilized, we lost touch with that magical ability. (Actually, babies can still find their way to mommy's breast even within an hour they were born. It's moms not knowing what to do.) Furthermore, thanks to the whole cultural shift of the '60s and '70s, including the feminist movement and the rise of food processing industry, we Gen-Xers were raised on formula. Even as we wanted to seek out advice on breastfeeding, our babyboomer mothers could not offer much help, unlike new moms of the past generations. In fact, not many of us (nor our parents) have seen what breastfeeding looks like!

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Before formula, only moms of rich families are freed from breastfeeding duty. They hire wet nurses to feed the baby. Hence, the arrival of formula, not unlike mass-produced automobiles, was seen as an empowerment.

Unfortunately, as norm of family dynamics shifted to dual-income, formula has morphed into almost a necessity. In fact, in today's developed countries, breastfeeding is still a very luxurious activity. Without sufficient income and time support--either from within the family or from the government--mothers are ill-afforded to breastfeed. Bottle-feeding, especially with formula instead of pumped breastmilk, allows a mother to be freed from the single most important task of caring for the baby. Anyone can give a bottle of warmed milk to a baby, but only a nursing mother (OK, or a wet nurse) can offer fresh breastmilk.

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From our personal experience, formula is definitely an inadequate substitute of breastmilk. Even when he was fed 1 oz of formula a day, Isaac still had a tendency to throw up a lot more on those days than the formula-free ones. (We have cut out formula completely after a few days of experiment.)

Maybe Isaac just didn't like this particular formula. Maybe we could keep trying other formulas until we find one he likes. Instead, we chose to feed him breastmilk exclusively and focused on maintaining a sufficient supply of milk in the fridge. (When we were trying formula, we have about 1 meal's worth of milk only. Now we have about 2 meals' worth stashed in the fridge.)

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There are a lot of stigma surrounding breastfeeding in public. We have yet to figure out a way to do it. Ideally, I don't want to have to hide in the car (infeasible in winter) or washroom (gross--who eats in public washrooms??) or other dark corner to breastfeed. I'm content with covering myself up with a poncho or something, as long as I can feed my baby in areas where people can generally eat or drink.