Breastfeeding In Public

This afternoon I happened to catch part of Jeremy Vine’s show on Radio 2, wherein he and his resident GP Sarah Jarvis were discussing the proposed changes to the law to allow women the legal right to breastfeed in public. I am so annoyed.

I find it very poor that the only airtime this subject gets is to bring all those reactionary Mail readers out of the woodwork, to pronounce on how revolting they find it to have to eat in a restaurant next to a woman who is breastfeeding her baby. This is not new and it is not news. I accept that such people have the right to their opinion, but it seems irresponsible of JV to broadcast that opinion, apparently with the support of a doctor who is normally an advocate of women’s issues.

To be fair to Sarah Jarvis, she was clearly in favour of breastfeeding in general, but what a wimp! Her response to the outcry was that it might be better if women did express and bottlefeed, so that those poor small-minded cretins who are offended by the female breast (in this context) might be spared the sight of a child being fed in a perfectly natural way. There are so many reasons why this is wrong, and here are three of them:

1. Expressing milk before the mother’s milk supply is well-established (i.e. in the first six weeks or so) will affect her supply detrimentally. It is the stimulation of the baby sucking at the breast that controls the volume of milk produced, not the stimulation of a plastic device. Sarah Jarvis also pointed out how great it is that dad can get involved in feeding if mum expresses, and this is a terrible misconception. It’s only great if there is no other way to feed the baby, which is a rare situation. Meanwhile mum still has the chore of expressing, which takes longer than actually feeding and is far less pleasant. Dad could be helping much more productively by taking baby out for a walk or giving him a bath, while mum gets some rest and recharges her batteries.
2. The action required to slurp milk from a bottle is different to the action required to suck it from a breast, and some babies are inclined to prefer it. At least, once they are used to the ultra-fast delivery method of bottlefeeding, if they apply the same action to the breast then not only will they be unable to feed as quickly as they could prior to their experience of the bottle, but they will almost certainly hurt their mother by chomping the nipple. All this usually leads very quickly to the end of the breastfeeding relationship. Did you know that in the UK, 9 out of 10 mothers stop breastfeeding before they wanted to?
3. If the medical profession advocates bottlefeeding breastmilk in public, then society continues to perceive bottlefeeding as the norm, and breastfeeding as the province of only very new mums, hippies and freaks. For example, this new law no longer offers me any legal protection, should I wish to feed Bernard in public, because he is over a year old. It specifically states that mothers have the right to breastfeed in public infants up to one year; and yet the NHS, supported by the World Health Organisation, recommends breastmilk as part of a mixed diet until the age of two years and beyond. The reason for this is that most people believe that babies “progress” from breast to bottle after a year (or sooner), despite the fact that even if you feed infant formula to your child, it is generally recommended that you move away from the bottle as a mode of delivery, by the time your baby is twelve months old. This is partly because most women have to go back to work once their baby is nine months old (now that maternity pay has been extended from six months), and in the UK, employers do not make it easy for mothers to work flexibly enough to continue breastfeeding. This is a whole ‘nother rant, though.

As long as the media and the medical profession join forces to encourage people to talk about how repulsed they are by the sight of a breastfeeding mother, this is not going to change. One caller suggested that mothers should organise their time better, so that feeding can take place at home. Such complete ignorance of the way breastfeeding works should at least be addressed; it’s no good just saying that we are encouraged to breastfeed on demand; we need to explain why (to protect the milk supply; to comfort the baby and help him to learn to regulate his appetite; because this is how it works best, as breastmilk is quickly digested and therefore babies need to feed little and often).

Breastfeeding mothers are focussed on feeding their babies; very very few of them are waving their boobs around purely to make a point. In fact that point would be better made by not feeding in restaurants, so that the delicate diner can listen to the baby yell himself purple with hunger instead.