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According to a recent article in the New Yorker, here's “A brief history of food: when the rich eat white bread and buy formula, the poor eat brown bread and breast-feed; then they trade places.” Right now, the rich breastfeed, and apparently also pay exorbitant amounts of money to wear their babies like women in the developing world (I just shelled out $73 for a Guatemalan sling). In popular childrearing books like Harvey Karp’s “Happiest Baby on the Block” we read how “primitive” cultures like the San Bushmen have had happier babies than us in the West, and we mimic their techniques in hopes of quieting our babies.
As much as we want to go primitive in our babywearing, technology, as in so many other arenas, has entered the fray and overcomplicated things. The breast pump adds another layer of complexity to feeding decisions; it's fraught.
Like a lot of other technology electric breast pumps are both wonderfully convenient and threatening. They allow us freedom from our infants while breastfeeding, and they help stimulate milk supply. La Leche Leaguers aren’t anti pump, just anti formula. Among many moms I'm meeting, formula is anathema, so if you want any freedom, that leaves pumping as your only option. I was at a meeting recently. An exhausted mom of a newborn was so stressed out because she wasn’t making enough milk for her baby. The leader suggested the women pump in between feedings, which were already every two hours or so. This would literally leave no time for the woman to sleep. I said as much, and got several nasty looks from the room. Surely, though, the benefit of an exhausted mother getting some sleep outweighs the cost of giving your baby some formula?
Oh, did I prepare for labor and delivery. When the day came, I was ready, and it went great (no drugs!). What I completely forgot to think about was breastfeeding. I assumed it would be easy. I don’t know what I was thinking, because breastfeeding has been the most challenging part of motherhood thus far--but also one of the most rewarding parts!
It’s not just physically and emotionally challenging: it’s socially charged. On the one hand, you have the La Leche League contingent, which believes babies should be fed on demand, and only breastmilk. The pro-breastmilk viewpoint is prevalent now, because our cultural moment is very pro-breastfeeding, as it is also pro-yoga and re-greening the Earth.
Popular wisdom right now encourages women, even women who are at home with their babies, to pump. Pump to encourage milk production, pump to allow Dad or someone else to feed the baby. And of course, pump to give your baby breastmilk when you work. When I look at my breast pump, I feel such mixed emotions, because pumping is awful. Often instead of doing it I just give my baby some formula if I’m going out, or if I feel tapped out. When I go back to work, I can only imagine how I might dread pumping at work, no matter how good the breastmilk is for my baby.
A recent New Yorker article by Jill Lepore questions the impact breast pumping has had on working women’s lives and on work culture. It is a must read, if a bitter one, Lepore notes,
“Pumps come with plastic sleeves, like the sleeves in a man’s wallet, into which a mother is supposed to slip a photograph of her baby, because, Pavlov-like, looking at the picture aids “let-down,” the release of milk normally triggered by the presence of the baby, its touch, its cry. Staring at that picture when your baby is miles away, well, it can make you cry, too.”
Pumping is a double-edged sword. It’s hard to pump and interact with your baby. Even though I have only done it at home thus far, pumping is lonely and depressing, while giving bottles of formula is quite satisfying. But employers love pumps, and I have no doubt their ubiquity will increase. On Friday Night Lights, which is a great TV show, the pump virtually has a supporting role when Connie Britton gives birth. Sarah Palin of course popularized the image of a BlackBerry on one hand, breast pump in the other. Corporate Voices for Working Families just launched a workplace toolkit to help employers create lactation-friendly workplaces. Co-sponsored by corporations like Abbott Pharmaceuticals, the initiative aims to especially help non-exempt employees enjoy
