In an effort to keep you abreast of news, we bring you this story. A senior editor of a parenting magazine has labeled breastfeeding “creepy” and she doesn’t like it because she wants to be able to drink booze. And she considers her breasts mainly an erogenous zone for sexual purposes and she doesn’t want saggy erogenous zones.
Pundette writes:
More on motherhood in the UK: A British parenting mag editor has written that breastfeeding is creepy. Kathryn Blundell, deputy editor of Mother and Baby, declares that her breasts are for sex only, and breastfeeding means she can’t get drunk when she gets the urge (sorry, Junior: priorities and all that). By her standards, childbirth must seem pretty “creepy,” too. How dare that baby intrude on her erogenous zones? Heaven help the child who interrupts her beauty sleep or cuts into her me-time with his petty demands.
Once upon a time we knew that motherhood involved self-sacrifice. How does a culture work its way back from such self-centeredness?
Pundette nails it. This is the apotheosis of self centered thinking. My body exists for ME to gain pleasure from. Anything which prevents Me from drinking and cavorting as I wish is bad.
But the worst part is she doesn’t just disagree with mothers who breastfeed. She calls it “creepy.” It is all part of the demonization of self sacrifice.
June 30, 2010 at 2:24 pm
I have to say that your statement regarding children being smarter if they are breastfed is simply not a fact.
That breastfed babies on average have higher IQs and have better test scores is a fact, but that doesn't mean that non-breast fed babies are doomed to lives of imbecility. In any given sample there are going to be those that are outliers, and when the statistical difference between two distinct groups isn't incredibly wide, obviously there are going to be many individuals in one group who outperform those in another. That you raised three gifted children who were not breastfed does not refute the broader evidence. I was not brestfed and now I have a Ph.D, but that still doesn't mean that breastfed babies might not have an advantage. No one is saying that only breastfed babies are smart, just that the statistical evidence suggests slightly enhanced educational aptitude.
That said, I have to wonder if there isn't a selection bias at play. In other words, it isn't that breastfeeding enhances intelligence, but rather that those families that choose to breastfeed might be ones who are on the whole more intelligent and better educated, and therefore their children go on to achieve academic success.
June 30, 2010 at 3:05 pm
As Catholics we do believe that God had a perfect design. He designed human milk for human babies. If it is not possible to use human milk, there is formula. However, that wasn't designed by God and therefore is the lesser choice 🙂 Ideally, enough moms would breastfeed and donate excess milk so that every child could receive human milk. It is simply appalling that breastfeeding is so often ruined by people in the medical community who simply don't know enough about it. I met moms who were told they needed to formula feed because their milk hadn't come in 24 hours after birth. Others were told to supplement with water because their babies were big *sigh* Another article I read suggested that there is a war on breastfeeding simply because formula makes folks a lot of money. I hope that isn't the case, but when I read comments and talk to other mommas I can't help but wonder if there isn't a kernel of truth in that.
As for the IQ, I think the difference is 1-2 points, not exactly huge. Don't breastfeed to make the baby smarter, but because that's how God designed our bodies (both mom's and babe's) to work 😉 It's the optimal thing for both of you.
July 1, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Jimbo: Thanks so much! And you're right, I should have said "my personal belief" instead of using the term "fact." I'm not so sure about the gene theory, though. Most of my nieces and nephews are also very intelligent (even against all odds) and I always wondered how. However, good genes could not have come from my side of the family (if you knew my family, you'd know why I say this lol), and I don't see how they could come from the people my siblings married! I do believe it may have something to do with it, though. Maybe it's a combination of the three; breastfeeding, genes, and good parenting. What do you think about "left-handed" people? That's always something I was curious about, especially since one of my nieces and my own son (my 7-year-old) are both left handed. Great…something else for me to spend my little bit of free time looking up on Google. 😉
Paul: I agree with your last paragraph, it makes a lot of sense.
Barefoot Momma: I couldn't agree more. I wish I had been encouraged to breastfeed when I had my first. It wasn't even suggested! I was told when I left the hospital that I should "bound" my breasts with an Ace wrap to help dry up my milk!! If only I had known what I was wasting! Argh!
Honestly, I believe ALL children are "gifted," which is why I do not really understand the "gifted" program (and also why I do not care to have my children participate…life is not a competition). Are my children really ahead of others, or is it that other children don't have the advantage that mine do? I think it's the latter. If you don't teach them, how will they know? Maybe it should be called the "advantage" program instead. Children start out with only human instincts – they have to be taught everything else. A child's brain really is like a sponge and they can absorb so much in such a short time – as parents, all we have to do…is give it lots to absorb. 😉
July 1, 2010 at 9:45 pm
Re, the first comment: There are no babies who are born without the instinct to nurse.
However if they have been given bottles, they can get nipple confusion and it can become difficult to get them to take the breast. I really doubt that there is any baby in the first week or two of life who cannot be brought to take the breast. However if the mother feels both rejected by the baby and highly anxious over the situation, this can certainly contribute to the nursing failure. A baby who "won't nurse" isn't just a normal variation that got sprung on someone; it is a result of some problem in the way birth and the neonatal period was handled. The guilty person might be a nurse in the hospital nursery who gave the baby formula or sugar water in a bottle, or someone who put a pacifier in the baby's mouth, not the poor nervous new mother.
This should go better the next time. Tell the hospital-and put it in writing-that nothing is to go in the baby's mouth except the mother's breast, period. In fact, insist that there be NO separation of the mother and the baby at all during the time you are in the hospital, and make that time as brief as possible. When birth is as natural as possible the mother picks up the baby when it emerges and puts it right to her breast; the baby will almost always start to nurse, and the nursing helps the uterus to contract and the placenta to separate. It's the way we mammals work. Anything which interferes with this pattern makes everything more difficult, although as intelligent beings we are adjustable and can make them work anyway, usually.
So please don't give up on nursing because of your first difficult experience.
Susan Peterson
July 1, 2010 at 10:17 pm
And someone wrote-in a midwifery magazine yet "Not all women have the urge to breastfeed, and that doesn't make them less of a mother."
In my book it does!
Such a woman might manage to be a good mother in other ways, as my mother was, but I do think there is something deficient about a woman who really doesn't WANT to nurse her babies. For those who never solve the sore nipples issue I can see not liking it, as who likes pain, but
not even wanting to in the first place?
And the reasons this woman gives! She associates her breasts primarily with sex and can't make the switch which is part of human maturity to associating them with loving the baby who is the result of the sex? The way she talks about her baby it is as if it isn't even her baby! She describes her own baby the way you might expect a less sensitive 15 year old boy to describe a baby. She hasn't bonded with this baby at all! Women who bond with their babies love the smell of their scalps and the feel of their skin, and every little sound they make, and every facial expression. It is something like how you feel in a sexual relationship, not the arousal, but the investment of love for the person into love for just that way their hair curls at the nape of their neck, and all such things. And this something makes the normal body integrity barriers go down.
I think my own mother did not feel this way. She was an extremely dutiful mother, but believed that a baby's smiles were 'gas', and that you shouldn't spoil babies by holding them too much. It was touching, if a bit emotionally painful, to see her finally bond with my sister's daugher when she took my sister and the baby to her house from the hospital. Suddenly this was the most amazing alert baby, "she looked right in my eyes, she smiled at me, listen to her coo!" I am glad my mother finally got to where she could feel that for a baby.
How will this woman's child feel when he gets older and picks up on his mother's lack of mother love for him?
Susan Peterson
July 2, 2010 at 5:08 am
I wanted very badly to breastfeed my first child, but after 4 days had passed since her birth and I still did not appear to be producing any milk, my husband got panicky and insisted that we go out and get her some formula before she starved. I kept trying to breastfeed for about 2-3 weeks after that, and even rented a breast pump, but couldn't produce more than a few ounces and eventually gave up.
I told myself I'd probably do better next time since milk comes in more quickly with subsequent children. Unfortunately, there never was a "next time" and she turned out to be our only child (now 14).
It's obvious to me that breastfeeding is the more "natural" way and should be encouraged, not discouraged. However, given the lack of exposure to breastfeeding most women have and the demands and expectations surrounding childbirth and parenting, it's probably no wonder many women who want to breastfeed cannot. My mother was the same way, she wanted to breastfeed both me and my older brother, and even was given shots to stimulate her milk production (she said), but nothing worked.
The bottom line is that we should not pass judgement on either breast feeding moms or bottle feeding moms. Unless we have good reason to believe otherwise we should assume both are doing the best they can with what they have.
Elaine
July 2, 2010 at 4:07 pm
The comments & original post are so informative that I created a post about it at http://divine-ripples.blogspot.com/2010/07/make-verizon-stop-distributing-xxx.html