Strollerderby

Yeah, I don't really get this article. To me, she is trying to say that it is anti-feminist to do something as undignified as pumping or spend your brain power caring about whether you nurse your baby. I think it's a difficult article for me to read because it so steeped in unacknowledged privilege. Hanna Rosin talks about shocking her mommy enclave at her tony NY neighborhood playground by saying she doesn't want to nurse her (third) baby anymore. In this description she is breathing such rarefied air that most of us can't relate at all.

As much as I would love to ditch the pump, I know my supply would be severely impacted if I stopped. I would be very uncomfortable on the days I didn't have her with me, and she would be hungry on the days I did. There are also benefits to nursing. Whether it is the breastmilk or the close snuggling, I do not see why Ms. Rosin and her colleagues are casually suggesting we toss out these benefits to the baby and the mother with the bathwater.

I have had negative experiences on both sides of the nursing debate. I have been sneered at and ogled when nursing my baby in public and shamed by coworkers when I pumped at the office. When my second baby had trouble gaining weight, I had lactivists shame me for suggesting that I supplement until I got my supply back up. In all of these instances, I focused on what was right for me and my daughters -- sometimes nursing, sometimes formula.

Ms. Rosin dismisses the value of nursing, claiming that it chains us to our children and keeps us from being productive members of society. I think it's a little easy for her to say it now that her children are nearly all weaned and she can pontificate all she wants. For these women to suggest that we all take it all a little less seriously and throw off the shackles of the pump and the nursing imperative -- even as some of them candidly admit that they nursed all of their children -- feels like a double-standard. It's such an uphill battle to nurse -- most of our society (tree-lined playgrounds on the upper west side notwithstanding) does not support it, it is difficult and often painful and frustrating at a tender time for any mother, new or otherwise. It is certainly true that for some women, nursing is not the answer -- I hope we have learned by now that no size fits all. But why dismiss and undercut it for the rest of us?

Who "really, really wants to nurse but" gets bad or no support?  There is so much support for nursing moms and no support for those who give formula.  Bottle-feeding moms are made to seem lazy, selfish, and incapable of being a good mother.  There should be more of the attitude that moms should do whatever is going to make their babies grow while reducing the stress in the home.  A stressed-out mom and dad lead to a stressed baby and then no one's happy, even if said baby is receiving the miraculous breast milk.

Nicole, it's been documented that many women receive bad information and poor support about bf from hospitals. And a woman who is bottle feeding never had to worry about being asked to leave a public place or being charged with indecent exposure. Formula feeding moms have never been told that she can't obtain enough formula to adequately feed her baby, or received an unsolicited free nursing cover and coupons for a breast pump in the mail. All moms need better support and information about the options available to them. And I'm sorry if bf was too stressful for you to continue, but for some moms, trying to keep up with the expense of formula and difficulties of preparation, storage, and maintenance of equipment is a burden they'd rather not cope with. No method of feeding is effortless.

This kind of article was inevitable. There was so much in the media about how breast is best, and you are basically poisoning your kid if you give them formula. This was pushed so hard that there was bound to be a backlash.  

I actually nursed my son for 12 months, but I do agree that the benefits of breastfeeding are overstated. There are benefits, don't get me wrong. But the average woman who breastfeeds is much wealthier than the average woman who does not, so there are so many factors going into the health of the child.

I remember a lactation consultant telling me "breastfeeding is the greatest thing you will ever do for your child." No matter how wonderful breastfeeding is, I really hope this is not true.

someone's mom, it is true that a bottle feeding mom never has to be told to leave a public place because of indecent exposure, but I have seen bottle feeding moms get scolded by complete strangers for "poisoning" their babies.

I think it depends where you live. I live in San Francisco, and in the 12 months I nursed I never had any problem. I'm sure in other parts of the country it is different.

Laure68, that's why I said that all moms need support, as no matter how you feed your child, someone's going to harass you about it. Perhaps cards like bf organizations put out about the right to bf could be adapted for formula feeding moms, outlining the fact that formula, as a blogger on this site noted, is not poison. (Although the diapers of formula fed babies sometimes smell like they ought to be handled by a hazmat team, but that's the former babysitter in me.)

I had the opposite experience in the hospital. I had no interest in breastfeeding and the nurses made me feel like I should be sent to a leper colony.  Lactation specialists kept “popping-in” –even when I was packing my bags to leave! They also tried to make me feel badly when I didn't attend the classes given daily on my floor's wing.  When my milk came rushing-in the nurse assigned to me told me to either take a cold shower (in the middle of the night) or pump. When I got home, I could not walk down the street in my urban neighborhood without virtual strangers asking me whether I was breastfeeding.  In fact, strangers even asked my husband when I wasn't there! It was beyond bizarre. I do sympathize with women who want to breastfeed and are not supported in their efforts.  But I think a decision not to breastfeed – for whatever reason – needs to be respected too.      

The whole thing is ca-ca both ways. I felt like Rosin was just resentful of still having to do for her later babies what she did joyfully for her first. I think she has that famous feeling of being "done" having kids, but has misdirected it at the La Leche League. As for banning pumps, that's just intentionally shocking to draw attention (read: blogs) to the heart of the matter. In my opinion the real problem is that we are shortchanging mother's and children by virtually requiring them to put back on the reigns of the working world too early and handing them only the cold-comfort of mechanized baby replacements. Why aren't we all getting together and raising some hell for reasonable maternity leave-- so we can all hold the babies a little longer whether at our breast or in our arms for a bottle.

And, second, that topless lady has stolen another, much bulgier, woman's newborn in order to get post-partum modelling gigs. ( I NEED to believe this.)

I wrote about this at my blog too: meaganfrancis.com/.../ban-the-breastpump

I agree that moms need more support for their choices. But demonizing breastpumps? Talk about barking up the WRONG tree.

Also, Warner's assertion that we should change our parenting standards to--what was it?--"figure out reasonable ways to make our new family lives work?"

How about realizing that our crazy family lives AREN'T working and figuring out how to change those instead?

It's not just exclusive breastfeeding that can seem like an impossible standard these days. The parenting bar has been raised in ways that are far more expensive, more time-consuming, and more difficult for "average" parents to attain than 6 months of nursing. Setting up breast pumps as the bad guy when they are, for so many women, a way to make their family lives "work" is just silly and dismissive.

I think only the title of Judith Warner's article referred to "banning" the breast pump, and it was clearly meant to be inflammatory -- probably written by someone else, not her. The intent of her article, it seemed to me, was to free women who don't want to exclusively breast feed from feeling that they HAVE to. Because once that pump is in your home, you're a 'bad mother' if you don't use it.

I agree that exclusive breastfeeding seems like a luxury these days, limited to women who stay at home and are able to have their child around constantly.  I'm sure bf SAHMs don't feel totally luxurious, but as a working mom, how the heck can I bring home a paycheck (and our family's health insurance) with a baby attached to my chest? By pumping, that's how, and now I have one more obligation that no one can fulfill but me in order to provide what's 'best' for my baby.

So from that perspective, what I hear from Ms. Warner -- and I totally agree with her -- is that if you're going to work full time, just allow yourself the fact that exclusive breastfeeding isn't gonna happen.  If you want to make the herculean daily effort to fake a meeting so you can strap a suction cup to your breast while you balance a laptop on your knee and hold a cellphone to your ear, good on you.  Seriously.  But the rest of us should spare ourselves the guilt and torture, buy some Enfamil and move on.

The pump isn't the bad guy, no. But neither is the bra or the high heel or the nanny cam or what have you. They're all reminders of what we're *supposed* to be doing with our lives. And if that's not what we want to do, just cut them out.

I really don't get this kind of attitude towards pumping. I did it with my daughter for 11 mos. on days I worked out of the home. It was a PITA at times, but worth it. Anyone who says formula is equal to breastmilk is referring to poor information. I'm grateful formula is available because some women are in work situations that are not conducive to pumping - and that may be me one day. Just because a child can live on formula and "seems" just the same as his breastfed counterparts doesn't mean formula is equal to breastmilk in nutritional value. I have a high metabolism and could eat fast food all the time and still look skinny, but that definitely doesn't mean I'm at my optimum health.

Also, for me I found pumping gave me two breaks during my work day to shift my thoughts from work to my child. It helped build the attachment on my end, and pumping was one of many sacrifices I'm willing to make for my child.

My experience with breast-feeding was very hard at first. I really had very little support. I mean very, very little.My breasts were huge and it made nursing my newborn extremely difficult. Breast-feeding would have also been easier if the lactation consultant I got had been a better person, to put it nicely;) I was also in a lot of pain. But I was sooooo adamant that if I was making milk I was going to use it. Also, as an artist with little to no money paying for formula was not  an option. So I exclusively pumped for 13 and 1/2 months. Having my pump made it possible for my daughter to have breast milk. Both formula and breast milk are wonderful ways to nourish a baby. And both bottle-feeding and breast-feeding although visually different are pretty much meaningful in the same way to the mother’s who do them.

This is bizarre.

Okay, what about the fact that formula costs a SHITLOAD of money?! A decent pump can be bought for a fraction of the price and used for multiple children, whereas once that $25 can of formula is gone, better go but a new one! I didn't read the article, so maybe Warner and Rosin get around that fact somehow, but if the fact that formula is eff-ing expensive doesn't even cross their minds, then what a class-ist argument that only well-off women can enter into. Sheesh.

Also, call me lazy, but I find washing the bottles used to feed my babies expressed milk, or, yes, formula on occasion to be way more work than hiking up my shirt. I HATE washing that stuff up.

My husband is undoubtedly one of the smartest people I know (and I know some smart people) and he was a formula baby. So I don't really care whether or not someone nurses or gives formula; there are more important things to lose sleep over. However, I know that for me nursing is "empowering" (I hate that word) and it allows me to bond with my baby in a particular way, fostered by skin-to-skin contact. I'm pro-life and generally advocate mothers (or the father, one parent at least) staying home with kids, which according to a number of people make me "anti-woman". So now I'm anti-woman because I use and advocate breast pumps? Nice job, feminists.

What a strange and unproductive backlash.

In the entirely unlikely event that pumps were banned, I guess the breastfeeders among us could celebrate because that would mean they concurrently passed legislation that would allow mothers to stay at home with their babies as long as needed to meet their needs from the source.

I totally agree that all moms need support.

I think that when we talk about hospitals not supporting breastfeeding, we have to include rude lactation consultants. (OK, I'm sure there are some great ones out there, but the ones I encountered were awful.) I almost quit breastfeeding because a lactation consultant made me feel like a total loser. My son had such a hard time latching, and she kept rolling her eyes and telling me I was holding him wrong. She got frustrated so easily with me. I met with several others, and I did not find one who displayed the slightest bit of compassion. It was only when I spoke to other moms that I started feeling like there were other people who had a hard time too, so maybe I wasn't so bad. (Oh, and the nurses were wonderful.)

All this aggressive pushing can do more harm than good.

I think making the argument that only affluent moms nurse is crazy. Maybe if the average mom (not the one who qualifies for WIC) breastfed she would find she has alot more money not having to buy all that expensive formula.

Breastfeed, bottle-feed, make your own Scientology food mixture like Katie Holmes did, be content with your decision and allow other moms to make a decision that fits thier family.

Why must we bicker over this stuff?

This is so interesting...Jill LePore wrote a similar piece in the New Yorker (1/29/09). She points out that, historically speaking, wealthy women didn't breastfeed--they could afford formula. Poor women couldn't, so they breastfed (and acted as wet-nurses for the upper classes). Now the situation is reversed, sort of. Formula's still expensive, but most women have to work to support their families, so pumping is often the only option for a woman who _wants_ to breastfeed.

I am packing to go to a one-day meeting that requires an overnight stay. I'm taking the pump. I even asked the meeting organizer if there's a place I can go that's not the bathroom (and since this is at a university, the answer was "Yes, there's a "Mommy's Room" just down the hall..."). No shame. No guilt. I refuse to buy into this new "culture war" backlash, frontlash, whatever. I will pump because I want to, not because I "have to". My son is almost 4 mos. old, exclusively breastfed, and 17 lbs.

If I couldn't breastfeed for some reason, I'd have no problem giving him Similac. I refuse to buy into the guilt and shame. Period. I'm the mom, I'm the one who decides. That's what women have to remember. And whether you breastfeed or formula feed, that baby is still dependent on you.

1.  What is this lady's problem?

2.  As a feminst, I chose to breastfeed and use a pump.  Isn't that a major point of the feminist movement, that women get to make their own choices?

Banning the breastpump? Um, why? Who's it hurting? Is it like smoking? Or automatic guns? Is it now deemed a silent killer?

Seriously? Ridiculous!

What is really anti-feminist is that these women were hired by two major publications to write an article dismissing the benefits of breastfeeding and breast pumps. Seriously, isn't that insulting to them? Secondly I view the breast pump and breastfeeding as liberating, I never had an issue with it changing the nature of my equal relationship. Isn't part of feminism also encouraging more equality in the work place? I know bus drivers and waitresses ask for smoke breaks, why can't women take breaks to pump? Breastfeeding also lowers the rate of breast cancer in women. There is nothing "anti-feminist" about it. If anything formula companies are anti-feminist by preaching that they can replicate the milk mothers evolved to feed their infants from their breasts, that women should feed their infants something created by male scientist who know better then we silly women do about feeding our infants. Oh and I work full time and still breastfeed my daughter (without a pump, I breastfeed her when I am at home now that she is a toddler) so much for the breastfeeding delaying career theory.