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Breast's not always best
Ryan Davies3/ 7/2008
WE AT the Mancunian Candidate are this week proud to unveil a new sponsor.
It’s Formula Milk, the convenient choice for idle mums who can’t be bothered to staying up all night to breast-feeding.
Of course, I’m being facetious. There is no tie-up with any artificial baby-feeding product - although you would never guess it from the sack-full of letters I’ve received over the last fortnight.
I just thought I’d further antagonise all those furious mums, who have written in to berate me for my ‘irresponsible’ views on breast-feeding.
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, as they used to say.
How dare I say compare breast-feeding to a religion, they wailed, all the while making Opus Dei and the scientologists look like a loose collective of agnostics.
For those who have just joined us, allow me to explain. My last column was devoted to expressing my delight at fathering a little baby boy, a joy which knew no bounds save for the difficulties we had in the early days of keeping him alive under the strict ‘don’t even think about bottle-feeding’ ethos the midwives had instilled in us.
Such was their vigor for breast-feeding that last week’s column even went so far as to fantasize that they were meeting in candle-lit cellars to smash creates of formula milk, and to gleefully chant their much-loved mantra ‘Breast is Best’ as the evil liquid trickled into the sinking sewers where it belongs.
This was too much for one Josephine Simpkin, who wrote in to say my column lacked ‘educational facts’, adding that my views were ‘rubbish and dangerous‘.
Another reader, Susie Stubbs, of Chorlton, was in complete agreement. "I can only assume that it’s this chronic lack of sleep that has led him to spout such damaging and incorrect rubbish," she wrote.
Then she paused, one imagines, her pen quivering with indignation, before delivering her hammer blow: "It’s lazy journalism at best; irresponsible at worst. Get your facts straight."
The thing is, after reading my original piece again, I think it’s fair to say there weren’t actually all that many facts in there.
That’s because it was not supposed to. This was not the Mancunian Candidate’s Guide to Child-rearing - that will be available next month in all good book stores priced £18.99.
It was simply an opinion piece; a writer’s attempt to simply to share his experiences and convey his perspective on the world to others.
But if it is facts my critics are after, then here are a few for them.
My son was born on June 1 to a mother convinced of the benefits of breast-feeding.
Within days we were expressing concerns to our mid-wives over his lack of sleep and perpetual state of agitation, but were told that there was no problem and that we should continue to feed by breast.
We persisted but it soon became clear that something was very wrong and, against the advice of the midwives we started to top up his feed with formula milk.
For first-time parents this was extremely traumatic, especially as we felt that the people that we should be have been turning to for advice, seemed to more interested in pushing the NHS line than dealing with the specific problems our baby was facing.
By day seven it was discovered that our baby had suffered a dramatic loss in weight and he was readmitted into hospital.
Here he was put on a strict diet of – guess what – formula milk to try to get his weight up. Thankfully, a few days later his health had sufficiently improved and he was allowed to come home again.
By this point his poor mother, who had also been readmitted into hospital with eclampsia, had been driven to the edge of post-natal depression by the stress and frustration of not being able to provide enough milk for her child. She needed a comforting arm around her; she got a government directive.
What we wanted was help in making an informed choice. What we felt we got was pressure to stick to a breast-feeding programme that we were not convinced was any longer in our baby’s best interests.
So Susie Stubbs, I do not claim to be an expert, but I do feel that I have some experience that I am entitled to share with others.
I am not saying that everyone who breast-feeds has a bad experience, far from it, but I felt that the policy to push breast-feeding at all costs prevented my baby from getting the best care at a time when he really needed it.
The point I was making in last week’s column was that, whatever the benefits of breast milk – and I accept there are many - the pressure that some new mums are put under to breast feed cannot always healthy for them or their babies.
And for this innocent observation, I am pilloried for my ‘dangerous ideas’ and ‘lazy journalism’.
Well, if the truth be told, I’ve probably been guilty of the occasional piece of lazy journalism over the years.
And, while it is tempting to be flattered by being called ‘dangerous’, I actually think this gets us to heart of the problem.
Just why are these people getting upset over what a cynical old hack thinks of breast-feeding were it not for the fear he might be giving other young mums an excuse to give up on the breast?
It seems to me that the concerns of our respondents and the NHS policy on breast-feeding both stem from a lack of confidence in mothers not to take the easy option when it is put in front of them.
All you hear about is informed choices, but at the end of the day it seems that many mums are not trusted to make these important choices for their children.
For the record, my wife has not given up on breast-feeding, but has decided to supplement the breast milk with SMA.
But so sick of the slogan ‘The Breast is Best’ has she become that she is actually thinking of starting her own counter campaign. It also has a similar four word rhyming slogan, but it’s a bit too crude to repeat here.
As for formula, I’ve no great love for the stuff. In all honesty, it gives off a rather foul smell and creates a mess in the nappy that no man deserves to be exposed to - although that doesn’t seem to stop my little one from gulping it as if his life depends on it, which given the difficult he had, I suppose, at times, it has.
Even so, just to be clear, should any representatives of nuclear power, the arms industry or personal injury groups be reading, just because the Mancunian Candidate has not jumped into bed with any makers of Formula milk that doesn’t mean the he is too proud to take bribes from any source, however unfashionable they may be.
After all, he does have a new little mouth to feed.
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28/07/2008 at 14:08