(Above: My tiny breasts have nourished 5 babies. wow!)
I know I’m late to the party here, but I have been reading and thinking and reading and thinking about the recent blow-up around Sarah Pope (Aka The Healthy Home Economist) and her endorsement of Sally Fallon and the Weston A. Price Foundation’s views on breastfeeding. Amid all the din, there is, in my estimation, a glaring omission from the debate.
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The issue, if you missed it, is this: The Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) is an organization that promotes a traditional diet based on whole foods, raw milk, grass-fed free-range meats, vegetables and fruit, as an alternative to the SAD (Standard American Diet) that so many of us consume on a daily basis. Sally Fallon, the author of “Nourishing Traditions”, and Sarah Pope (the author of popular food blog, The Healthy Home Economist), both recently advocated for the idea that women who have a poor diet or who follow a vegan diet, should, essentially, not be breastfeeding their babies. Instead, according to WAPF, these mothers should be concocting a superior “formula” made from raw milk and a bunch of other stuff, to, ostensibly feed to their babies from a bottle.
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I have a lot of respect for the WAPF. I think that most of their nutritional advice is sound. I like most of their ideas, and I am personally a proponent of a whole foods, traditional diet. I would never describe myself as a follower of the WAPF diet, per se. I have my own approach to food, I’ve read widely, we do what works for us. And I guess I’m lucky in that the only real allergy I have is to dogma.
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But when I read Pope’s support for WAPFT’s breastfeeding suitability hierarchy and her support of the frankly scandalous idea that vegans shouldn’t be nursing their babies at all, I, along with so many others, was horrified.
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I agree with all those who point out that while the quality of breast-milk certainly is affected by diet, human milk is ideal for human babies, and that throughout every stage of infancy–and even through the course of a nursing session– a mother’s milk modifies and responds to baby’s needs. It is also absolutely true that for those mothers who are nutritionally compromised, the body still manages to extract the very best that it can to sustain a child. It is more likely for a mother to become physically stressed when nursing her baby on a sub-optimal diet. The body prioritizes the infant. Miraculously, despite the crap that we might be consuming, we mothers can turn it into gold.
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Breast-milk–whatever the mother’s diet–grants our babies immunity to disease, protects our children from obesity later in life, along with a host of other benefits, in addition to being nutritionally perfect, as much as any food can be.
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But what I did not see come up very often in the ensuing discussions condemning WAPF and Pope, is the incredible importance of the emotional, physical, psychological and relational benefits of breastfeeding.
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In my view, these intangible social benefits of the nursing dyad, are totally enmeshed with the nutritional benefits of breastfeeding. I truly believe that our first infant experiences of nourishment is at the foundation of our sense of self, of intimacy, of relationship, and of language.
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When Felix and I nurse, he is not simply being fed. He is learning how to like someone, how to get along. How to love. How to get attention. How to have a conversation. How to say No. How to take a No. How to ask. How to hurt his mum. How to gain favour. Manners. How to be gentle. What feels good. How to be loved. And this is all learned deeply, intrinsically, through pure experience. Breastfeeding is the ultimate socialization.
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The complexities of the social world of breastfeeding are just staggering. There are simply thousands of distinctions available for the breastfeeding infant to learn, to absorb and to embody, and these are unavailable to the baby who is fed from a plastic bottle by whomever happens to be around.
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This is not a criticism of mothers who make the decision to bottle-feed, but simply an observation of the fact that a relationship between two people is more complex, textured, emotional, intellectual–more everything–than its plastic substitute. Like the current research that shows that babies who are surgically born miss out on the immensely protective and health-giving experience of passing through the birth canal, I strongly believe that what I know intuitively will be born out through research in the future: that the breastfeeding relationship–along with the digestive benefits of breast-milk itself–is so much more complicated and important than many of us realize.
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Fundamentally, I simply think it is most appropriate simply to encourage all women to nurse their babies. We don’t need more fear-mongering about the quality of our mothering, down to the very quality of the milk from our breasts. Almost all women can do it, and we need to know that it is perfect, that is is easy, and that in more ways than in what a chemical analysis will show, that it is the mark of our humanity.
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I believe breast feeding is the first and most precious gift a mother can give her child. My daughter turns 20 next week and we are still so close, we have a bond, a connection that I think we formulated during all those hours sitting in our rocking chair in the quiet morning hours, the late quiet nights, mother and child, breast feeding.
Even now, when she is home if I walk into the kitchen she walks in there with me. It’s like she still sees me as her main food source, if indirectly now. And I still have a strong need to nourish her. I want to make her tea and warm soups and delicious meals, since breast feeding is quite out of the question now. Twenty years ago, there was not so much information for new mothers, but thank God, I had good instincts and did what I knew in my heart was the very best for my child. Mothers today are very lucky to have so much information available to them.
Totally agree! It is quite ridiculous and limited to state that a mother should not feed her baby because she is eating junk food, or even worse when the mother in question is vegan, which essentially means she is conscious about nutrition. I think, whoever has a non conventional diet, most probably has made a decision based on research (hopefully).
Anyway, two phrases I borrow and will have to be quoting you:
“And I guess I’m lucky in that the only real allergy I have is to dogma.”
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“Breastfeeding is the ultimate socialization.”
Love
Oh, thank you so much Elena! I hope you’re doing really well lately. Thank you as always for your thoughts! Yolande