So we went to a breastfeeding class Saturday morning, and got some great tips and pointers on things to watch out for. I never thought I'd be so completely up to speed on cracked nipples and the signs of a good latch, but so it goes. I was super proud of Lis, who basically knew as much as if not more than the nurse who was running the show (largely, she tells me, from Dr. Jack Newman's A Guide to Breastfeeding which you can see here). Even though my wife's amazing, the people at BC Women's and Children's Hospital are actually really good. It's a top research facility, so they're always cutting edge in their practices there. I feel extremely lucky that this is the hospital we'll be delivering at.
One issue that we've encountered before and ran into again during the class is the question of maternity leave. The World Health Organization recommends that women breastfeed regularly for two years, until the baby's immune system is fully developed. This is a noble and worthy goal, particularly for such pro-breastfeeding parents as ourselves, but there's the ideal and the real. The facts are that Lis will likely only be able to take four months off before she has to return to work. This is a strictly economic decision. She could keep breastfeeding the baby at regular intervals, but the milk wouldn't be that good if we weren't eating.
What I really didn't like in the class was the subtle but unmistakable implication that we were somehow irresponsible parents for not committing to two full years of breastfeeding. She reiterated it in several ways, including discouraging mothers from taking the occasional night off and letting dad do a bottle feed. I think this was more than just a kind of paranoid guiilt at the nurse's lecture on our part. Lis and I were mulling it over, and there's something a bit weird going on in the way things are framed. Basically, a while back -- say the 1950s -- a woman would be considered irresponsible if she went off to work and left her baby to a caretaker. Her irresponsibility was framed in terms of neglecting her natural womanly duties. Then the feminists of the 60s and 70s fought their asses off to buck the oppressive categories of what was "natural" and "not natural" for a woman to be and do. Women went to work if they wanted. They stayed home if they wanted.
And yet, here we are, in the 2010s, suddenly hearing all of this discourse about how women should really be staying with their kids long term again. Now it's framed in terms of baby's health, and yet it seems to be potentially serving the same oppressive function that the "woman at home" did in the 1950s. Obviously babies and their health are extremely important, but at what point do the mother's rights and needs start to weigh in? Must she commit to total sainthood, or face the wrath of social judgement? (Interestingly in Bringing up Bebe, the French mothers are much more nonchalant about discontinuing breastfeeding after a few months, if they start at all. Did feminism do better in Europe?)
One issue that we've encountered before and ran into again during the class is the question of maternity leave. The World Health Organization recommends that women breastfeed regularly for two years, until the baby's immune system is fully developed. This is a noble and worthy goal, particularly for such pro-breastfeeding parents as ourselves, but there's the ideal and the real. The facts are that Lis will likely only be able to take four months off before she has to return to work. This is a strictly economic decision. She could keep breastfeeding the baby at regular intervals, but the milk wouldn't be that good if we weren't eating.
What I really didn't like in the class was the subtle but unmistakable implication that we were somehow irresponsible parents for not committing to two full years of breastfeeding. She reiterated it in several ways, including discouraging mothers from taking the occasional night off and letting dad do a bottle feed. I think this was more than just a kind of paranoid guiilt at the nurse's lecture on our part. Lis and I were mulling it over, and there's something a bit weird going on in the way things are framed. Basically, a while back -- say the 1950s -- a woman would be considered irresponsible if she went off to work and left her baby to a caretaker. Her irresponsibility was framed in terms of neglecting her natural womanly duties. Then the feminists of the 60s and 70s fought their asses off to buck the oppressive categories of what was "natural" and "not natural" for a woman to be and do. Women went to work if they wanted. They stayed home if they wanted.
And yet, here we are, in the 2010s, suddenly hearing all of this discourse about how women should really be staying with their kids long term again. Now it's framed in terms of baby's health, and yet it seems to be potentially serving the same oppressive function that the "woman at home" did in the 1950s. Obviously babies and their health are extremely important, but at what point do the mother's rights and needs start to weigh in? Must she commit to total sainthood, or face the wrath of social judgement? (Interestingly in Bringing up Bebe, the French mothers are much more nonchalant about discontinuing breastfeeding after a few months, if they start at all. Did feminism do better in Europe?)
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