No, not this here of mine, this one, “Breastfeeding support: less is not more” over there at Spilt Milk’s. Really, go read it.
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I am convinced that in the early weeks of raising a newborn, instead of giving parents support, they get lots of bad advice. This includes all kind of “solutions” to fix the “problem”. So, instead of acknowledging that newborns are needy and often difficult and that it is a short period of the family’s transition, parents either look for or have “solutions” forced upon them. Often, breastfeeding is portrayed as part of the “problem” and if only the mother could get rest and be away from her baby (or whatever non-sense is prescribed), the “problem” will be fixed. When can we as a society stop looking at babies’ early needs as a “problem” and start looking at them as the first few weeks of normal life? Because of this issue, I think some mothers and fathers introduce formula to fix this “problem” and by doing so, they unknowingly sabotage the delicate early breastfeeding balance. So either, the baby has coincidentally passed through this fussy stage and the parents feel that formula fixed the “problem” or by the time they realize the formula did not have any improved effect, it is too late and the breastfeeding process was damaged.
My middle-class friends are finally starting to have babies (a good 10-15 years later than my working-class friends and family) and now I’m finally seeing that hideous “I feel like I should breastfeed” pressure I read about on the internet so much.
A friend of mine is having a really awful time and she keeps asking for advice and then ignoring it, to the point that it seems like what she wants is for nothing to work, so she can quit without feeling like she quit. And I don’t really know how to support her, in either case. She’s really invested in being good at things and having a hard time nursing seems to just be breaking her.