BREASTFEEDING OR BREASTMILKFEEDING?

“By the time my youngest had moved onto solid foods, I had spent hours on hours staring at my breast pump, imagining all the ways I could improve the design…” -Melinda Gates quoted in an article https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/03/melinda-gates-its-time-to-talk-about-breastfeeding-at-work.html

The title of the article in which Melinda Gates is quoted is, “Melinda Gates: It’s time to get real about breastfeeding at work.” I am vaguely amused by the title because I don’t believe that getting “real” about breastfeeding is about pumping. Yet so many people, including breastfeeding advocates, use the words, breastfeeding and breastmilkfeeding interchangeably. Even the Lancet 2023 Breastfeeding Series implies by some of their comments that breastfeeding and breastmilkfeeding create the same health benefits to moms and babies. I’d like to see the research papers on that! I haven’t seen any studies that do such a comparison.

The title should have been about getting real about breastmilkfeeding at work. How come one of the wealthiest women on earth must use a breast pump to work? She is not working on an assembly line, in a factory where stoppage of the line would not be acceptable (other than official breaks). Was breastfeeding unacceptable at the Gates Foundation? One would assume she could have an office for privacy and a nanny to care for the baby, if she was uncomfortable about breastfeeding publicly.

The article about Melinda Gates goes onto state:

“In fact Gates says she toyed with [the] idea of patenting her own design. ‘I like to think that in an alternate life, I’m a breast pump tycoon.’”

Was she joking? Perhaps she is thinking of the Gates Foundation’s global agenda of a technological solution to any problem? In this case the problem is employment and breastfeeding. What is acceptable to the US corporate world is getting rooms to pump not keeping mothers and babies together. Do people understand about the cost of infant care? In the US infant care costs way more than child care. And it should cost more. Mothers are irreplaceable. Babies miss their mothers, and strangers are not who they need. Babies cry for many reasons. One unrecognized reason is the need for the presence of their mother. Babies get overfeed in care-giving situations, because the crying is misunderstood for the need to eat, and not the need for physical comfort of the mother’s presence.

I suppose I am fascinated by the Lancet 2023 Breastfeeding Series and its views on crying. Their views made me want to cry. I suppose everyone thinks that crying babies are the norm. Yet there are cultures in which babies don’t cry very much at all. The babies are held or carried most of the time. There are babies that live in communities in which babies’ feet don’t touch the ground until the babies start to walk. Babies are a part of the community, not isolated away from the community. And yes those babies are breastfed.

Some years ago I met a young woman from Liberia, and we were talking about her life and my life. She talked about walking to school and how a Black Mamba snake (one of the most poisonous snakes in her country) appeared in her path. Luckily, she didn’t move, having been taught to stay still. Finally the snake moved away into the brush. She taught me how to cook plaintain, and showed me how to wrap material around my waist to make a skirt (fanti). I talked to her about my desire to become an IBCLC, and she didn’t understand what I was talking about. I tried to explain and said I wanted to teach breastfeeding. She started laughing so hard, and I asked her why she was laughing. She told me that all mothers in Liberia know how to breastfeed, they don’t need teachers. She thought the idea of teaching breastfeeding was crazy, and I felt somewhat offended by her laughter. She was such a delightful person, and her laugh contagious that I laughed just a little bit. It’s only years after teaching US moms to breastfeed, that I understand more fully what she was teaching me. Knowledge of breastfeeding in US culture is buried in technological babel, and in products like pumps, bottles, and pacifiers.

“Breastfeeding is time-consuming for women, which takes away from time that could be spent on income-earning activities.” https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01933-X/fulltext

The above quote is from The Lancet Series 2023, Breastfeeding 3-”The political economy of infant and young child feeding: confronting corporate power, overcoming structural barriers, and accelerating progress.” Guess what else is time consuming besides breastfeeding? Yes, breastmilkfeeding and/or infant formula feeding. Heaven forbid mothers breastfeed rather than spending time on income-earning activities. Instead, maybe the request for funds from foundations like Gates should be on giving mothers an income, rather than spending money on programs that end up being beneficial to employers who gain cheap labor. Meanwhile mothers and babies gain what? A pumping room with fancy equipment. Is the solution to global poverty the exportation of pump technology, and mother-baby separation?

Valerie W. McClain