Breastfeeding Beyond World Breastfeeding Week

Breastfeeding's on my brain. This past week has been World Breastfeeding Week celebrated this year from August 1st to August 7th. I feel a little guilty because I feel like I should be out there in public with a sign touting breastfeeding this week, but in the mom zone sometimes I just can't add one more thing to my life to organize and get together. And I don't even have a breastfeeding baby to tote along any more for all the Latch-Ons that are being organized.

My efforts to help mothers succeed at breastfeeding come from leading monthly breastfeeding support meetings, helping and supporting moms on the phone and through my childbirth education classes. Education and correct information help pave the way to successful breastfeeding, but the most crucial element is support. Each mother that I work with I can offer support to and by doing so help to her achieve her breastfeeding goals. So, I work quietly behind the scenes helping one-on-one.

I am disheartened by the current breastfeeding rates. When I read on the World Breastfeeding Week page that according to UNICEF's State of the World's Children Report 2011 only 32.7% of 136.7 million babies are exclusively breastfed in the first six months, I felt shocked. For the United States specifically, our report card is pretty lame -- only 14.8% of our babies are breastfed exclusively for the first six months. Here in California, the rates go up to a whopping 25.7%. We're double the national rate, but still way below where we need to be for our children. Only a quarter of our CA babies still breastfeeding exclusively at six months? This actually meets the Healthy People 2020 Breastfeeding Objectives - but why is the goal so low?

I feel passionately about the importance of breastfeeding. Yes, I know that breastfeeding has incredible health benefits for both the mother and the baby. Yes, I know that breastfeeding is good for the environment. Yes, I know that breast milk is the baby's normal food and that formula is better looked upon as a medicine to be used only when its truly needed. Yes, I know that breastfed babies generally have higher IQ's. I know that breastfeeding has many benefits.

Yet, the main reason I feel passionately about breastfeeding is for a reason that can't necessarily be measured in concrete terms. For me the real power of breastfeeding lies in the strength of connection and the sense of wholeness breastfeeding gives to each new little person born into to this world. A breastfeeding baby is living his biologically correct destiny -- he is designed to breastfeed. Breastfeeding meets his needs for food, for comfort and for connection. Breastfeeding fulfills his efforts at communicating; the breastfeeding mother who responds to her baby, nurses her baby, and holds her baby in her arms enables her child to feel wholly understood. A baby (or child) who feels understood feels good about himself and at peace with the world.

This is a depth of communication between a mother and her infant that can only be found through the act of breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is an intricate dance of mutual and reciprocal communication between mother and child. I suppose that would fall under the title heading of "bonding', which I hesitate to use here because it's not specific enough; it's easy for some to minimize breastfeeding's necessity in this role; certainly there are other ways of bonding besides breastfeeding. But the breastfeeding relationship is a very specific form of communication that is different from any other.

Part of feeling deeply attached to another person lies in good communication; for babies, good communication -- which lays the foundation for the baby's sense of self -- starts with breastfeeding. Biologically and emotionally a baby needs to breastfeed. When he is in a mutually responsive breastfeeding relationship, he learns that he has the power to make things happen; his attempts at communicating with mother, the sun at the center of his universe, are fulfilled and he feels good. The world needs more children who feel understood, at peace and good.

When a mother chooses not to breastfeed or weans her baby prematurely (which I would consider six months to be) she closes a door of communication. She breaks connection. She looses a tool that cultivates sensitivity and attunement that can help her communicate best with her child. Her child's best way of communicating and getting his needs met has been unplugged. His need for her can more easily be diverted to a less satisfying object like a bottle or pacifier; a bottle or pacifier can make it easier for the mother to focus on other things rather than holding her baby in her arms and connecting to him. It can make it more likely that she will be less sensitive to his needs and helping him develop a good sense of self which is found through positive interaction with her.

Breastfeeding reminds the mother to stay in communication with her baby. When the mother is exclusively breastfeeding there is no denying that she is essential to her baby -- she is the only one who can meet her baby's needs to connect and communicate in this very specific way that is so essential to his well-being. She is the only one who can empower him fully in this way, laying the groundwork for a healthy and balanced human being.

I nursed both my daughters for many years. This breastfeeding relationship was essential in helping me to understand my daughters' needs and to respond to them; I developed a more highly-tuned sensitivity to their needs and a deep level of communicating with them. In doing so, I helped them to develop a strong sense of themselves. I am not sure why I nursed so long (it certainly wasn't a goal of mine), except that it seemed to be important to them and I trusted that if they felt they needed to nurse, then it must be essential for their development. I know without a doubt that our relationship and their sense of self would have been much different without breastfeeding.

I do not blame or look down on mothers who nurse for less time. I understand that our society is very hostile to breastfeeding and makes it difficult. I understand our birth practices in the United States make it challenging for mothers and babies right from the get go. I know that formula marketing and the formula companies' priorities of putting profits before human health undermine breastfeeding. I understand that many families lack enough support after having a child to help them succeed at breastfeeding. Don't even get me started about the lack of maternity leave for our new mothers. I understand that there are many obstacles.

Yet, this understanding this does not make me feel less sad for the babies who are not being breastfed or are breastfed for only a very short time. This is doing a disservice to our children - a disservice to our future. This is doing a disservice to mothers who also can feel a great sense of empowerment at their ability to provide for their children's needs at their breast. Not breastfeeding is a loss all around on many levels.

Our babies need the sense of peace and well-being that the act of nursing at their mother's breast provides. Our babies need this essential act of communication that can help foster a heightened level of sensitivity that is found in the breastfeeding mother. Our world needs children who feel understood and who approach the world with openness and peace; in order to understand and feel empathy, our children need to experience it first -- experience it at the breast. We need to find a way to keep the doors of this vital form of communication open for our mothers and babies.

Today, World Breastfeeding Week ends, but each and every day it is our responsibility to help our sisters, our daughters, our neighbors and yes, even our enemies, to achieve breastfeeding success. This is the one of surest ways we can bring a balanced sense of self to our children -- helping them become persons with a strong and healthy sense of self balanced with empathy and understanding. Persons who can work on healing and restoring balance to our world. Persons who understand the value of life.

So today or tomorrow, whenever you next have the to blessing to witness a mother nursing her baby, give her an encouraging smile, a wink or even two thumbs up. Let's let mothers know we support and value their efforts.