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.

Speaking Up for the Little Guy

When you really need a Park Ranger, you can never find one. Although, somehow, he mysteriously appears when you make a u-turn in the park road that apparently is illegal - that costs 100 bucks by the way (and, Happy New Year to you to Mr. Ranger!) -  but, when you really need him, it's crickets. Today was the no show day as I and another mother traipsed around California State Park grounds hoping to get back up for an urgent situation - saving a butterfly.

Saving a butterfly?! I know - you might be scratching your head right now. You might even have that little "oookaayy" with the eye roll going. You sound just like the emergency park operator when I called the number that said, "For information or an emergency call....." Hey, it did say information. When the operator asked what the situation was I had to let her know that we wanted to get in contact with the Park Ranger - we had a situation where a man from our group was trying to abscond with a State Park butterfly and take it home (and in the process was injuring it); our understanding was that not only was this illegal, it was also immoral. We needed confirmation and interference. Isn't that the Ranger's job? There was a definite pause and then reassurance that the Ranger would call me. She did take my cell phone number.

I don't normally like to speak up. I hate confrontations. But I had a mission. Just last month this same perpetrator snatched a beautiful caterpillar and took it home from Temescal Park. My daughter and her friends had initially caught the caterpillar - it was incredibly beautiful and colorful- but I told them to place it back where they had found it after they had a chance to inspect the creature. They did.

Photo courtesy of BaconFat at Flickr

Not much later this man from our group and his daughter caught the sweet beastie and put it in a jar to take home. I was upset, but said nothing. Didn't want to rock the boat. My eight-year-old daughter was upset, too, but I assured her he was a nature man and he was sure to return the caterpillar once it became a butterfly.

Then, at another get together a couple of weeks ago in the same park, I discovered in a group conversation with the man that indeed the caterpillar turned into a butterfly, but he and his daughter kept it in the house, never released it in the wild and it died in their home. Betrayed. I felt livid at the thought of that beautiful creature not able to live out it's full destiny trapped in their bedroom. The utter gall.

This really weighed on my mind. Today, as I was walking into Temescal Park with my daughter we discussed the situation and I vowed that if he took another caterpillar or butterfly, I would speak up. (Be careful what you wish for, right?) So I was sitting on the deck under an old oak tree gabbing with the other mothers there, when right next to me this man arrives with his butterfly net filled with one of the largest and most incredible yellow butterflies I have ever seen; then he proceeds to put this butterfly into a small, plastic jar and put a lid on it. I was incredulous. I had to speak up. I was very careful to use my "I statements" and was very glad for my training as a support counselor. I didn't think anyone else would know or care. This is a group of homeschoolers, so everyone is opinionated and you never know which way the wind will blow.

Surprisingly, it was some of the other children who spoke up with the same objections I had. I just spoke about how upset it made me and I would prefer that he not take the butterfly and if he proceeded on with his mission, I would contact the Ranger. Another woman who recently became a docent for the Santa Monica Mountains informed him that it is illegal to take anything - even a dropped acorn - from a California State Park.

And yet he defended himself and was persisting in his acquisition which he wanted for his daughter (who was at the same time holding a large dragonfly trapped in her fingers). It was too much. And he tried to deflect the whole situation by saying that we were ganging up on his daughter - to which I pointed out that we were talking to him and not even addressing her at all. It was truly unbelievable.

So began my march for the Park Ranger. Two mothers joined me. We never did find a Ranger. And after my call to the State Park Operator (who I am sure was a little surprised at our "emergency"),  the other mothers and I walked back to where everyone was. The butterfly had since been released. Thank god!

I ignored the man. He approached us with an apology and then launched into justifying why he and his daughter had a right to take the butterfly. His defense being that since his daughter was diagnosed with Autism she needed to handle and hold animals. This didn't wash with any of us as an excuse to torment and torture a living creature - as one of the mothers there also had a child with Autism and we all knew someone who had a child with special needs even if ours did not. To us, this was a teachable moment for any child. Respecting living creatures. Respecting life. Following the law.

Photo courtesy of Bron at Flickr

I suppose we all learned something. The following day several people posted the rules for California State Parks and for the Santa Monica Mountains; here are the rules for California State Parks: http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=21301,  http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=21300 
Our group is going to have a nature guide from the park talk to the kids about the park rules and how to respect wildlife.  We learned to disagree, yet to do so respectfully. My daughter learned that her mother follows through. I learned that you gotta do what you gotta do, no matter how unpleasant. And, heck, good can come out of it. A learning moment for all of us.


Still waiting for my phone call to be returned, though. Guess, I shouldn't hold my breath. In the end it's up to us isn't it, to speak up for the little guy? In the words of Margaret Mead, "A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."