The Big Letdown

by Kimberly Seals Allers

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  Where consultants actually may need to dial back the well-intentioned overzealousness is toward WHO code compliance. The WHO code is an important document and infant formula marketing is indeed more insidious than blatant but still reprehensible. Compliance is critically important. But women don’t see it that way. Free samples of everything from laundry detergent to infant formula are viewed as par for the course in American capitalism. Mothers aren’t there when their physician is skiing on the dime of the infant formula makers, possibly being influenced by free trips. And in this country, without the stark images of sickly babies, breast-milk-substitute marketing appears to be a victimless crime. Trying to mobilize women around a problem they don’t see is counterproductive. In addition, inherent in strict adherence to the WHO code is a dangerous definition of what is considered actually breastfeeding—i.e., at the breast—and what is not. This doesn’t unite women, who as a matter of federal policy have very little time to keep a baby at the breast before returning to work anyway. A strident opposition to anyone who makes bottles and nipples, when bottles are necessary for mothers who have to return to work and choose to pump, makes the ones calling out WHO code violators look out of touch. And there are more and more mothers with special circumstances.

  “I definitely planned on breastfeeding. I always knew that I would,” says Amy Lupold Bair, speaking from her home in the suburbs of Maryland. “I read everything that I could get my hands on before I had my first child, and I understood the health reasons why breast is best. I had taken a leave of absence from my teaching job to be a stay-at-home mom, so I knew that I would have a certain length of time and availability. I just assumed that I would breastfeed and it would just be an easy thing,” she says.

  Bair is a social media wunderkind of sorts. She created the concept of the Twitter Party and then went on to dominate the field, now charging some $6,000–$8,000 per party and hosting at least three or four per week. You do the math. Her clients are nearly guaranteed to make the coveted trending topics list on Twitter, either in the U.S. or, more likely, worldwide. In July 2008, she launched her award-winning Web site ResourcefulMommy.com, which she saw as a way to write parenting articles for the freelance writing career she hoped to spark, instead of returning to work. And she is the author of Raising Digital Families for Dummies. An English teacher by trade, Amy and her husband had a five-year plan that included one child then another two years later, and returning to work three years after that.

  But the planned-out motherhood experience Amy had in her head did not materialize. “My daughter was born two months early, so that immediately complicated things. I also had something called hyperemesis gravidarum when pregnant so I had lost thirty pounds and was very sick. So I had my own health issues on top of having an unhealthy newborn. We tried teaching her to latch about forty-eight hours after she was born because there was not an immediate opportunity to feed her. I went to the NICU about thirteen to fourteen hours a day and tried multiple times to breastfeed her. They found that she was burning more calories trying to nurse than she was receiving in milk. On top of that she would stop breathing—due to her preemie-ism she could not suck, swallow, and breathe innately like other babies. I was devastated,” Amy says. “A child who feels like they are suffocating when they are nursing because they don’t know how to suck, swallow, and breathe pulls away and arches back—it’s a survival instinct. So I had this newborn who was pulling away from me frantically when I tried to nurse her and that was a very difficult thing for me to understand as a twenty-six-year-old first-time mother.

  “Certainly the focus was on getting my daughter healthy. She was in the hospital for three weeks. It was very critical and touch-and-go with her for a while. Emotionally, it was really terrible. The whole idea of having a big healthy baby that I could hold immediately and would breastfeed happily flew right out of the window,” Amy says.

  For months Amy agonized over trying to transition her baby to the breast. It never happened. “It was not until I met with the second lactation consultant that I found some relief. She said, “Let’s get you on a pump. Let’s make life easier for you and just know that you are providing her with some breast milk, which is certainly better than none at all, if that’s your goal.” It wasn’t until she said that that I was able to say, “It’s okay. Let it go. It’s okay if she never nurses.” At that point I was sort of able to relax and I actually went into this mode where I was able to pump more efficiently. Pumping breast milk for eight months, five to six times a day was a nightmare. It was very emotionally draining, but I had the incentive of improving her health. The breast milk that comes in for a premature baby is very different from the milk that comes in for a full-term baby. It has a different quality, caloric amount … it even looked different in the nursery fridge from other pumped milk. I understood that it was really important for her health to have that, especially seeing that she was already starting behind because she was two months early, so it was very motivational for me.”

  Amy ended up with enough milk to provide at least some breast milk through her daughter’s entire first year. “But we always had to supplement. We had to supplement in the hospital with milk fortifier and I had some supply issues. When you are exclusively pumping sometimes the body doesn’t always provide the supply of breast milk needed. Had we not had things like the milk fortifier, formula, or bottles that had a variety of features like nipple sizes and flow rates, I don’t know what would have happened.”

  Twenty-seven months after her daughter was born, Amy gave birth to her son. “After my experience with my daughter, I already told myself that if this next child does not latch on I don’t care if we have to go make him a sandwich, I am not pumping again. I was prepared to go straight to the formula,” she says. Like her first delivery, Amy ended up having an emergency C-section and suffering from dehydration. Her newborn son went straight to the NICU. “I didn’t even get to touch him. So he actually received a bottle as his first milk and did not have any contact with me for several hours,” Amy recalls. “I was concerned that we were going to be in a situation where he wouldn’t be able to latch or I would not be able to breastfeed, but actually he rejected the bottle and took to me immediately, so I nursed him for sixteen months,” she says. Her son nursed exclusively for six months. “He would not take a bottle. I would pump and have to throw it away. We ended up moving him from the breast to a sippy cup.”

  Amy’s experiences shaped her own sensibilities about the varied experiences of breastfeeding and the need to not have one fixed idea of what is acceptable breastfeeding and what is not. Women like Amy, who wholeheartedly support breastfeeding but also understand the roles of formula, bottles, and teats are not the exception—they are more of the norm. And it is creating fixed lines about what is breastfeeding and what is not that also creates rigid definitions as to who is a breastfeeding supporter or breastfeeding mother and who is not. This is counterproductive to movement building.

  Because of her personal story, Amy often works with companies that are technically WHO code violators and has been on the receiving end of serious backlash from breastfeeding supporters for some of these decisions. “To those people I just say that my daughter is alive and healthy because of bottles and because I was able to find a nipple that worked for her. Yes, I want all mothers to breastfeed. But I also want mothers to have support if that is not their story.”

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  Stories are important. They are how we shape our perception of the world. The stories that shape the breastfeeding world should be multidimensional and complex like the women they seek to attract. Instead, they have been mostly simplistic. Drawing on my communications and messaging expertise, I’ve identified essentially three story lines that have been dominant in the breastfeeding narrative in the past ten years.

  The first is the idyllic-meadow scenario, seen in many parenting magazines, that presents breastfeeding as calming, beautiful, and serene. While that can be the experience
of some women, most women face fear and frustration at some point in their breastfeeding journey. Putting out a euphoric visual that is in direct opposition to the experience of most women caused some to stop breastfeeding, concluding that something must be wrong with them if their experience is so different. The second story line is all about the scientific evidence behind breastfeeding, even as “science” became a more confusing field for all. That misstep took an intellectual, fact-based approach to an emotionally charged act—showing once again that the movement did not understand the personal complexities of breastfeeding.

  But where the media really dug in and found a place to amplify a dangerous submessage was with the so-called lactivist story line.

  “Bristol mother suckers!” the sign said. A woman with a broad smile held the poster up high with her left hand, an umbrella in her right. She had a bright red scarf on her head, tied Rosie the Riveter style. Her baby was snugly in a front-facing carrier, wearing a similarly styled red scarf. The occasion for such colorful outfits and equally colorful language was a breastfeeding flash mob that descended on the Park Street Café in Bristol, England, just days after a twenty-nine-year-old mom was asked to leave when she began breastfeeding her baby. The ousted mom took her anger to the highest court of public opinion, also known as Twitter and Facebook, and in a few days hundreds of breastfeeding supporters rallied to her side on social media and in real life to march to the café, pull out their breasts, and feed in a show of defiance and solidarity. The owner was quick to apologize and reiterate that all mothers are welcome in his establishment. But the nurse-in was on.

  It’s become an all-too-familiar scene in the U.S. as well. So-called lactivists rallying on social media, staging nurse-ins at cafés, shopping malls, corporate headquarters, and media outlets after a mother has been slighted, shamed, or expelled for breastfeeding in public despite laws in almost fifty states protecting breastfeeding in public. The “defend and protest” refrain has become a common narrative among breastfeeding supporters and a large part of the mother-led, social-media-powered movement to normalize breastfeeding. Much of this organizing occurs on Twitter and Instagram with hashtags such as #NormalizeBreastfeeding or #FreeTheNipple that have brought women and men, celebrities and activists together to support nursing moms and end shaming. That’s the good news.

  The bad news is that every inflammatory headline about an ousted mom sensationalizes breastfeeding and perpetuates the notion that breastfeeding puts you at risk of being kicked out of a public place and that you need near activist-level moxie to do it. On the surface, women inciting other women to fight for their right to breastfeed and coming together in a display of sister courage has all the hallmarks of a powerful strategy to mobilize women. But women waving signs like “Bristol mother suckers!” may make breastfeeding look more like a fringe movement or a cult. Names such as the “breastapo” or “mammary militia” are thrown around after these incidents. And who has the time? When I was breastfeeding and heard of nurse-ins, I always wondered who were these women who had extra hours to march to a café and sit there nursing in protest. I had to work. Even while on my extended unpaid maternity leave, I freelanced to keep some money coming in—there was no time for nurse-ins. These dynamics can alienate many women while emboldening a select few. And it adds to the notion that breastfeeding and protecting breastfeeding are the work of the privileged. Something is indeed upside down if not inside out about how we think about our so-called choices when we take to the Internet and to the streets in knee-jerk reactionary ways. What women need is a well-conceived outlet or campaign for these frustrations that leads to systemic change, not just hashtag activism.

  Women also need more institutional support. The United States Breastfeeding Coalition has done commendable work leading the state coalitions to think and act more inclusively and with a broader scope, The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has been the leader in the philanthropic space, funding millions in breastfeeding-supportive activities in line with their mission of supporting early childhood and economic security. Others like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have also stepped up. But the dangerous framing of breastfeeding as an individual issue keeps away key funders, who in fact claim to focus on infant and maternal health but don’t view breastfeeding as fundamental to improving those outcomes.

  Some advocates have gone another route, rallying celebrities to the cause. Bettina Lauf Forbes and Danielle Briggs have built their life’s work banking on the power of celebrity being the key driver in shifting cultural norms around breastfeeding. As the founders of the Best of Babes Foundation, they primarily enroll celebrities in the Champions for Moms ad campaign and host events centered on the power of celebrity to advance the breastfeeding movement. They have already enrolled stars such as Kelly Preston, Jenna Elfman, Laila Ali, Kelly Rutherford, and Gabrielle Reece; spurred corporate sponsors to invest in change; and put positive pressure on the media to tell the story of moms who are being prevented from succeeding by what they call Booby Traps.

  Their model for helping women and babies is based on the thing no one wants to admit: we follow celebrities. Historically, celebrities and Hollywood have always influenced our ideas about beauty, fashion, and our bodies in general, which play a part in our breastfeeding decisions. We want to buy the strollers and clothing that they use for their own kids. And if celebrities can make leggings and headbands cool, then why not breastfeeding?

  “We want to do what Michael Jordan and Nike did for fitness. And what Paris Hilton did for carrying a dog around in a Louis Vuitton bag. Jordan made it cool and hip to exercise. And Paris Hilton transcended socioeconomics. Even if you had a fake Louis Vuitton, you put your dog in it. That’s the power of celebrities to set trends,” Bettina said in an interview.

  Of course, breastfeeding is more complex. And as much as we love celebrities, we also love to hate celebrities and criticize them for their idealized lives, which are far removed from our day-to-day realities. Celebrity can be a double-edged sword.

  Still, Hollywood has had a fairly robust parade of breastfeeding supporters: Angelina Jolie, Alanis Morissette, Beyoncé, Alicia Silverstone, Halle Berry, Mayim Bialik, Alyssa Milano, Tori Spelling, Kourtney Kardashian, Miranda Kerr, Gisele Bündchen, Kendra Wilkinson, Selma Hayek, Naomi Watts, Rebecca Romijn, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Garner, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kate Beckinsale, Mary-Louise Parker, Pink, Ashlee Simpson, Victoria Beckham, Hilary Duff, Jenna Fischer, and Snooki to name a few. All of these mothers have publicly stated that they breastfed or made positive comments about the experience. Snooki even talked candidly about her fear of pain and feeling “like a cow” when pumping, but overall she spoke of loving the experience. Add to this that Ricki Lake, Bialik, and Morissette have also been very vocal supporters of extended breastfeeding and attachment parenting. And alt-rocker Peter Wentz solidified his “cool dad” status by commenting that he had tasted his wife’s, Ashlee Simpson’s, breast milk, declaring it “soury” and “weird.”

  With such a long list of celebrity moms and dads talking about breastfeeding, why aren’t we there yet? How many more does it take to get our “Nike moment”? For as much as celebrities can help with the “image” of breastfeeding, there is a downside to their spotlight. It’s easy to think, well, of course Angelina Jolie is breastfeeding twins—she has the money to buy resources such as nannies, a personal chef, and housekeepers, while the rest of us have to cook our own food and clean up after ourselves (and possibly another child). If I had all of that, I would breastfeed too! Angelina Jolie doesn’t have to return to work in three weeks or fret how she will pay the bills. She probably has access to superior health care providers, on-standby lactation consultants, a personal trainer, and money for all the convenience tools. It can deepen the dangerous thinking that you need extraordinary circumstances to breastfeed and, without that, it is just too hard. The use of celebrities may make breastfeeding more attractive to the average woman, but not necessarily more attainable.
Is attractive enough?