The Heusens

No, I'm not talking about Sharon Stone, who claims to have amazing breasts AND a genius IQ (I'd like to see her take an actual IQ test - homegirl is straight up wacky and delusional...did you hear about how she lost custody of her son because she kept insisting he get Botox in his feet...because she didn't like how they smelled?)

I am also not talking about my own brains and boobs. I know some of you might wonder why my chichis are so small. And I'd like to point out my own theory that they are small because my brain is just SO HUGE that there is no room in my body for big boobies. Just think about THAT. (But not too hard.)

The real brain news here is that Saya's EEG is normal! Yay! We just have a followup with a neurologist for the all-clear, but everything looks good. Chalk those spasms up to the randomness of babyhood.

And the boob news is about breastfeeding. Let me give a little background on my stance on breastfeeding. In the hospital, when I had Saya, I was accosted by so-called "Nipple Nazis" - lactation consultants, nurses, and doctors - who basically made me feel like I would be an awful human being if I didn't breastfeed exclusively for six months.

While some aspects of breastfeeding are extremely gratifying, many aspects of breastfeeding just suck - it introduces inequity into the mother-father relationship, it's unbelievably physically demanding, and it sucks up roughly 5 hours per day for at least the first three months. I'm also convinced that a big reason why Saya woke up so many times is because breast milk is too easily digested in comparison to formula, leaving her with an empty tummy 4-5 times per night. Now, we're STILL having issues getting Saya to take a bottle - because we were told not to introduce one until breastfeeding was well-established - which creates problems for us when we want to leave Saya with a babysitter for an extended period of time. And let's not forget how fun breastfeeding becomes once teething starts.

I also think the breastfeeding expectation puts an undue burden on working mothers in particular. If I didn't have the schedule flexibility I currently have, breastfeeding would have been even more of a nightmare. While some working moms are fine with pumping, others - like me - find it far too burdensome and are performing the task out of a sense of guilt and obligation created by the medical community.

I don't know why I caved so easily to Nipple Nazi pressure. Left to my own devices (sans pressure) I probably would have supplemented with formula from the beginning. It offers flexibility and sanity. But I didn't know any better, and so I succumbed because I didn't want to feel guilt or pressure from other moms and the medical community. I'd also like to point out that this is not even something that many moms have the option to do - many, many friends of mine have not been able to breastfeed due to one physical reason or another (or because their babies never took to it), and other working friends of mine who don't have the same schedule flexibility I enjoy are made to feel either that they're short-changing their baby by not providing pumped milk, or feel forced to endure pumping at work.

That's why I'm always annoyed when, while breastfeeding in public, a Nipple Nazi turns to me and says something like, "It's so great that you're breastfeeding. It's really The BEST thing you could EVER DO for your baby." Oh, really? Cuz I totally thought the best thing to do for my baby was to, like, be her mom and sh*t. As if the day-to-day holding, comforting, talking, teaching, playing, bathing, rocking to sleep, poo-cleaning, singing, schlepping, etc. was all insignificant in comparison to this very basic, and yet totally unnecessary act. Yes, breastfeeding feeds and comforts my baby - but it's not like I wouldn't be able to provide that for her in other ways. And I would perhaps be a more sane, organized mother if I didn't have, oh, five hours a day dedicated to breastfeeding. And happy me = happy baby, right?

So...why don't I stop? I'm trying! We're trying to wean Saya right now - it's just a process because she's become habituated to breastfeeding and doesn't have a "substitute" for comfort. I don't know why I bought into the whole thing to begin with. I've always been wary of claims by the medical community that we "should" or "should not" be doing x, y, or z, in large part because I took a statistics course once where we spent an entire year (year!) ripping apart the methods used in most medical journals. Far too many medical studies report risk in terms of odds ratios, rather than in terms of absolute risk or statistical significance, leading to gross exaggerations of medical benefits and risks. (For example, you might hear things like "Taking a prenatal vitamin reduces the risk of neural tube defects by 50 percent!" But...should you care, when the absolute risk is already only 0.003 percent?....) In addition, medical studies often make claims based on non-representative populations, or make causal claims using correlational data. So, I should have been more wary when I heard claims that would certainly be hard to validate statistically (like "Breastfeeding = higher IQ" or "Breastfeeding = better immunity").

That's why I was so happy when Nicole sent me this article in the Atlantic Monthly, which presents a comprehensive review of the medical findings on the causal benefits of breastfeeding - and concludes that, basically, there are none. After you factor out all the other things contributing to a baby's health and happiness, the benefits are essentially zero. I was also happy when Nicole sent me this cool response article. I consider this mandatory reading material if you're a new parent or thinking of becoming one. In other words, if you have Brains AND Boobs. (Or, if you're like me - or a man - if you just have Brains.)

Now, enough mommy blogging! Back to grant-writing....erggggg.....

Posted by Ashlyn on Saturday, April 4, 2009 at 12:17 PM | Permalink