Unless I tell you otherwise, please assume I don't want your hands on my boobs

This breastfeeding controversy struck an incredibly raw nerve with me, and I've been trying to understand why.  I breastfed my children for 20 and 16 months respectively, but I never really questioned that choice until now.

I'm not the only one who's gone nuts about the Piri Weepu/La Leche League business, but I'm going nuts for my own set of reasons.  I won't be joining the hordes of rednecks calling midwives Nazis, although they never once took an interest in breastfeeding until an All Black got involved.  These people teach us that enough exposure to talkback will eventually have the same effect on you as a lobotomy.

And I don't entirely share Piri Weepu's view, "They are my kids, I'm not going to have anyone tell me how to raise my kids."  The original purpose of his ad, after all, was to urge people not to smoke around their children.  I think the state has the right to make or encourage me to do certain things that benefit my kids, like put them in seatbelts or support their learning.  I think it's got both the right and responsibility to inform me how to keep my kids healthy, including by breastfeeding.  And as a grown up with the wellbeing of two little people in my hands, I've got a responsibility to at least weigh up this information.

What rankles me is not being told that breastmilk is better than formula, but the way this was communicated to me as a new mum, elevating breastfeeding into my life priority, whether I agreed with that or not.  My first birth was not a barrel of laughs.  I was young(ish), without family nearby or much idea what I was doing - and because it was the days before paid parental leave and we had no money, I had to get back to work as quickly as possible.  Thirty-six awful hours of labour culminated in an emergency caesarean, ante-natal depression segued neatly into post-natal depression, and the fact I didn't bond with my baby straight away made me feel guilt and unhappiness.  Not being able to breastfeed readily was really the poo icing on a poo cake.


Bad birth experiences - and plenty of us have had them - can't be blamed on breastfeeding advocates, but how those advocates respond can be critical.  In hospital, when I asked for information on formula feeding, my question literally wasn't acknowledged by hospital staff, because that would have meant admitting there was an alternative.  There was no adult discussion with me about the child health merits of breastfeeding or bottle-feeding: just a big silent fend.  (I believe it's this censorship, real or perceived - this denial that there are other valid ways to raise a child - that's riled people in relation to the Piri Weepu ad.)  It became very clear in hospital that my happiness, my bond with my baby, my partner's feelings and my mental health were not particularly relevant considerations.  The message was 'Keep on going'.

But that wasn't the worst of it: a parade of breastfeeding enthusiasts on staff made their way through my room in the maternity ward, often without introducing themselves, and some literally just grabbed my tits.  Seriously: I'd be sitting trying to feed, and some strange woman would mosey on in unannounced, help herself to a handful of boob and stick it without further ado in my baby's gob.

Now, I don't know about you, but I make a real effort not to grab random people's breasts - or at least I introduce myself before doing so.  This treatment actually made me feel like I was a breeding animal, without any sort of dignity, reduced to an indifferent lactation function.  We ladies have gone to the trouble of having two and bit waves of feminism to show we are more than just our bodies, and can do more than just reproduce - and yet there I was, strangers grasping at my knockers under the auspices of the women's movement.  One time I was so tired and discouraged that I looked at the anonymous midwife with my boob in her hand, tried to say something, but just cried with a bunch of hopeless, snotty, inarticulate sobs.  'Keep on going', was the response.

My hospital stay ended abruptly when I could take it no more, threw my toys and was discharged into the cold night at 10pm.  Breastfeeding may not at first have been a natural and womanly process for me, but packing a tantrum will always be.

And then, five years later, there was my son.  I'm really quite fond of him, but there's no denying that as a baby he was the most difficult little shit in God's creation.*  (Since that time, he's grown into the most difficult medium-sized shit in God's creation.)  He breastfed like a champ, but he liked to do it often, feeding four or five times on a good night and eight times on a bad one.  I was exhausted and I couldn't cope, so I quit my job.  Had I bottle-fed, the lad would have slept for longer intervals, and Andy B and I could have shared the feeding responsibilities - much like that Piri Weepu footage deemed too injurious to public health to go to air.   Our older child would have had more attention and time, the stress on our family relationships would have been less, and our household income greater.  All this was my choice - but to be honest, it never occurred to me to choose otherwise.  I look back on it now and it seems inexplicable.  What benefits did I think crazed, sleep-deprived parents were conferring on my children?

If I sound like I'm really frickin grumpy, it's because I'm really frickin grumpy.  I feel like some part of my life with my babies was lost because of someone else's zealotry.  When the La Leche League calls the controversy a storm in a teacup, it belittles my experience.  I'm not even sure what my kids gained from the breastfeeding.  In the improbable event I sprogged again, I'd do exactly what I liked and listen to no one: that's the legacy my experience of breastfeeding advocacy has left me.  Sometimes, the problem with breastfeeding advocacy is that it's exactly that: advocacy for breastfeeding, not for the women doing it.

What I want to see is breastfeeding advocacy that regains the confidence of women by understanding our lives.  Until it does, it's as useless as tits on a bull.

* The medium-sized shit in question ran into the garden last week, came back with a flower and a cheeky grin for his mum, and said 'There you go!'.  It almost made me forgive him for that episiotomy.  Almost.

Gratuitous photo of my kids being cute, included only for purposes of showing off.