…Contemplating the Core Elements of a Modern Breastfeeding Lifestyle

Frida Kahlo was born on this day, 103 years ago, into the patriarchal society of early 20′th century Mexico.  A revolutionary in so many ways, she created an enduring brand of her image that greeted me today on my Google home page.

A  lifetime of painful experiences, including contracting polio, a near fatal bus accident, a tumultuous marriage and infidelities, multiple miscarriages, served as the inspiration for her paintings.  She continually pushed the envelope of social convention as she struggled to find her identity and come to terms with what it meant to be a Mexican woman.  

One of her more powerful paintings, ‘My Nurse and I’ gives us an idea of how this journey began for Frida.

Frida’s mother fell into a postpartum depression in the months following her birth and handed her over to a nanny.  There are reports that her wet nurse was drinking and offered little nurturing and care to her as an infant.  This lack of bonding is thought to have been the impetus for her perpetual attempts at giving birth to and mothering herself through her art.  

There are many layers to this painting.   The masked nurse hints at a shameful and victimized version of the Mexican mother, La Malinche.   Seemingly abandoned by her own mother, she was left to nurture her own development to adulthood.  On a more positive note, she connects to her Mexican homeland and indigenous culture symbolically through this act of breastfeeding.

As a breastfeeding advocate, I find it disturbing to see this impersonal depiction of what should be a primal bonding experience between a mother and her child or between a loving mother surrogate, wet nurse, and child. 

Frida Kahlo shared with us in this painting what she perceived to be the lack of the milk of human kindness that was offered to her while she was at the breast.  Although this had left a bad taste in her mouth, she still portrayed breastfeeding as the cultural norm for her time.

What feelings does this painting evoke in you?

Confidence, according to dictionary.com is a noun.   

1.full trust; belief in the powers, trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing.  2. belief in oneself and one’s powers or abilities; self-confidence; self-reliance; assurance.

There is a familiar catchphrase.  ‘Fake it until you make it’.   Such attempts at  imitating confidence to produce success often fall short for breastfeeding mothers.   

• They worry about how the experience will be for them, and whether or not they will be successful. 
• There is no margin for error when it comes to feeding and nurturing their babies.

Jerry Stocking was interviewed on the subject of confidence.  If you have time, please check out his blog   where you can read and/or listen to his wonderful perspective on this subject.   He believes that confidence is  more of a process than a thing.  I agree with him, especially when discussing it in relation to breastfeeding. 

The kernels of wisdom from his interview are as follows:

• We want it all without the risk.
• We run into problems when we get caught up in the why’s.
• We should not opt for structure over possibility.
• Confidence and Competence should leap frog for best results.

Conscious breastfeeding is not a no-brainer.   It is a skill that is learned by the mother and taught to her baby.  In reality, there is a process that we must go through to learn any skill.  In his blog post, Learning = Change, Rowan Manahan discusses movement through the steps of lthe learning curve (photo) below. 

1. Unconscious Competence:  A mother acknowledges that breastfeeding is a skill to be learned.  She becomes pro-active in the learning process.  To move to the next level, she may need an intervention to assist her in learning the latch.
2. Conscious Incompetence:  The Aha moment comes when she realizes she must make a decision. Her choice is whether to change a sub-optimal latch, grin and bear the pain or abandon breastfeeding altogether.  This stage of learning can be as short as 3 weeks.  The key is not to give up because of  physical discomfort or mental frustration or exhaustion. 
3. Conscious Competence:  Modifications are learned and made which make the latch consistent and pain-free.
4. Unconscious Competence:  Breastfeeding is operating well without conscious thought.  It is ingrained in the body memory.  The skill has been mastered.

Confidence is a way to play with with the unknown, to learn.  It is present in the first steps of the learning curve as we pay more attention.  With the acquisition of skills, confidence becomes grounded in competence.  Ultimately, it becomes second nature, leaving us with a sense of mastery.  

Confidence can open us up to a much larger game.  The secret is to not become afraid of change.  The balance is struck when we maintain an on-going dance between having faith (confidence) and developing the ability to do something (competence). 

Conscious Breastfeeding mothers put their full attention on optimizing their experience. This is the ultimate confidence game for mothers.

I was privileged to attend an amazing personal transformation workshop led by Jerry Stocking, Embracing Being,  Held in early June, this is an on-going course that he brings to New York City several times a year.

A group of us participated in an impromptu sales exercise.  We were sent out on the streets of Manhattan in the Herald Square area.  Each of us was asked to sell one copy of a book from Jerry Stocking’s catalogue of books  to a complete stranger.  Each book was to be sold for $10, which we were told was the price of re-admission to the morning session of the workshop in progress.

The Herald Square neighborhood around Madison Square Garden, Macy’s and Penn Station is usually full of pedestrians, especially on a warm Saturday morning.  People were in motion-many of them were rushing to a  destination or had time constraints needing to catch a bus or train. 

Enter our band of itinerant sales people.

To be successful, we had to break through our personal fears.  We had to confront our fears of approaching strangers, of being rejected, of not being fully conversant with the product we were asked to sell.

There are no accidents.  The book I chose, “How to Win by Quitting” was more fitting than I could have imagined at first glance.  I had chosen it thinking it would apply to giving up substances (smoking, alcohol, etc.) or resonate with folks trying to find their passions in this new global economy.  Actually, it spoke to the fundamentals of this “cold call” sales exercise.

Fear can stop us from attempting anything.  Be it sales or breastfeeding.  As the lotto motto reminds us, “You’ve got to be in it, to win it”.  By quitting my fear, I was fully able to engage in the experience and win big.

The basic secret of successful sales is that you must be able to put your attention on the recipient of the goods or services being offered.  It turned out that the objective of our morning exercise was not to merely sell a book.  It was to observe a process.

The win was not in selling the book as much as it was being fully engaged and attentive.  A personal, authentic human interaction was to be experienced.  Selling the book was just the icing on the cake.

If you are able to align yourself with the dance of communication, you experience life fully in the moment.  You can have fun and both sides reap a reward.

This is as true for breastfeeding advocacy as it is for successful sales.  Passion and playfulness need to to be the order of the day!

Living in NYC, there are many opportunities to interact with celebrities.   However, one of the reasons John Lennon loved it here is that, for the most part, his privacy was respected.   

I stood on line behind Kevin Bacon at my Starbucks.   I could feel my father desperately channelling through me an urge to engage him in conversation.   Although I inherited my dad’s ”gift of the gab,” I could not utter this joke forming in my mind.  “So, this is what they mean by six degrees of separation?”   If only I had remembered at that moment that his wife Kyra had breastfed.   Given my penchant for marketing at Starbucks , who knows what I might have been able to say. 

All kidding aside,  I have found that there is less than 6 degrees of  separation for breastfeeding success.  

• Your mother, partner, a sibling or close friend, doctor (pediatrician or obstetrician), lactation specialist can all impact your choices and the trajectory of your experience. 

Six Degrees of Separation For BF Success

One of the most important considerations is surrounding yourself with positive breastfeeding role models and enthusiasts.   Given the barrage of hormones, any lack of support, whether real or imagined, can shake your confidence.  Those who love you do not want to see you exhausted and overwhelmed.  They may try to relieve you by offering to give a bottle or encourage you to consider an exit strategy. 

Breastfeeding is natural, but it is also a learned skill for both mother and baby.   Tensions can build when couples are not on the same page about this essential aspect of caring for their newborn.  Attend a breastfeeding class together if at all possible.   Remember that coaching does not end after labor.  

Many of you will defer to the “authority figures” such as the doctor and lactation consultant.  

1. No Pediatrician will hang out a shingle saying they are opposed to breastfeeding.  However, early supplementation with formula is a big clue about their knowledge and support of breastfeeding. 
2. A survey of Pediatricians published in late 2008 verifies that their promotion of breastfeeding is down.
3. Lactation consultants that rely too heavily upon gadgets and pumping may further overwhelm a mother. 
4. Check out your local parenting boards and read them carefully.  Look for someone who has the clinical expertise to fix your latch rather than manage your pumping.
5. Ask your friends to  honestly share their breastfeeding experience and judge if you want some of the same.
6. Follow me on twitter or become a member of  The Breastfeeding Salon

We live in an interesting period of human history where popularity and affiliation are highly valued.   With some preparation you can assemble your dream team of breastfeeding support within six degrees of separation.

Mothers are literally buying into the idea that pumping is the magic ticket for breastfeeding success.   Thanks to the ‘pump pushers’  it is a rare woman who actually believes that she can only breastfeed.  I have written about this “Pump Mania” extensively in  Are You All Pumped Up? 

Many lactation consultants and health professionals are encouraging a dependence upon pumping.  They have been sold on the notion that the pump is as good, if not better than a baby feeding directly from the breast.   They tell mothers, “Pump to see how much milk you are making.”  Another common piece of advice is “Pump after every feeding to increase your milk supply.” 

Clinical evidence shows that pumping is always second best when compared to direct breastfeeding with an excellent latch.   What is obtained from pumping is only a percentage of what the baby can get when properly positioned on the breast.  

The impression of increasing the milk supply often comes from the fact that the breast seems fuller with the combination of breastfeeding and pumping.  Assessing the quality of breastfeeding is essential because the appearance of fullness can be misleading. 

• If the baby has a poor latch and the mother is relying more heavily on the pump for removal of her milk, the breast will build up its storage capacity. 
• An excellent latch leads to a breast in equilibrium rather than having a leaky, full and uncomfortable breast.

Pumping most definitely has a place in the breastfeeding experience of some, but not all, new mothers.  Those mothers who encounter challenges due to prematurity, maternal/infant illness or those who work outside the home, will most likely need to pump if they are to  maintain their milk supply.  

It is both ironic and disturbing that such a profound lack of confidence in milk supply by mothers has grown in an environment where there are legions of lactation consultants and breastfeeding advocates now among us.   It turns out that the allied health profession of lactation consulting (IBCLC) and Medela, the leading manufacturer of pumps world-wide, have been closely linked throughout the past 25 years.  (I don’t seem to be alone in voicing my concerns.) Read more here.

• A rise in individual pump ownership and use since the mid-1990’s is directly proportional to this increased focus on breast milk supply versus direct breastfeeding.  

 As far as I can tell,  mothers do not lose sleep worrying about how many ounces of amniotic fluid their placenta is making for their babies.  They trust in the wisdom of their bodies to manufacture what is needed to get the job done.   Before the advent of routine sonograms, “the bag of waters” was not even on the radar until time for labor.

Breasts would be see-through or come with alarm systems if the volume was the critical factor to be considered.  The notion of volume  being important comes from a formula feeding model-nothing changes in that processed food save for calories delivered by the ounce.

This collective obsession, pun intended, with proving how much breast milk we have, makes me think of the biblical figure, Doubting Thomas.  

Why do we need to see our milk  in order to believe in the ability of breastfeeding to nurture our babies?