I read your piece Dear Fed Is Best … and I am so sorry.
I am so sorry for your poor baby who suffered terribly as a result of your cult-like worship of breastfeeding.
My first few days with my baby were actually glorious in the moment…
Our bubble was violently burst on her fifth day of life. The midwife came to weigh my beautiful baby and she had lost 20% of her birth weight… I was asked to give my nipple a squeeze and when milk surfaced I was told ‘Oh. You’ve got loads’… Nevertheless, they thought it best to ring the hospital. Apparently, the paediatrician was not worried and decided that we should give her another 3 days to see what happened.
And so they left us. For another three days…
Why didn’t you just feed her formula??!!
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]I am so sorry that being a breastfeeding apologist has robbed you and your fellow lactivists of simple human compassion.[/pullquote]
You were well aware that 20% weight loss is dangerous; that’s why you called the hospital, isn’t it? It’s as if you valued ideological purity above your daughter’s wellbeing as she was obviously failing to thrive.
Instead:
We ended up in hospital when she lost more weight. I watched the doctors tell me that they were deeply concerned about my baby, that they would need to transfer her to another unit for paediatric intensive care, that they would need to send a doctor and a nurse in the ambulance with her so we would need to make our own way as there wasn’t room for us. I watched the ambulance blaze past me on the motorway, blue lights flashing and siren blaring. Being separated from my precious girl was torturous.
There were moments of horrific trauma that week in intensive care. Like when they told us that they needed to re-hydrate her at a very specific speed and that if they got that wrong she could be left brain damaged. Or the time that her drip tissued and left blisters the size of her fist all along her arm, because somebody had given her a drip with potassium in. After that there were two hours of hell as the doctor tried desperately and repeatedly to replace her drip…
I am terribly sorry for her starvation and her traumatic hospitalization since you could have easily prevented it with formula but instead let her suffer until she was nearly dead.
But that’s not the only reason I am sorry.
You write:
I can only reason that for somebody to have launched a campaign such as yours they must have a story as harrowing as mine.
I am so sorry that you lack the insight to understand that the only reason your baby didn’t die or sustain permanent brain damage is LUCK; other mothers were not so lucky and now must live with empty arms.
There are stories that are MORE harrowing than yours and it baffles me that you don’t recognize the difference between a baby who recovers fully and one who never recovers or even dies.
You boast:
In a desperate attempt to ensure that this could never happen to us again, I learnt everything I could and sought support before having my next baby. And miraculously, this one thrived on breastfeeding alone from the very beginning. Nothing about my boobs changed between my first and second baby. My physiology remained exactly the same. And yet, I was able to feed my second baby totally and completely. The only thing that changed was the amount of knowledge and support that I had. Nothing more.
I am so sorry that you don’t understand that while your personal situation may have had a preventable cause, insufficient breastmilk is a very real biological phenomenon.
Breastfeeding, like fertility and pregnancy, has a significant failure rate as a result of known biological pathophysiology. No amount of support will reverse the effect of polycystic ovary disease or insufficient glandular tissue. It reflects remarkable ignorance or insensitivity or both to ignore that reality. It’s like claiming that because you had difficulty conceiving the first time and no difficulty the second, infertility doesn’t really exist.
You write:
Am I glad that in our time of crisis, there was substitute milk available to us that helped keep my baby alive . . . of course I am! But do I wish I’d formula fed her from the start and never put her to the breast? Absolutely not! …
I am so sorry that your daughter’s suffering turned you into an apologist for breastfeeding. Instead of recognizing that exclusive breastfeeding nearly killed your daughter, you continue to offer cult-like devotion.
I want to believe that your motivation in writing this piece is pure and that it is your desperatation to deny your own role in nearly killing your baby that makes you so insensitive to those who were not as lucky as you.
But then you write this:
I want to believe that your motivation is pure and that you are merely trying to spare other women from enduring what you have.
Advocates of Fed Is Best from the founders on down to individual women have given you NO REASON to question their motivation yet you do so anyway.
Why?
Because you can’t bear to acknowledge that breastfeeding isn’t perfect and that aggressive breastfeeding promotion doubles the rate of newborn hospital readmission, and leads to brain damage and death from dehydration, hypoglycemia, kernicterus and falling from or smothering in maternal hospital beds.
Ultimately, I am so sorry that being a breastfeeding apologist has robbed you and your fellow lactivists of simple human compassion.
Only someone who lack compassion could have written a piece like yours.
