Dear Parent Unable To Breastfeed Your Baby For Whatever Reason

Lesego Nswahu Nchunga | Tuesday August 10, 2021 06:00

You know what's best for you! No matter what the world comes up with to marginalise you and to invalidate your efforts to merely stay alive for your baby, know that you are important, you and your baby’s experiences are valid, and you and your baby’s health including your mental health are more important in this season than anything else.

Yours

A person who understands mum guilt!

On the other end of world breast feeding week, reflecting on the objectives of the week, what it seeks to achieve and who it is aimed at, I cannot help but wonder about the parents who, for whatever reason under the sun, find themselves unable to breastfeed. What many people don’t say about breastfeeding is that it is actual work; and many women cannot keep up with the pressure and the stress related to the work of nursing a baby.

When a parent starts to breastfeed their child, if the baby even latches, some women will have sore or tender nipples which make the task of breastfeeding, rather daunting. Many other parents are unable to produce enough milk to ensure that the baby is sufficiently fed. Something else that parents only find out about after the child is earthside, is cluster feeding, which occurs usually when a baby has a growth spurt and they demand to be on the breast for a longer time, in order to feed more and match the spurt.

Engorgement and plugged duct as well as fungal infections are other harrowing challenges which affect breastfeeding parents, making it nearly impossible to keep the baby fed. Much of it is accompanied by a parent’s utter and shear exhaustion, feeling like they cannot leave the baby, post-natal anxiety or depression, while balancing the judgemental stares and comments around and about the parent.

All of this coupled with the fact that the parent is trying to recover from major surgery, or living through the just ended ordeal of trying to dodge the risks related to natural births, and at the same time trying to manage a new life in which they have a new human being in their lives is overwhelming, intimidating and frightening.

So of course, breast is best, but even better, is a well fed baby and a mum who is in a safe mental space to ensure the baby’s safety, and who is unhindered by societal pressure and other stress factors in ensuring the baby is fed, whether through tube feeding, mixed feeding, combined feeding, pumping or formula.

If you’ve stayed long enough with this piece to be at this point, you may be trying to figure out what this has to do with the general content of this column, being the finding of polemy in politics, socio-economic rights, cultural commentary and civil interactions.

So I’ll position it for you if you would like. In many countries, women are expected to divide themselves and their lives between the public and professional personas, from their private selves. So a woman at work is often expected to not to show up to the work space with the load of her personal plights or things that affect her outside of work. If they allow their “home” things to affect their work, then they are seen as weak and reinforcing social constructs of gendered roles. The thing is though, that women are human, first and foremost; and the things which affect women, including breastfeeding, are matters of public concern, and should not be viewed as a factor to isolate women.

Work, public and private are no longer separate, especially now when we are, many of us, working from home. So there is an even more urgent need to think about how to respond to the present needs of parents and their very young children.

We have just stepped out of World Breastfeeding Week, which is observed or occurs on the first week of August. This year, for the first time, I was aware of and present for the week. As a starting point, I believe there is a lot to be learnt. I certainly learnt a great deal from observing the week, and being alive to the experiences of the women around me.

The purpose of the movement of celebrating world breastfeeding week is to support and raise awareness as well as galvanise action of themes related to breastfeeding. The theme this year is “Protect Breastfeeding: A Shared Responsibility”. It highlights the links between breastfeeding and survival, health and well-being of women, children and nations.

The work of supporting breastfeeding parents and their infants to stay together, practice skin-to-skin contact and/or kangaroo care, suspected, probable or confirmed COVID-19 virus infection, is on us as a society. That, I think, is where the “shared responsibility” comes into play. The benefits of breastfeeding and nurturing parent-infant interaction to prevent infection and promote health and development are especially important when health and other community services are themselves disrupted or limited as is the case in Botswana right now, where we are living through the third wave of the pandemic, and our health system is on its knees.

We must take it on ourselves to support new parents around us, who need kindness and compassion. People are doing their best. Its important that we bear this in mind when approaching a parent with a small baby! They are doing their best and are worth the recognition that they are.