Ban The Breast Pump--NY Times - Page 3

[mamaUK]

Originally Posted by ChampagneBlossom

I know I'm going to be flamed for this, but I too am strangely repulsed by the act of pumping. Perhaps that's why I never got any milk to let down, despite purchasing a fancy schmancy pump, taking supplements up the whazoo, etc. I totally wanted to pump... but honestly, it wasn't working. My son wouldn't suck, I couldn't pump... Double failure. (I was so glad to be able to exclusively breastfeed my daughter without needing to do any pumping.

I fully support and encourage all mothers to provide breast milk for their babies, but I don't think it's... "kind" ... to demonize mothers who really... REALLY don't like the way pumping makes their bodies feel. I can totally relate to the repulsion some women feel at watching nipples being stretched in those machines... I applaud women who make that sacrifice, but is it... dare I say... fair? to EXPECT that sacrifice? I'm not saying let's just push formula, because breastmilk is definitely a baby's birthright... but maybe women who don't *mind* pumping (and there are some!!) as much can donate milk for the babies who truly cannot breastfeed? I don't know what I would have to say about mothers who work... Maybe work on improving maternity benefits? Instead of saying, "well hey, just pump!" It's just not that simple. And while there ARE pumps available for OTHER than medical reasons (like the baby cannot suck or something) pumping shouldn't be the go-to-first option for working mothers.


Just my two cents. Please don't hate on me too much.

I just wanted to say I HATED pumping too, so much, it was so miserable and horrible, so not only could I not get the breastfeeding right, I was finding the pumping too tiring to continue with along side looking after a new born baby and being in early remission from cancer. So I was a double failure. I hated it so much. and yes, i did feel like a cow, but that was my personal feeling. It made me dislike my body, and I was feeling pretty crap after all the invasive stuff from the cancer treatment.

[vbactivist]

Originally Posted by ChampagneBlossom

pumping shouldn't be the go-to-first option for working mothers.

I don't know of anyone who 'likes' pumping. But what should be the "go-to-first option" for working mothers, in your opinion?

[vbactivist]

Originally Posted by JessasMilkMama

actually really offends me. Just like her first article, and the second one supporting it, this is so elitist. What about watching your baby die from diarrhea. What about the Chinese parents who buried their kids. I bet those things were the least favorite parts of their lives. On a smaller scale, I know parents who have gone from BF to FF only to see horrible reactions, illnesses, etc. Your life is pretty EFFING good if the worst thing that ever happened was using a $300 breastpump at the office.

I bet one of the MOST FAVORITE things Carolyn Jessop ever did was to pump her milk. She escaped the FLDS polygamists and wrote the book, Escape. And she had a disabled son who could not be moved. She started pumping her milk from her last baby and fed it to the disabled son. He improved SO DRAMATICALLY that she was able to pack him up in the night and flee her abusive home. She fully credits pumping her milk to this. She SAW the difference.

Breastfeeding/BreastMILK are beneficial to mothers and babies. It should be supported and encourated. These articles do all women a disservice.

[readytobedone]

Originally Posted by vbactivist

I don't know of anyone who 'likes' pumping. But what should be the "go-to-first option" for working mothers, in your opinion?

on-site childcare, so you can just go nurse the baby instead. paid leave, so you can stay home longer with the baby and still have $ and a job to go back to. both of those are better "first" options than pumps, or would have been for me.

don't get me wrong, though--i think pumps are also great. i am by no means in favor of banning them! they're great for when you actually need or want to be away from your baby, or for babes who can't nurse effectively, or for lots of other reasons that i haven't thought of!

[Rico'sAlice]

Originally Posted by vbactivist

I don't know of anyone who 'likes' pumping.

I'm not sure if I "liked" it, but there was a really awesome aspect in being able to see the pump bottles fill up. I mean I know that you "know" that you're producing milk by baby's weight gain, wet diapers, spit up, etc. But for me, being able watch it spurt out was pretty fascinating.

But what should be the "go-to-first option" for working mothers, in your opinion?

I'm not the PP, but a combination of longer maternity leave, and nursing breaks to go to onsite daycare or to go home and back. Obviously not feasable with a tiny babe if you work far from home and they stay home w/ grandparents or something. But if maternity leave was longer than you would probably be able to figure out a schedule for an older nursling who can go longer between sessions. But all these things need a radical shift in society (for them to become universal, I know individuals and certain business already do these things) and throwing away the pumps won't make it happen.

------------------
Also, as far as "feeling like a cow" it's not as if it is normal/natural for cows to be hooked up to mechanical pumps either. In either case it's humans using technology to meet their own goals. It's not a "cow" thing. I don't feel like a horse when pulling my son in a wagon just b/c horses are also used for that task.

[Jimibell]

OMG! I read this article this morning and then went to brush my teeth and I was muttering to myself the whole time. It made me so angry!
I was trying to read with an open mind because sometimes it's hard to see other people's perspectives.

My overall impression of the article was that this woman is quite a negative and unhappy person. She obviously has issues with the lifestyle SHE has chosen. Lots of resentment that she isn't out of the house, maybe a lot of insecurity about her own physical appearance and as pp said, I see the elitist vein.

I am so sad she wrote this article because, as she pointed out, only 17% of women nurse exclusively for the first 6 months. Why should she want to give further reason for people to discourage bfeeding?! Because she and a few others were personally unhappy with their own life decisions? Isn't that a bit irresponsible and presumptuous of her? As pp points out, she is not a medical researcher, she is a journalist....is she prepared to stand behind her claims 100%?

The other thing that gets me is that she completely ignores the very real evidence that our species has survived for 20,000(?) years on breastmilk. The question is not whether or not breastmilk is "best", the question is, "what damage does formula do". I think too many people in general focus too much on the benefits of breastmilk. Forget about that, the benefits are obvious, breastmilk pretty much got us to the 20th century, do we need more proof than that?! Now when you begin the conversation of the detrimental effects of mass-produced formula from conventional milk
then you're in a real conversation. (I believe that when it is absolutely necessary formula is a wonderful thing to have around, but not the crap you see in the supermarkets)

And on a more conciliatory note, how about we work together to address the very real problems of the modern-day mothers (parents)?! Her article does no good, only harm, as it stands (although hopefully it will inspire some good).
How about we look into improving maternal health through nutrition? What about extended maternity leave (as so many have mentioned)? Why not recognize the fact that women do not want to be idle, they need to work, but how they choose to work should be up to them (ie: SAHM, out of the home, WAHM, etc) and yes, SAHMs are working and many are happy to be doing so? How about acknowledging the fact that children need to be around their mothers as much as possible and need to be around many other people who love them?

I like pp's comment about "who said it was going to be easy?" and also I agree that our culture, as it is now, is not conducive to raising healthy children.

Implying that the pressure to breastfeed in our society is SO great that it has created leagues of discontented women out there and a female brain-drain, is just plain wrong. I agree many people are unhappy but it certainly isn't from breastfeeding or pumping! And I agree there could possibly be more women in positions of power, but, uh, you certainly can't blame that one on breastfeeding. She is just miserable, I think.

phew, had to get that off of my chest somehow......

[kcstar]

I have a love-hate relationship with my pump.

I love that it allowed me to provide milk for my son while I was at work. I love that it allowed me to be comfortable on a business trip when he was 15 months old.

In some respect I am grateful that I had to pump-and-dump in the second week PP, because it meant that the lactation consultant showed me how to hook up the hospital's pump, and to get milk out.

And I felt disappointed, something of a failure, every time I came home to find that he had finished my milk in the morning and needed formula to make it through the afternoon. I hated spending money on formula.

But I also hated the fact that a 20-minute pump break was 20 minutes I was not at home nursing my lad. 20 minutes that I had to stay at the office longer.

I didn't much like splitting my lunchbreak into two or three so that I could pump in the morning and the afternoon.

I ended up bringing work home on weekends so that I could spread my hours better. And eventually I ended up moving, partly so that I could have those few days of house-hunting, packers, movers, driving cross-country, and unpacking with my son! My sick leave got eaten up ensuring that I got full pay for the 8 weeks of maternity leave. And if I'd succeeded in having a natural birth, I would only have had 6 weeks.

It's crystal clear to me that banning the pump is the wrong answer. We need four months of maternity leave. And in the position I was in for DS1, I needed that leave to be paid time off. I am working hard / hoping that when we have our second, we'll have built up savings to live on for that time.

Work is SO important for me. I wanted to do the sort of things I do for practically my entire life. I used to love my old job, before it got too stressful. And I like my current job too. There is no way I could be SAHM, I don't have the patience for it. WAHM I'd consider.

[MommyDOK]

Originally Posted by Altair

and? who am I to tell a mother she has to stay home? She could have 1 million valid reasons for working.

yeah, that's what I was pointing out. Why should an employer give a mom paid time off if she doesn't want it? Some moms opt for formula bc they don't want to bf, not bc they don't get time off.

[fairejour]

Originally Posted by OGirlieMama

I pumped grotesquely for 18 months because my 29-week preemie twins never got the hang of nursing. I don't really care if you hated pumping. I don't care if you think I look like a freakshow while my nipples get sucked into the pump tubes. That was the only way my babies were getting breastmilk, and I only have to look at my strong healthy girls to know that this was no sacrifice.

You and me both!!! :

[AnalogWife]

As much as I would have preferred extra time off, I didn't mind my pump AT ALL. DS stayed home (and still stays home) with DH when I'm at work, I have a tough job and welcomed the extra breaks to sit and listen to the radio, and I got a bit of an oxytocin high from the lactation. And I loved seeing how much I could fill in the bottles. If I had to work, I much enjoyed feeling like a mama there, the EBF felt a little like I was still pg, I was still the only nourishment for my DS, I felt so womanly and special. Banning the pump makes no sense to me!

[EviesMom]

DH actually asked me about this piece today. His question was "So is there a backlash against AP and BFing going on right now or something?" Apparently there was something snotty on a blog about babywearing too. He said "It seems like they're starting a backlash by attacking the "low hanging fruit" first or something, the fact that pumps are kinda bizarre devices" (I pumped when I was working, but they are um... weird.)

My response was that yes, there's a backlash ramping up. It's basically though, that lots of AP things, and BF, have been picked up as fads IMO. And fads end. Which is fine with me, as I told him, if someone was only BFing because she thought it would make her thinner, she wanted to hang with the cool moms at the playground; only babywearing because it was designer chi chi fabric sling and then she'd move on to the bugaboo she really wanted; signing with baby classes bc its a super costly luxury, and lots more.

Doing any of those things for "hipness" means you should never have been doing it in the first place IMO. If you need a list of *reasons* to babywear, breastfeed, homeschool, AP, sign, like the Atlantic and NY Times authors, then seriously, quit. Leave it to those of us who do those things because we find them in line with our spirituality, our values, our real lives instead of doing them so we can hang with the cool kids.

(Mutter mutter Freakin' cheerleaders and queen bees trying to co-opt the rebels and freaks authentic values by making them trendy fads. When does high school end again?)

[kcstar]

Originally Posted by AnalogWife

As much as I would have preferred extra time off, I didn't mind my pump AT ALL. DS stayed home (and still stays home) with DH when I'm at work, I have a tough job and welcomed the extra breaks to sit and listen to the radio, and I got a bit of an oxytocin high from the lactation. And I loved seeing how much I could fill in the bottles. If I had to work, I much enjoyed feeling like a mama there, the EBF felt a little like I was still pg, I was still the only nourishment for my DS, I felt so womanly and special. Banning the pump makes no sense to me!

How'd you swing extra breaks? If I took longer than my lunch hour to pump, I made up the time by staying (away from DS) longer. I probably could have negotiated a 35-hour week, but I couldn't risk dropping income.

[AnalogWife]

Originally Posted by kcstar

How'd you swing extra breaks? If I took longer than my lunch hour to pump, I made up the time by staying (away from DS) longer. I probably could have negotiated a 35-hour week, but I couldn't risk dropping income.

The management at my company is very BF friendly...well, as much as they can be. They'd rather give me an extra 25 paid mins per day to pump BM than to totally lose the skills they've spent time and $$ in training me. I also believe that HR believes in BM keeping babies healthy so I can come into work. I work 8-2:30--I'm supposed to have 1 half-hour and 1 fifteen-min break, but due to pumping they gave me 2 twenty-min breaks on top of the unpaid half-hour lunch. My friend who works 8-4:30 gets 1 unpaid half-hour lunch and 2 twenty-five min breaks....she did pretty good negotiating that one, imho!

We were also provided with a private bathroom with a sign on the door designating it for handicapped and nursing mothers only----unfortunately, many other non-handicapped and non-nursing mothers used the bathroom. That was a big problem, but after complaining we were allowed to use an empty office.

I've always been very thankful that my employer gave me the time and facilities to BF my son. I pumped from 8 weeks until he was 19 months old, they never once pressured me to do anything otherwise. Is it possible to talk to your employer for extra pumping time? It meant the world to me.

[kcstar]

DS is 18 months now, and I haven't pumped at work since he was 8 mos. My main concern is for my next child, since I would prefer to minimize these stressors. Starting with taking more than 8 weeks leave at the beginning.

I will definitely negotiate with management for my next one. My company is BF friendly, at least with regards to facilities. The rules on the pumping room clearly stated that it was on our own time, so I didn't ask my management for support. The room was also supposed to be scheduled in 1-hour blocks, which didn't fit with my 2-3 times per day. I never tried using it in my building.

OTOH, when I needed to pump in another building, I was able to reach that building's room coordinator, and she found me an open conference room with a door that locked. I ended up using that several more times.

[mandam]

Originally Posted by krystyn33

:

"That a mother’s need for some semblance of physical dignity is perhaps a right worth respecting?"

Breastfeeding my son gave me more dignity with regard to my body and my sexuality than anything ever did. I make milk--what's your superpower? And I would hope that the moms who work so hard to pump for their little ones feel more pride and accomplishment than anything.

.

I was so irritated by that comment as well. I am insulted that some one thinks that my pumping milk for my son is "undignified". I worked my @ss off to pump enough milk so that he could have the best food I could give him while I was at work.

[Talula Fairie]

I was so pissed when I started to read that article (I couldn't even finish it).

:::

[eepster]

Originally Posted by JessasMilkMama

actually really offends me. Just like her first article, and the second one supporting it, this is so elitist. What about watching your baby die from diarrhea. What about the Chinese parents who buried their kids. I bet those things were the least favorite parts of their lives. On a smaller scale, I know parents who have gone from BF to FF only to see horrible reactions, illnesses, etc. Your life is pretty EFFING good if the worst thing that ever happened was using a $300 breastpump at the office.

You don't have to look at the horrifying things that have happened to other parents to think that the idea of pumping being the worst thing that ever happened to one as a parent is rediculous. Just in my own experience, starting with preterm labor at 23 weeks and then the trebutaline, there has been gas propelled poop, and trips to the ER, finding a way to pay for Montessori, the baby grabbing and pulling out chunks of hair. The discomfort of pumping don't compare at all to any of these.

[A&A]

Hopefully lots of people will write letters to the editor.

[crunchymomofmany]

First of all...does anyone else ever feeling they are beating their head against a rock?

Second, what is the deal with these large publications paying these women to write these poorly researched articles? It makes me wonder what else they are fabricating....

Why does the "liberal" media - and I used to consider myself pretty liberal - insist on giving these supposedly highly educated, liberal women a forum for these types of anti-mothering, "need more time for me, me, me," articles that seem to be populating all kinds of media - from babble.com, the home of I'm a mother, but I wish I was still in high school, to now the NYT and the Atlantic!

UGH!

[spughy]

Originally Posted by crunchymomofmany

First of all...does anyone else ever feeling they are beating their head against a rock?

Second, what is the deal with these large publications paying these women to write these poorly researched articles? It makes me wonder what else they are fabricating....

Why does the "liberal" media - and I used to consider myself pretty liberal - insist on giving these supposedly highly educated, liberal women a forum for these types of anti-mothering, "need more time for me, me, me," articles that seem to be populating all kinds of media - from babble.com, the home of I'm a mother, but I wish I was still in high school, to now the NYT and the Atlantic!

UGH!

: You know it's bad when there are hordes of left-leaning liberal types clamouring for a "suck it up, princess" article.