Sweating under scarves or guilt-weary with the bottle: Why breast or bottle feeding your baby feels like a lose-lose

Put down your parenting pitchforks. We know we all want the best for our baby. We know fed is best, we know you have been up all night, and we admit that we all feel touchy when it comes to motherhood and our methods.

“I’m not sure I’m doing it right” is the mantra I’ve repeated in my head a million times since I had my three children.

Every choice I make, I question. Any choice that I make that is questioned by someone else makes me borderline violent. It is born out of insecurity. Becoming someone’s mama is a game-changer, and nobody ever gave us the rulebook. Hell, we didn’t even realise we were playing. It’s feeling your way in the dark, but not really knowing where you are going in the first place. Welcome to motherhood.

And it’s the smuggest of us that are often the most insecure. Sleep deprivation doesn’t help, it fans the flames of our uncertainty. We’ve been handed tiny helpless creatures to keep alive – that’s some responsibility. We are overwhelmed, unsure and oh-so-tired. We back the choices we make out of the desire to do right by our children. We snap on social media when we feel cornered by our peers. We jump on our soapbox to proclaim our way is the best way because it is working for us. We have become very good at making ourselves feel simply awful about our choices.

Milking it

In fact, the lobbyists for this industry are so powerful that a 2018 gathering of World Health officials almost turned into a diplomatic conflict. In a shock move, the US threatened to pull military aid to Ecuador because it proposed an international resolution that encourages breastfeeding.  The move surprised hundreds of delegates at the UN-affiliated World Health Assembly. According to the New York Times, American officials opposed a widely popular resolution to promote breastfeeding – specifically they pushed to remove language asking governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding”.

Fearing the consequences for initiating the proposal, Ecuador backed down – along with a number of other countries, afraid of the wrath of the US. Luckily, the resolution ultimately made its way through because the Russian’s refused to be bullied into submission. According to the New York Times, one Russian delegate explained; “We feel that it is wrong when a big country tries to push around some very small countries, especially on an issue that is really important to the rest of the world”.

When contacted about the threats made by the US, Caitlin Oakley, from the Department of Health and Human Services said that the initial version “placed unnecessary hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition for their children”.  She continued, ‘The US was fighting to protect women’s abilities to make the best choices for the nutrition of their babies. Many women are not able to breastfeed for a variety of reasons, these women should not be stigmatized; they should be equally supported”.

Commercial pressures

Let’s ponder this for a bit. Nobody is denying access to formula for women who choose not to breastfeed. Making it into a breastfeeding versus formula feeding debate plays into the commercialisation of baby nutrition. Let’s also not forget that then-US President Donald Trump has referred to breastfeeding as ‘disgusting’ more than once. In 2011, he called a lawyer “disgusting”  when she requested a break to pump milk for her 3-month-old daughter. In 2012, he tweeted about the front cover of a TIME magazine showing a woman nursing her toddler saying ‘The TIME magazine cover showing late age breastfeeding is disgusting – sad what TIME did to get noticed.”

But this isn’t an anti-Trump rant, it’s just an example of whole governments are becoming increasingly vulnerable to commercial pressures when it comes to human decisions. Siding with corporate interests, in this case the billion-dollar infant formula industry, is becoming commonplace, and if we’re not aware of the lobbying groups at work, it can be difficult to see the wood from the trees

The Mommy Market

We are being targeted, our emotions are being played and our insecurities used against us – even from the very moment we decide to create life, An Australian study found that there was a conflict of interest when it came to fertility clinics operating as a commercial business. The research, published by Human Fertility, found evidence that women may be given false hope and continue IVF treatment, despite success being unlikely.

Of course, that doesn’t happen everywhere, but we have to remind ourselves that as mothers, we are a very desirable and financially lucrative demographic for big corporations. They know that we will do whatever it takes to make our child happier, healthier, stronger, more intelligent and safer.

In recent years, fewer of us in wealthier countries like Ireland are buying formula for our children. Instead, most of the formula industry’s growth is coming from developing nations like Ecuador. That’s why so much pressure was put on it by the US delegates who likely were, in turn, pressured by the infant-formula lobbyists. We know that’s the way of the world, but we need to open our eyes to how it is affecting us day to day, during a time when we may not be fully ourselves.

Nobody wants to be made to feel bad, but we can’t let corporations dictate what is and isn’t best for our children. Formula is a convenient substitute for our own milk, but it is obvious that governments have to prioritise breastfeeding over formula feeding when it comes to its guidelines. That’s not to say that more support shouldn’t be offered to those who formula feed their children – but it should come from a place that is free from commercial gain. We need to leave behind the snide remarks and our defensiveness We’ve more important tasks as mothers – little humans to raise, tiny minds to cultivate and fledging personalities to nurture (all without losing our own minds).