Mamamia what a mess!

Last week Mia Freedman jumped into the breastfeeding vs formula debate with the publication of this column in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. To quickly summise, Mia wrote of her experience trying to help her friend obtain formula for her baby in hospital - in short, it wasn't easy.

Here is an excerpt:

"Groups like the Breast Feeding Association have done a bang-up job at publicising the benefits of breastfeeding, and I'm not being sarcastic. Is there a woman in the Western world who doesn't know breast is best? Message received and clearly understood. But, in some cases, the pendulum has swung too far, from positive encouragement to negative pressure and borderline bullying."

The article was always going to be somewhat controversial - I think a large part of Mia's success is being able to choose topics that resonate with her readership - but an unfortunate factual error in the piece, where she confused the Australian Breastfeeding Association with the Baby Friendly Health Initiatve (BFHI), helped to unleash a backlash which resulted in a public smackdown by Tara Moss and a severe dressing down from the readers of her mamamia website. One reader even said that the column made her cry.

Here is part of what Tara said:

"I am writing this not just as a mum, an individual, but as patron of the BFHI program, and in this volunteer role it is my job to pass on evidence-based information on this topic, quite beyond my very small sample size or personal anecdotes. It is because of decades of exhaustive research conducted around the world by scientists and health professionals that I can confidently say that the perceived injustice of an objectionable facial expression from a midwife, or the need for midwives to sign off on formula to feed a newborn, in the case of your friend’s experience, is a small inconvenience for a policy that provides significant improvement in health outcomes for babies and mums, eases the burden on our health system and in some cases even saves lives."

Ouch! All of this because of an article trying to support mothers in feeding their babies, whether it is with breastmilk or formula. I bet Mia sat back and wondered 'how did it all go so wrong?'.

Since we started this blog I have been wanting to write a post about formula and breastfeeding but I have been hesitant. My fear was that it was just too much of a loaded issue - loaded with hormones, guilt, fear and of course good intentions and a whole lot of love. Mix them all in together and it starts to get murky. Until this week I didn't know if I was just being paranoid but clearly not!

We have gone the combination feeding route with Stickybeak. He was exclusively breastfed for more than three months and on our doctor's advice we started feeding him formula top ups which turned into one bottle of formula a day, which we still do. It worked for us and along the way I have received mixed responses. Some people are pleased that I am still breastfeeding, others find it odd. Some are openly supportive and encouraging of formula use, others just curious and others have a quiet suspicion. Thankfully I have never received out and out negative judgment on the formula use.

One thing I have learned though is that my breasts are everybody's business. Even when I was pregnant people of varying levels of closeness would ask me if I intended to breastfeed. I truly didn't know what response they were looking for - I still don't - but my response was always the same: I am going to give it a good go and I hope it works out. I did and thankfully it did.

Mia's column clearly struck a nerve which to me highlights what an emotive issue breastfeeding is and echoes my own experience. She had some good points to make that unfortunately were lost because of the execution. I hope the conversation continues because I think that even though Australia has come a long way in supporting mothers to breastfeed we still have a ways to go in supporting all mothers in their milk feeding choices, whatever they may be.

-- Natalie