Masochistic Mommy

In last week's post (get your butt over here y'all), I explained the self-serving mechanisms involved in mommy guilt: the ways in which guilt forms an addictive cycle. In this post I'm going to explain the guilt-triggering mechanism in more depth and - most importantly - suggest how to crack the cycle. Seat-belts, people! Let's begin with a radical consideration:  If you don’t want to feel a certain way, just don’t feel it . I know that’s far easier to say than to do, especially after a long time of forming habitual butthurt to certain things. Your brain has spent months, maybe even years, beating a neural pathway to butthurt, and you’ll need to retrain it. Let me explain.. The Voluntariness of Guilt We humans are happy to take full responsibility for  some  of our emotions no matter how unbidden, so long as they fit into our personal agendas (pride, love, compassion, whatever). We deny responsibility for others (guilt, envy, lust) due to the most self-serving of reaso...

If you’re been alive for the fast five or so years, you may have noticed something peculiar: the emergence of a new zeitgeist of contempt for breastfeeding. Even a cursory look at the lifestyle section of many online newspapers reveals a contemporary back-catalogue now groaning under the weight of the collective bitching of a vocal minority of failed breastfeeders. In this post I question the motives of these failed breastfeeders, let’s call them ‘formula apologists’ – the folk who make it their raison d'etre to criticise breastfeeding - that is, to criticise its promotion and its significance. You see, nobody comes immaculately to the infant feeding debate. Its discussion can never be abstract. As I discussed in the chapter of my book  aptly titled ‘Defensiveness’, the agenda of these people is not as transparent as they would hope. Ask yourself this question: by virtue of being failures, do these people really qualify as noted dispensers of feeding advice? Do they have the well-b...

You see the world from your own perspective – of course you do. What can be harder to recognise is that not everyone else does. When you’re a child, most of the people in your world are focused on you most of the time. When you’re two, for example, you can scream when you’re hungry and someone will produce food for you. But that’s not going to work when you’re 20. Okay, so you’re thinking “No shit Sherlock”. But there are other ways in which we can all too easily assume that the world is focused on us when in fact no one is giving us a thought. Parenting is the mother of all imagined theatrical stages. We picture ourselves centre-stage, with all eyes on *our* performance. Either we think people are “breastfeeding at us ”, or a scientific study is a conspiracy to make us feel bad , or someone pointing out the risks of circumcision is spoiling for a fight with us. Such self-centrism is an easy trap to fall into. Yet part of growing up is recognising that other people might not have us in...

We’ve all heard the mantra “one bottle won’t hurt”. It’s the mating call of the disengaged health professional or well-meaning but ultimately misinformed relative. A study published last year even suggested that giving formula to babies can help relax mothers and increase the length of time they end up breastfeeding ( The Telegraph 2013 ). This was a huge pat on the back for supplementing mommas - and there are plenty of them about. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , one-quarter of the babies born in America in 2009 were supplemented with infant formula by two days of age, and by three months, this had increased to nearly two-thirds. With this bottle-centric backdrop it should come as no surprise that when I posted the following meme on Facebook, there was a lot of panties taking residence in buttcracksville: However, as I have explained previously ( here ), one bottle does in fact hurt. It can cause irrevocable damage to your baby’s immature digestive ...

Question: What do the following people have to with breastfeeding? Rihanna, Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Elton John, Tom Jones, Pavarotti, Katy Perry, Whitney Houston, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Diana Ross, Cher, Kylie Minogue, Coldplay, The Spice Girls, JLS, One Direction. Answer: They have all graced the very same stage that will now be home to Europe’s largest conference on infant feeding: The Unicef Baby Friendly Initiative Conference. As you know, later this year I’ll begin working with Unicef on my PhD study of breast and formula fed babies. Over the last 18-months their convention organising committee visited my neck of the woods several times and on one occasion were even greeted by a flash mob of breastfeeding mamas. Paul Szomoru, head of business tourism at NewcastleGateshead, had a chortle. He said: “If there’s one thing the North East does well, it’s welcoming people!” Dude knows his shit.  This gig of a lifetime will take place at the Newcastle Metro Radio Arena, 26-27 Nove...

Babies are the largest group of victims on the planet. Don't believe me? Infants aged under one year are more at risk of being killed at the hands of another person than any other age group (Source: NSPCC 2014 ). You only have to compare the length of prison sentences handed to paedophiles and child abusers with those guilty of fraud to see what little value we attribute to children. It's important to recognise however that 'harm' isn't limited to such legal definitions. By restricting our understanding of harm to just the extremes, we condone and normalise other harmful acts towards children, acts that fall outside the legal safety-net. In this post I will focus on babies and toddlers to show how the mistreatment of children is a widely accepted and even cherished part of our culture. The burden to justify harming children lies on those who wish to conduct it, and justify they do. Each society usually has a list of the types of people who can be ‘justifiably’ mistr...

What does it take to be a born-again breastfeeder? In a word – courage! It takes courage to accept that you could have done better, courage to try again, and courage to face unpleasant memories and painful truths. Success is the award for those willing to rewrite their story. Yet success, as sweet as it tastes, is not without its paradoxes. Success can birth pride and a sense of fulfilment, and at the same time, it can reopen old wounds, triggering feelings of guilt and regret. Here is one mother’s emotional journey of failing to breastfeed her daughter, and then succeeding to breastfeed her son. “I am part of a breastfeeding family. My mom fed me till I was 18months. My cousins all were breastfed to at least this age. My mom was an LLL member and she had all her friends breastfeeding. Her best friend is an IBCLC. Breastfeeding is my norm. I was raised with it. I didn’t think there was any other option. When I fell pregnant with my daughter I was absolutely confident that I would breas...