Saturday, March 22, 2014

'to help the mothers and save the babies'

I think Plunket, who provide free well child checks for New Zealand babies, have decided I am a woman on the verge.  Due to my sleep-deprived state, they have decided that I need help ... presumably in order to save my baby too.
‘To help the mothers and save the babies’ was the official motto of the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society, founded in 1907 to address the high rate of infant mortality by Sir Frederic Truby King. The motto is engraved on a plaque by his mausoleum in Wellington (see picture), alongside his old house and garden and the remainder of the Karitane formula factory. 
Although his training and experience was primarily in pyschiatric care (interestingly, he visited the feted French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, who was famous for his treatment of female ‘hysterics’), Truby King was one of the key proponents of a scientific approach to child-rearing, one which had the effect of divesting mothers of their instincts.  As Linda Bryder comments in A Voice for Mothers: the Plunket Society and Infant Welfare 1907-2000, ‘mothers were ignorant of the correct methods of child-rearing and needed to be educated’ (p ix). Initially, Plunket focussed its efforts on Paakehaa or white women, who were required to produce children to do their patriotic duty for race, nation and empire. (Seriously. Sue Kedgley documents this in Mum’s the Word). It grew and thrived in New Zealand due to the support and voluntary work of a number of women, including the ubiquitous Plunket nurse.
While Truby King himself advocated breastfeeding, his methods were interpreted in the form of rigid rules about scheduled feeds and deeply strange ideas about when and how babies should be breastfed that basically meant that many women were not able to get breastfeeding established. In Mum’s the Word, Sue Kedgley notes that following the normalisation of hospitalised births in the early twentieth century, women were told to only breastfeed their babies for two minutes for the first few days, not to feed at night, and to delay the first feeds (p 89). Once home, mothers were ‘handed over’ to Plunket nurses who visited them at home and provided advice and support (not much change there, then). 
While Kedgley is careful to note that many of the mothers found this support invaluable - and we’re talking principally of Paakehaa mothers here - some felt they were being monitored and found wanting. Mothers were encouraged not to ‘spoil’ babies, leave them to cry, and to establish routines for their days and nights. Plenty of mothers ignored this advice, while others twisted themselves inside out to follow it religiously. This regime enabled the government in 1924 to report that it, in conjunction with Plunket, had gone ‘a long way towards ensuring a uniform, authoritative advice in regard to matters bearing on family life, and the rearing and treatment of children in health and disease.’ Kedgley observes that, by 1927, with approximately two thirds of babies  under its care, ‘the government was able, through the Plunket society, to effectively control how Pakeha babies were brought up.’ (p 90) 
It is somewhat ironic that as well as ditching the patronising motto (I mean who are the babies to be saved from? Their mothers? The redemptive religious tone in the phrase is also striking), Plunket now advocates ‘breast is best’ and to feed newborn babies on demand. The Plunket society is now complemented by a range of health organisations who also offer well child / tamariki ora services, so it no longer has a monopoly on infant care. This is reflected in its funding, which is forlornly trumpeted as a ‘unique three-way partnership’ between business, the community and government. Or, in other words, they are expected to carry out the functions of the modern surveillance state, without adequate funding to do so.
This walk down the path of history has caused me to reflect that while Plunket is, in general, a more benign and less rigid institution than it was for much of the twentieth century, several similarities remain, not least in its monitoring and compliance function. Although our Plunket nurse is personally quite nice, I’ve noted every single time that she has ‘ticked off' my responses to her questions in a lengthy form: tick for exclusive breast-feeding, cross for sleeping through the night. My individual responses will be crunched down to produce a range of collective statistics that indicate how well or poorly New Zealand mothers are ‘performing’ at this thing called mothering. It gets my back up everytime I notice it, and I am tempted to lie just to be perverse.
The uniform and authoritative approach to childcare has not quite died a death either. These things I have been told by various Plunket nurses, either in person or via Plunketline, wouldn’t have been so out of place in the last century: 
  • not to feed the baby to sleep (of which I am unapologetically guilty)
  • that I have been breastfeeding my baby too much (to which, I responded, ‘how much is too much when you’ve been advised to feed ‘on demand’?) 
  • to let the baby cry (a mixed one this: I’m not prepared to let my baby scream uncontrollably for ages, but some crying is inevitable in tiny creatures who have few other means of communicating)
  • not to co-sleep with the baby (oops, too late. I’ve even lied to their faces about this and I bet I’m not the only one. Surely it would be better to give advice about how to safely co-sleep rather than scare-monger about the dangers of co-sleeping? It’s not like in the high-profile cases of infant deaths in which co-sleeping is a factor that there are other aggravating factors: drugs and alcohol being the most significant, I would’ve thought) 
  • to be alert for the signs of post-natal depression (I don’t want to minimise the risks of PND but at my first few visits I felt like they thought I was just about to crack up any second because in answer to their interrogation about the family networks we had locally for support I said ‘none’.) 

Very seldom have I been encouraged to trust my own ‘instincts’.  And, while they note that my baby is healthy and happy, very rarely has anyone said ‘you’re doing well, especially given what you’re dealing with at the moment.’
But are ‘instincts’ a reliable guide either? Recently, I have blogged about the extreme sleep-deprivation we’ve been experiencing and my instincts tell me that my baby, who barely six weeks ago was sleeping through the night (aah, bliss) doesn’t now need food every one to two hours in the night. But that logical belief is pretty hard to communicate to an inconsolable baby in the wee hours of the morning. And so I feed her. Because it works.
I must’ve seemed like a zombie when I reported this to the Plunket nurse at a recent visit, because she set various processes in motion to provide support to us: a visit from a Karitane nurse to offer advice on sleep training, a food-run from a charity called Bellyful who supply free food to parents of newborn, young or sick babies, and also strongly encouraged me to contact the Post-natal distress support line
All of which showed concern and did offer some help and I hasten to add that I’m not ungrateful. We’ve managed to improve the night waking, but it’s still not great. To which, I guess, Plunket could say ‘they’ve helped this mother and saved her baby.’ Or, to be more paranoid, have they just ticked a box to say support was provided and they can therefore wash their hands if anything goes badly wrong now?
Yeah, we don’t have much additional support. Yeah, we’re not getting enough sleep at the moment. Yeah, we’re not doing everything perfectly. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that I’m a woman on the verge.  
It does mean that looking after a young baby is hard, unpredictable and challenging on just about every level. Perhaps the most helpful thing that I’ve learned in the last few weeks was not from Plunket. And that is to try and let go, to give up the illusion of control, and to not resist the idea that the baby will wake in the night. Just because I think she shouldn’t doesn’t mean she won’t.  
The most supportive comments have come from another mother whose baby doesn’t sleep through the night either. Instead of telling me what to do or try, she simply said “I hear you! Some babies just don’t sleep’ and ‘Sleep will come back. All will be forgiven.’

Sometimes being heard is better than being 'helped'.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

on reclaiming public spaces

 I've just finished feeding my baby. 

This time, I was feeding her in the comfort of my own home, in bed, snuggled up together, one of us, at least, pretty sleep-deprived. The other, just hungry.

As she fed, I had time to wearily think. I've blogged about breastfeeding before: about feeling coerced to breastfeed at all costs while I was pregnant,  about my own ambivalence towards it, whether it is feminist or not, and public shaming of women's feeding choices that create unnecessary and hurtful divisions between mothers. I wrote these posts largely in retrospect. The first was when my older daughter was well on her way to weaning, the others once she was long weaned. This time, I'm thinking and writing about breastfeeding as a mother going through the challenges and joys of exclusive breastfeeding for a baby yet to properly wean (although she has just had a first taste of pureed apple so there is a dimly-glimpsed light at the end of the tunnel.)  That means it is still round-the-clock, time-consuming, physically demanding, and provided solely by me. 

I'm not saying that to be a martyr, and absolutely not at all to criticise bottle-feeding, just noting that this is our reality at the moment. My tired reflections on breastfeeding that follow are similarly not intended to critique any other feeding practices, rather to think about the more radical implications of breastfeeding, specifically, breastfeeding in public.

Confession time. I  don't like breastfeeding in public very much. 

It makes me uncomfortable to be 'on display' and is often physically uncomfortable too given that public spaces do not always contains sofas, armchairs, beds or cushions. However, it would be totally unrealistic for me to stay at home most of the time. And I don't want to, either.

I've tried timing feeds to make it to a parents' room, or a trusted cafe with sofas, so I can at least be comfortable. And I've even sometimes used the old-blanket-over-the-head to not feel quite so exposed. From my experience of this, I agree with blogger Katharine McKinney's thoughts:

There are many people who suggest a nursing cover as an acceptable alternative. I invite those to please commit to eating all meals under a blanket. It's hot, it's annoying, and most babies will scream, squall and push the blanket aside. Not exactly discreet.

What is making me uncomfortable? Although I've noticed averted gazes and the odd look of discomfort from others, I've never been asked not to feed, to go somewhere else to feed, or to leave a place because I am feeding. Is my discomfort, then, just in my own head?

Partially. But it also comes from a wider culture that is very conflicted about women's breasts, and the fact that women breastfeeding in public spaces is not as normal and everyday as it is for the woman in the photo above (nor this breastfeeding mother talking to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez). There are plenty of stories about breastfeeding images being censored on Facebook (while images of more 'normal' sexually objectified breasts still roam free) and women being asked to cease and desist from feeding their babies in public to support this view. Ideas about what is 'normal' for breasts on display relate more to bras than babies.

With this idea of normal, it can be easy to forget that basically, before the twentieth century, breastfeeding - and breastfeeding in public - was so normal, that nearly everyone who was alive owed their lives to it. Even the Virgin Mary did it (apparently).

Events like the international Big Latch-On, which takes place during August each year, seeks to empower breastfeeding mothers to come out of the private sphere - the domestic space thought to be the 'proper' site of mothering - and feel comfortable about feeding in public. As a secondary aim, it seeks to make public breastfeeding a more normal sight, one not shrouded in discomfort and embarrassment. In making breastfeeding a normal part of the public sphere, these mothers send the message that breasts aren't just meant to sell cars or lingerie. They aren't just there for aesthetic appeal. They work, they do something; in fact, they do one of the most important things of all: they sustain the life of another human being.

That is why I'm trying to get over my discomfort - which is really my pre-emptive feeling that I am discomforting others - and put myself out there, literally and metaphorically. Trying to be more sanguine about public feeding means my baby is also likely to be more relaxed about feeding in public, and I'm less likely to experience the 'double embarrassment' of wrestling with her to try to get her to feed.  

So here's a list of public places I have breastfed recently, and tried to feel beatific, calm and relaxed:

- the back of a shearing shed propped against a wooden beam for back support (yes, it was pretty much as uncomfortable as it sounds)
- in an underwater observatory watching trout, salmon, and slightly menacing long-finned eels swim by
- on not one but two different boats
- in several different cafes (some furniture more supportive than others: yay for the sofa in Glenorchy cafe, boo for the backless stools and tiny buggy-unfriendly spaces in Vudu cafe)
- on an airplane, and at the airport (yep, baby and boob have both recently been on holiday).
- in the staffroom at work
- at the library
- at the local rec centre while watching daughter number one play
- at the playground
- on the beach
- and in the back of the car.

Pope Francis has recently been lauded for encouraging a woman to breastfeed in front of him. That's great, but it'd be good to hear her side of the story too (and isn't just a wee bit weird that a celibate man is being lauded for granting 'permission' for her to feed her baby in public?) 

Many women are attesting to their experiences of breastfeeding in public, seeking to make it normal, end the embarrassment, and come out of the toilet. McKinney opines that if you don't support breastfeeding in public, you don't support breastfeeding.  Kate Fridkis in the Huffington Post is one of many mothers who acknowledge the radical aspects of breastfeeding in public, but affirms that she feeds in public not to 'be a rebel' but to meet her baby's most basic need. And, brilliantly, poet Holly McNish's impassioned verse on her embarrassment about feeding in public concludes:

So no more will I sit on these cold toilet lids
No matter how embarrassed I feel as she sips
Cos in this country of billboards covered in tits
I think we should try to get used to this.

Speaking of reclaiming public spaces, I have decided to make the time to write posts from the front-line of mothering a very young baby. In my previous post, I wondered how I would juggle blogging with all my other tasks, with the implication that it was likely to fall by the wayside as the 'least important' of them. Sure, it's not keeping someone alive in the way breastfeeding is. But blogging is helping me through a difficult time, so it is playing an important role too. 

It is also reclaiming a small part of the public (blogger)sphere, for the 'private' experiences of a breastfeeding mother. It's a modest part to be sure, but it is in small acts like feeding our babies in public, like speaking or writing about our experiences 'warts and all', that mothers can work to transform the public sphere, to influence damaging attitudes about women's bodies that affect all women and girls (not just those who breastfeed), and, most importantly of all, fulfil our babies' most basic right: to be fed.