Last week my better half sent me an email titled “Boycott Isotoner?” with a link to this article, about one company’s legal troubles following its firing of a female employee who was pumping breastmilk while on the clock. The case went all the way to Ohio’s Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled that the firing was legal because—woman or not, breastfeeding mother or not—this mother-employee had taken unauthorized breaks to pump during her shift and was therefore in violation of company policy. As a breastfeeding and working mother myself, my hackles were of course immediately raised, but then, when I read that the woman admitted to taking unapproved breaks to pump, I almost slapped my forehead and yelled “duh” at the computer screen, because this—this—is the sort of thing that gives working mothers a bad name and makes it hard for us to parent in the ways we want to, whether that involves breastfeeding while working or even going back to work after having children at all. No wonder we’re accused of seeking special treatment! But then I read on.
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Have you read the article on breastfeeding in this month’s Atlantic? Dramatically titled “The Case Against Breast-feeding,” it isn’t an anti-breastfeeding treatise at all but a critical examination of modern breastfeeding culture, which, according to the author, rests on decades of specious research and can, in some cases, lead to the virtual enslavement of the mothers it’s taken society even more decades to “liberate” from their gender roles. What the author, Hanna Rosin, says about breastfeeding culture–that it has become the line in the sand that divides mothers everywhere–is true, but what she says about its role in working women’s lives struck me as dangerously one-sided itself.
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So, my breastfed baby still won’t take the bottle*, which means that for now at least I still spend a hearty portion of every day (and night) at the mercy of an infant’s tummy grumbles. The whole I’m-going-back-to-work-soon-and-he-must-take-a-bottle freakout aside, I can’t really complain, though; when he feeds with me, he feeds easily and well, and aside from a brief encounter with a plugged duct (yeowch), I’ve really enjoyed that special time we spend together. So, although I’m not “complaining,” per se, there is one issue I wish I could resolve, and I’m hoping you can help…
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While I was pregnant I had a lot of people ask me if I was going to breastfeed. My answer, based on years of horror stories about low supply, bad latch, pain, fatigue, clogged ducts, mastitis, and just plain incompatibility, was always: “I’m going to try.” When it happened that my son and I were both lucky to find breastfeeding as easy and natural as I wish it could be for everyone, I thought we’d dodged that particular bullet and could happily close the book on the issue, dust off our hands, and move on to worrying about other things, like, oh my god, one day I’m going to have to give him the keys to my car and let him go out driving, alone, on the roads, where he could get hurt!  It turns out, however, that my relief was premature and I have a little more handwringing to devote to breastfeeding before I proceed to installing a GPS device in my car to track my boy’s every movement. Motherhood: Let the worrying begin (and never end)!
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