Trapped
I came across an article about how breastfeeding can contribute to post-partum depression because a mother can feel “trapped” by all the demands of her new baby. Um, this article just made me sad. Yes, motherhood can make one feel trapped. Any new life change can make someone feel trapped - a new job, a new house, a new husband. But to lay so much blame on breastfeeding? For me, breastfeeding actually made me feel freer in many respects. When I rush out the door to run errands, all I need are diapers and a blanket. When I was traveling coast to coast with my son, I appreciated not having to worry about cups, bottles, formula. Regardless of how breastfeeding makes an individual feel, if a new mother feels trapped by breastfeeding what other aspects of motherhood will make her feel trapped? After all, Breastfeeding is just the very teeny tip of a monumental iceberg of Responsibility that motherhood brings.
Breastfeeding is temporary, much of everything else about motherhood is forever.
My StumbleUpon Page
July 25th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
I think this could depend on how comfortable you are nursing in public or even around your famiily. If you aren’t comfortable nursing with others around, breastfeeding can be very isolating. I know somone who didn’t feel comfortable nursing in front of her four older boys, so she retreated to her bedroom anytime she was nursing. I felt this way for the first few weeks with Lil D, but luckily got over it as I became more confident breastfeeding.
July 25th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
I would have never linked the two together. I agre, it seems like a stab in the dark.
July 25th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
I read that article, too. It brought to mind “Down Came the Rain” by Brooke Shields. In it, she talks about how glad she was that she could breastfeed because it was about the only thing she could do right. A WebMD article quotes her as saying:
“There was always a glimmer of something that kept me trying to get better,” she says. “I attribute a lot to breastfeeding, because, for me, the physical connection is what I really needed, whether I enjoyed it or not. Somewhere along the line it was undeniable that she was stuck to me,” she adds. “I think that was important to my recovery.”
July 25th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
You know I can relate to this article. I am one of those people who was not totally comfortable breastfeeding in public, partially because neither of the older girls were particularly good at it and partially because I was not particularly good at it either. Now that I am older, I am far more comfortable with it and Tyler is a much better nurser so now it is much easier. But I know in those early days when sleep was a rare commodity and nursing wasn’t going so great, I felt pretty alone.
July 26th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
(Not having read the article…) A link between nursing and trapped/depressed feelings makes complete sense to me. Ingrid had an intense need to nurse/suck a LOT, day and night, for a long time, and I did feel trapped by it. And that feeling is so seldom acknowledged — even by people ostensibly around to *support* nursing moms — that I thought I must be a horrible mother for feeling that way, and felt terribly ashamed about it.
Having a little distance on the pressure cooker of nursing in the first year (and intense night nursing) I can see that feeling trapped was a completely normal response and not at all an indicator that I wasn’t up for the other, longer-term obligations of motherhood. My baby needed me, and often ONLY me, for months and months and months, night and day. I was immensely sleep deprived and had just about zero time to be alone. How the hell could I not feel trapped?
For me, with the level of depression I experienced, I don’t think weaning would have been a magic solution. I can easily envision that being a good choice for someone who had things a notch or two worse than I did. For me, though, the benefits of nursing (including the conveninece thing you mentioned) still outweighed the hard parts… I’m still nursing my daughter at 26 months (!) and will nurse this next baby too. But I do think it’s important to acknowledge that some women really do feel trapped by it, so the shame/guilt element of that is no longer a factor. For myself, I would have avoided a lot of misery if I’d heard more people admit to feeling trapped by the heavy only-you responsibility of being a baby’s one and only food source.
July 26th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
I have to agree with some of your other commenters. I think whether or not you feel trapped by breastfeeding depends on whether or not you’re comfortable doing it wherever. I didn’t do it long enough to get to the comfortable stage. If I have another child, I think I will try breastfeeding longer, try your suggestions here, see if it could be less painful and scary to me the next time around.
Honestly, though, I wasn’t comfortable breastfeeding in public or in front of anyone, so I went upstairs to my bedroom when we had visitors (which was all the time) or hid in the car if we were out (which wasn’t nearly often enough). The other issue was my daughter’s oral fixation (which lives on thriving today with her cup fetish), which meant she would stay on each side for 30-45 minutes, which left me about a half hour to myself between the beginning of one 2.5-hour cycle to the next.
Perspective IS important, though, and if I do it a second time around, I’ll definitely go easier on myself and work harder on technique and form. Like exercise, you can really hurt yourself A LOT if you do breastfeeding wrong. And good Lord in heaven, I must have been doing it wrong based on how much it hurt. I’m relieved to hear it doesn’t have to be that way!