Having seen the stress of breastfeeding, working mom, I predict a whole lot more guilt and stress.
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Where is the red font?
I wonder if more mothers will be trying to pump more and save and share/sell to friends and neighbors.
Maybe a new gig economy job as wet nurse?
Yep. Some will be self-imposed; some will not be.
I mean, if I was getting ready to transition from breastfeeding to formula at this particular time I think I’d be scared to do so. And even in the future when formula is readily available, I’d be scared to switch to it because what if there’s another shortage and it’s too late to go back to breastfeeding?
That’s not even taking into account what others might say to me… just what I’d be thinking about all on my own.
This is making me recall how absurd the pressures are around breastfeeding. Throw in the hormones and lack of sleep and the marketing should be criminal. Thankfully our choice was 100 % clear so we weren’t subjected to this.
Other shortages:
Estrogen. My estrogen patch seems to be unavailable.
That’s not good. Is there an alternate medication you can get? Is all estrogen in short supply?
Hmmm, maybe my gyn won’t pressure me to do hormone therapy when I go for my checkup next month…
I’m saying this might be less choice than you think, whether contraindication to breastfeeding due to medical reasons or inability to maintain milk supply such as too challenging to pump for whatever reason at work, not producing enough, or both. Babies become much more effective at getting milk out than a pump, so even moms who have no problem producing milk in the first few months can really struggle making it through the first year if they need to provide pumped milk. Cue tears and feeling like an inadequate mom being away from the baby for work and inability to feed them. I don’t think the wife’s experience is unusual.
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Oh I get it. My cousin had serious complications breastfeeding her first child… such that doctors told her that under no circumstances was she to attempt to breastfeed her second.
I get that there’s a trillion factors that go into it. But for a lot of women there is a conscious decision at some point to stop trying to breastfeed. I realize in some circumstances that might mean a conscious decision to transition baby from 50% breast milk / 50% formula to 100% formula.
I’m just saying that this is going to cause women to rethink that decision. And it will probably be a combination of external influences and fear of giving up the non-formula food source.
Saw this and all I could think of was ‘do babies really like hummus that much?’
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From what I’ve seen it’s more quitting over the stress of not having enough time and/or supply and ripping off the bandage vs “feeling cute, gonna quit breastfeeding, idk.” Things were…not pretty for awhile at my house.
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I do not remotely think
is a factor for the vast overwhelming majority of women. I’m kind of shocked that you even suggested this. Do my posts come across as though I think that’s why women stop breast feeding? Because nothing could be further from the truth.
As you said, the factors that go into the decision are far more likely to be stress, time, and supply.
My point is that if women are scared there won’t be a sufficient supply of formula available then they are more likely to spend the time, deal with the added stress, etc.
My point is that the “conscious decision” is more recognition that things aren’t going well. Will there be some women who were planning on quitting who will try to hang on to the sinking ship longer? Sure, but it’s not really solving the problem, just buying a little time at best. If a woman can only pump a few ounces at work and the baby consumes 24 ounces during that timespan at daycare, the only way that’ll keep working is if she has a supply of frozen milk to supplement with. This also assumes the baby is able to get enough when directly breastfeeding when the mom isn’t working. Or struggling with trying to pump (sometimes to the point of bleeding) in between breastfeeding at home in hopes of building supply, but then worrying that’s talking away from what the baby would directly breastfeed. My point is that it’s not as simple as “just breastfeed longer.”
ETA: If you’d said “felt trapped or obligated to” vs “conscious decision”, then I’d have agreed with you. It can be a stressful enough situation in normal times. There was lots of stress, guilt, and tears over this during my kid’s first year. I think the wife would have done things differently in retrospect, but she was determined.
Good article on the formula shortage. Apparently a confluence of a closed factory, a bump in births, a decline in the desire to breastfeed, some trade policy, and the yoyos of the supply chain right now.
This was me. I was never able to pump enough to feed the baby while i was away. I pumped so i wouldn’t dry up, and so i could nurse the baby when i was home. But if there’d been no formula to supplement with, my babies would have gone hungry.
(I did dry up with the first, when i left my pump behind while traveling and i missed a couple days. I was much more careful with the second, and was able to nurse until i got sick, and wanted to take a medication that i didn’t want to share. But both my babies relied on also having formula as soon as i went to work.)
I really really hated nursing, but fortunately I was able to pump around 40 ounces a day (I exclusively pumped after the first week or two).
Unfortunately, my son was a hungry fella and ate around 44 ounces a day.
I gave up after just under six months. It became too much and I did my best.
You know I never felt any pressure around breast or bottle. I figured I’d breastfeed while I was on leave and then I found out how much formula cost. I didn’t pump enough so she got a bottle of formula a day when I worked. I felt great about that. With my second I invested in a better pump & I don’t remember how much I supplemented.
I have no idea if it’s a general or specific shortage, but my doctor found me a different formulation that will be a little bit of a nuisance, but should work exactly the same.
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I did. Both my mother and my mil nursed at a time when almost no one did, and both thought i ought to, and also that it was incredibly easy and i was making too much of a fuss about it.
My mil was like, “pump? What the hell is that? When i needed to leave a bottle for the baby sitter i just held a bottle under my nipple and filled it up.” My mother had so much milk that she “leaked” whenever she heard a baby cry, even when she wasn’t currently nursing. She had to wear pads in her bra all her child bearing years because she would routinely leak at the grocery store and stuff. But i struggled, and felt inadequate.
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Yeah, I was pretty lucky in that regard. AND that my baby went from breast to bottle fairly easily.
My second was not as easy but having a good experience with the first made a HUGE difference, I think, in my stress level. Contrasting that with my sister, who seemed to feel she “should” breastfeed but she struggled, I knew I had it easy.