Breastfeeding shunned as new mums deem it ‘unnatural and abnormal’

Claire Jones Hughes was mortified when she was told by fellow diners in a cafe that she should be more discreet when breastfeeding her four-month-old daughter. “It was very unpleasant watching you feed,” she was informed. But this was affluent, liberal Brighton. Another customer came to her rescue, ordered the group to “get in the 21st century” and, rather than hide away, Claire decided to take a stand. She took to the internet and organised a breastfeeding “flashmob” attended by 60 mothers who, just days later, proudly nursed their babies by the town’s clock tower.

Claire, a customer services manager, had made her point and acceptance of public breastfeeding, even in this bastion of tolerance, was given what health professionals would say was a welcome nudge. Yet such a display of unashamed public breastfeeding is unlikely to happen in large swaths of the country, figures from the Department of Health suggest. In Brighton, 67.1% of new mothers were partially or totally breastfeeding their children when they reported for a checkup six to eight weeks following their child’s birth, according to statistics for the first three months of 2013. Yet in other parts of the country the figures remain resolutely low.

In middle-class circles it is fashionable to criticise the “lactivists”, the volunteers and professionals who rather zealously warn of the dangers of formula milk. But far from women being unfairly pushed into breastfeeding, in many parts of the country the reluctance to even entertain the idea of using anything other than formula milk is firmly entrenched.

In Hartlepool, in the north-east, between January and March this year only 57 mothers told healthworkers at their six- to eight-week checkup that they were giving breastmilk to their child – 19.3% of maternities in that period and three fewer women than attended Claire’s demonstration. On the other side of the country in Knowsley, in Merseyside, an even smaller proportion of mothers were partially or totally breastfeeding by the time of their six- to eight-week checkup – 17.6%. In north-east Lincolnshire, it was 19.7%, in North Tees 21.5% and in South Tyneside 22.6%.

Nationally, in 2012-13, just 47.2% of women were totally or even partially breastfeeding around six to eight weeks after the birth of their child, unchanged from the year before. Furthermore, the Observer reports a decline in the number of women trying to breastfeed in the 48 hours after childbirth – the first year-on-year dip in almost a decade. The proportion of women who initiated breastfeeding, defined as just once bringing a child to the nipple, let alone feeding it some milk is down 1.2% on last year (about 5,700 fewer mothers), suggesting that the trend towards breastfeeding of the last decade has stalled.

From 2004 the proportion of women initiating breastfeeding went up one percentage point every year from 66.2% to 74% in 2011-12, with a smaller increase between 2010-11 and 2011-12. Now even that nudge, in what study after study says is the right direction, has dissipated.

Source The Guardian