Yesterday we started a series of three entries to explain Ten phrases we shouldn't say to a mother who breastfeeds her baby. We talk mostly about phrases that are told to recent mothers, new mothers, and have the power to help them lose confidence and stop breastfeeding, basically because they are myths or mistakes that make women believe Mothers that breastfeeding is different from how it happens.
After trying three of those phrases yesterday, we continue today with three more, to leave the remaining four for tomorrow's entry.
4. Maybe your milk is not good enough
The baby often sucks, maybe there is no good posture, maybe something is wrong or maybe everything is going well, the fact is that breastfeeding may not go as everyone expected, or as someone expected. Perhaps, as I said before, it seems to grandmothers that they suck too much.
Perhaps the mother is very tired because she is trying to continue with life from before, having the house untouched and taking care of a baby, not knowing how to delegate to other people or without clearly asking what she wants and needs. Perhaps there is no one who has explained that being a mother is not a path of roses where violas music plays, that a baby is a super demanding baby that absorbs the energies of its parents.
Perhaps because of all this, doubts begin, because the mother is very tired, because the baby often breastfeeds, because she is not gaining enough weight (or someone thinks she should gain more than normal) or because nobody is assessing the intake to help Look for some mistake in the position. And it occurs to someone that perhaps the fault of everything is, indirectly, the mother, who turns out to produce a milk that does not feed enough.
Yes, because everyone knows Manoli, Paqui's daughter, who had to give bottles to her son, and then don't see how she grew up, because his milk was not of good quality. And if it happened to her, it can happen to anyone, "and this child has absorbed you, and that is that you don't produce good milk."
But it is a mistake, again. No bad milk, and this was totally denied a long time ago and we rescued him, in case you want to read it, in the entry in which we talk about women with few resources, by commenting that before the risk of malnutrition, we should not give artificial milk to their babies (who is what is suggested by thinking that eating badly have bad milk), but to help mothers be well nourished.
5. We, in our family, were never able to have enough milk
It may be true, but it may not be. It is true that there are women who do not get enough milk, we will not say now that the grandmother lies, but is not hereditary. And yet many women think so, that they will not have milk because their mothers did not have it and because the grandmother did not either (the first, probably, because the second convinced her that she would not get it).
It may be that a real woman has hypogalactia, but I repeat, it is not inherited. If there are even women who have problems with the first child, they believe that they will never be able to breastfeed a baby and it turns out that with the second they do. Therefore, having differences between different children, imagine if there are differences between mothers and daughters.
Telling a recent mother not to insist, that she will not succeed, that it is a family problem is to lay a big stone to ballast breastfeeding, because that woman's trust is undermined from the base.
6. But do you produce enough milk with a breast of that size?
For a reason of simple logic people think that women with the big breast produce more milk than women who have the smallest breast. By simple logic I mean it seems that they are comparing the size of the chest with the size of a bottle. In a large bottle it fits a lot of liquid, but in a small one it fits very little.
The problem is that the breast is not a bottle, the size does not define the amount of milk that is produced and not, the breasts are not hollow, they are not empty inside and therefore do not have the same functioning.
Inside the breast of a woman are the mammary glands, a tissue whose mission is to produce milk. All women have mammary glands, so they can all breastfeed (then, in breastfeeding, many other factors that can hinder or make it difficult, but a priori, the gland is there). Around the mammary glands, women have adipose tissue and suspensory ligaments that hold the breast. Both structures give the size and shape that can be seen from the outside, but they have nothing to do with what is seen from outside with the amount of milk a woman produces.
So the question is misplaced first because it is a lie, a woman with little breast can produce much more milk than one with a lot of breast, and second, because it is tremendously disrespectful. Can you already have children with such a small penis? Can you go through the doors with such a big ass? How can you get to the sites with such small legs? Don't you dazzle people when the sun reflects on your bald spot? Do you think you'll ever have a partner with that face you have? I think nobody would ask such a question, or at least nobody in their right mind. How is it possible that, when there is a baby involved, people take the opportunity to doubt the mother's ability to raise him with such a question? Already, there will be no bad intention, I imagine, but this is one of those times when one has to think twice before speaking.
And tomorrow more
Well, that. Tomorrow a new entry in this series of three, the last one, with the four missing phrases, which you can read here.
