it's early days yet to start thinking of breastfeeding but i am. it seems that many women, no matter what country they come from, are pressured to think that their milk is 'not good enough' due to the success of milk powder companies' aggressive marketing. back home, you can see ads that promise to make your child, 'smart' 'intelligient' with DHA, folic, etc etc etc. the pictures they use have babies with graduation hats on their cute little heads, the babies that drink milk powder can read faster.
Relentless advertising have brainwashed women to believe that their milk is inferior!
the surprising fact is that often times it is women who discourage other women from breastfeeding. i remember a friend of mine who was determined to breastfeed exclusively for 6 months back home. Exclusive breastfeeding is still not common back home so she met with so much resistance, a lot of it from her mother-in-law and mother who accused her of starving the baby. you see, in the beginning, the milk takes a while to come (plus problems like cracked nipples), so a new mother needs a strong support system to start nursing productively. the last thing a woman needs is accusing fingers pointed at her. oftentimes, new mothers cave in to such pressure and supplement with milk powder when their own, natural breast milk IS THE BEST!
i met a friend whose wife began feeding powdered milk in the baby's first month because that way the baby would sleep longer at night and she could get a rest. i was really shocked that the doctors had not dissuaded her. i guess, back home, knowledge of breastfeeding is still so limited. we're still in our mothers' generation which was completely brainwashed to spend on milk powder. even though we're more educated, many of us remain ignorant of the benefits of simple things like breastmilk. We tend to believe more 'scientific' sounding ads, perhaps because every parent secretly harbour a desire to create an Einstein.
Timorese women face a different set of problems. a woman at an IDP camp told me that while on the run she was eating supermie (instant noodles) every day so much so that the baby began to reject her milk. imagine that! so the poor woman had no choice but to turn to milk powder - nobody thought of using the money for milk powder to feed
the woman instead.
During the peak of the emergency, milk powder was given out by some NGOs with the genuine intention of feeding the children but there was potential disaster in such an action because once mothers stop breastfeeding, their milk run dry, and what will they do when the packets of free milk powder also runs out? each packet of SGM brand powder costs about $2 US dollars here - a price that few timorese can afford on a regular basis. it was a real dilemma. the only solution really is to feed the mothers with more nutritious food which is the most viable and sustainable long term solution.
When i approached a bunch of doctors (who embarrasingly came from my country)who also had a hand in distributing milk powder, they demonstrated utter ignorance in working in developing countries. they said "the milk boxes had instructions" yeah, but 27% of the population (15-24)are illiterate, they can't be expected to read instructions in Bahasa Indonesia or English. They said "we instructed them on how to prepare the milk" but how many households use 1) clean water 2) boiled water 3) sterilised bottles and 4) do not share bottles amongst children? We tried to explain that milk bottle feeding is one of the top causes for diarrhea that can kill Timorese children. We don't have those fancy "bottle sterilisers" that people in developed countries have. And getting anything sterilised means using up firewood and precious water. I really wanted to punch a doctor when he said "i really don't see what the fuss is all about over powder." WHAM! BANG! KAPUT!
so next time you see a woman breastfeeding, go up to her and give her some encouraging words! she needs it! WOMEN OF THE WORLD UNITE!
right on sister! you are lucky to be able to see breastfeeding from both worlds: in developed countries and in developing countries. Breastfeeding is the greatest thing i ever experienced and i hope you will experience it toO!
ReplyDeleteabsolutely. our parents didn't think breastfeeding is good. After i was discharged. My parents and aunties made so much discouraging comments about me breastfeeding. They kept asking if i had enough for the baby. I was so irritated until i told all of them to ZIP up and keep their comments to themselves. Sometimes no choice ... the word is to pesevere. After one or two weeks, it'll be fineeeeeeeeeeeee.
ReplyDeletesad to say, sometimes we, the so-called 'developed world' ppl, failed to understand basic health education. eg: the "smart" doctor who questioned the fuss over the powder. And we always take shortcuts - i.e. addressing the problem instantly with no lasting results than long term results.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, it is not hard to provide nutritious food for pregnant women and children. There are plants like the moringa tree that can be grown easily and packed much more vitamins and iron than the average food. But it seems we're all too busy running around to get something as simple as planting trees started. We go to iron pills, folic acid pills and vit A pills. Nothing wrong with all these but the poor women will not be able to afford them.
here's a link to an informative doc about moringa and how it had benefited various countries and slash infant mortality rates. I once spoke to a NGO in ET before. In fact, this NGO had done it successfully in senegal. But for Timor, they're not growing/using the plant. Maybe other things are "more important". I wonder what;s more important than educating and saving the lives of women, babies and malnourished children.
http://www.moringanews.org/documents/Nutrition.pdf
hi Jas, yes, i too came across the NGO in Baucau that is trying to promote Moringa and i do agree that there is so much we have yet to understand about natural herbal medicine. Traditional Chinese Mediciine used to be scorned but thankfully it is now taking its rightful place, where in some western medicine hospitals at home, there are also TCM consultants. I guess the Enlightenment period which stressed so heavily on scientific explanations made us all skeptics of natural everyday miracles we can't sometimes explain. Who would have thought years ago that foot reflexology had 'scientific' bearings? Who knew that our big toe was connected to our heart??? i guess for other traditional medicines in the world, the struggle continues on! i'm all for further exploration as long as the traditional doctors don't go into voodoo stuff and start cutting up people or do strange stuff like that.
ReplyDeleteheylo. i completely understand where you are coming from, but i think that your post was rather one-sided. Don't get me wrong. I hate commercialism and advertisers trying to sell you things you don't need, but you have forgotten that these milk powder companies do fulfill a real demand--think of working mothers in the first world who can afford milk powder and do not have the time to breastfeed on a regular basis. would u rather the child grow up without the nutrients that milk, be it powdered or breast milk provides, at all? yes, there are the unethical companies who try to market their goods at the expense of human lives. Yes, there are well-intentioned doctors who ended up posing a threat with their milk powder hand-outs. but commercialism is going to get more widespread. and well-meaning people who dont think through their actions will keep appearing. in the end then, if you think about it, it becomes a very simple issue of helping to educate people so that they are able to make the best choices for themselves out of the many options that are available, and will only keep increasing with time.
ReplyDeleteI still remember a bIG article in the STraits Times several years back, written about this woman who organised a donation of milk powder for the babies in Timor. I was so angry about it, and a few of us wrote to the press about it.
ReplyDeleteYes, they can simply just feed the women better.
Actually, about the woman drinking milk - would she like it? I wouldn't myself. quite yucks to me. Maybe some vegetables or eggs with her instant mee might be better and cheaper.