I wasn’t planning on blogging but a post from a  PR & communications expert I really respect caught my eye.   He marveled at Dr. King’s ability, called him the “King of all Communicators” and urged us to read King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

Since my New Year’s wish is to “Be Inspired,”  I didn’t mind reading the nine-page letter.   What I didn’t expect was to find a parallel to the breastfeeding movement. 

When I talk to people about what I do, I find that many people don’t understand what the big deal is about breastfeeding.   Isn’t it natural and easy?  Aren’t most women breastfeeding?   Why the protests and “nurse-ins”?  Why do women keep making such a big fuss about it?

So I tend to do intuitively what Dr. King did, when he explained “why we can’t wait”–he gave us a moving, visceral and poignant snapshot of what it meant, at that time, to be a Negro.   In the same vein, I try to give people who don’t understand the urgency I feel, the opportunity to stand in a new mother’s shoes.  

Imagine you are expecting your first child.   Your mother didn’t breastfeed, so she can’t show you how, share her experience, or tell you what to expect.   You take a class at the hospital about childbirth, but it doesn’t include even the basics of breastfeeding.   Most of your friends didn’t breastfeed, or maybe you are the first in your group to have a baby.  Your ob/gyn never speaks to you about feeding choices, because his job pretty much ends at delivery.   You give birth in a country that has an astronomically high caesarean and birth intervention rates, which negatively impact breastfeeding.   Your baby is supplemented in the hospital with formula, against your wishes.   A certified lactation counselor is not on staff during the weekend you delivered, or is overwhelmed with patients.   You are discharged before your milk comes in or breastfeeding is established, and your “gift” is a diaper bag filled with formula samples and information which has been proven to undermine breastfeeding duration.   Because your baby was given a bottle in the hospital, he/she has a poor latch:  breastfeeding becomes unnecessarily painful and you have to track down a lactation consultant who makes home visits, doesn’t scare you, and is covered even minimally by your health insurance.   The clock is ticking and your husband hates to see you suffer and struggle, so he tells you ”it’s okay to give the baby formula.”   You go online and find a sea of misinformation or language that’s so technically scientific, it’s over your head.   Miraculously, you get help, stick it out, go to great lengths to leave the room every time you nurse the baby, yet your mother-in-law and friends ask you “when are you going to give that baby a bottle.”   Your pediatrician charts your baby’s weight against formula-fed babies and thinks she/he is undernourished, undermining your confidence and self-esteem.   By the way, it turns out no one in your pediatrician’s office is certified as a lactation counselor, or can give you any answers or refer you for your breastfeeding questions.   If you are lucky to have a maternity leave, or are able to afford unpaid leave, you may feel, as Michelle Obama reportedly did, that you have to go back to work just as you have gotten the hang of breastfeeding.   Perhaps you won’t be able to negotiate a flexible work schedule, as she did.   Most likely, especially if you are a blue-collar worker, you will have to fight for pumping breaks, put up with sneers from co-workers, and find an empty broom closet with an outlet.   If you are a stay-at-home mom, you will be expected to STAY AT HOME, and not feed your baby while you are running errands to feed the rest of your family or keep your home going; you will face social disapproval, rude stares, and risk getting kicked out of stores, airplanes, the mall.   You will need to have the same endurance and perseverance as an athelete trying to run a race in flip-flops while being jeered at from the crowd.   At any of these points, that free sample of formula starts to look quite appealing, and maybe some of the sneakiest formula advertising messages have worked their way into your subliminal consciousness, such as “Strong babies start here” even though your rational mind knows very well, that in fact, they don’t.  If you throw in the towel, which most new moms understandably do, you will probably be berated for NOT breastfeeding by the very same people who didn’t want you to breastfeed in public, and didn’t want you to make a fuss. 

So, if you wonder why women get so riled up, we hope you will not think that it is just because we want to breastfeed in public.  Many of us aren’t trying to make a point of breastfeeding in public, or on Facebook; If we post pictures for our friends, it’s usually because we are proud of ourselves, and amazed at what our bodies, and our babies, can do.  We just want to be able to feed our babies when they are hungry, without having to break into a sweat finding a bathroom, a closet, or a car.   We just want to be able to succeed at breastfeeding AT ALL without having the rug constantly pulled out from under us.  

As the inauguration of President Obama unfolds, we want what Michelle Obama says she wants for us, a balance of work and family.   We have high hopes for the new administration.  Hopes that breastfeeding’s health benefits and healthcare cost savings, employment savings, and environmental boost to the planet, and the rights of mothers and babies, will finally become more important than the agenda of powerful lobbyists and their industries.   We have waited too long, and as Dr. King says, ”our cups of endurance runneth over”–and truly they do, whether they are size A, B, C or double D.  

What saddens me most is not that most people don’t understand the many obstacles to breastfeeding–especially breastfeeding longer than a nanosecond–that new moms in the U.S. face, or don’t understand that breastfeeding can actually be easy and wonderful if proper support is in place.   What saddens me is that most new moms themselves don’t realize that although they were urged to breastfeed, they were set up to fail.   They unfairly blame themselves, and perpetuate the myth that “they couldn’t breastfeed,” when probably they could have, if only they had been helped along the way.   They don’t see that breastfeeding moms are being discriminated against, even segregated today, and in the exhausted fog of new motherhood, have come to accept what should be unacceptable.  They don’t see that the “mommy wars” have been fueled to pit breastfeeding mother against bottle-feeding mother and to conveniently avoid uncovering the real culprits that are undermining both. 

Please know that not all mothers experience all of these obstacles.   For some, breastfeeding is immediately easy and problem-free.  There are phenomenal hospitals that follow breastfeeding support protocol.   I know ob/gyns and pediatricians who are herculean in their efforts to support breastfeeding mothers, even though much of our health insurance system does not support them to devote the extra time.  There are mothers and in-laws and friends who will encourage you to breastfeed, even if they didn’t, some recognize that they were sold out, too.   Their willingness to put their defensiveness aside and end the guilt trip is admirable.  

I hope you will allow me to extend the inspiration, just for today, and paraphrase Dr. King’s closing:  If I’ve overstated the truth, and shown an unreasonable impatience, I beg your forgiveness.   If I’ve understated the truth, and shown patience to settle for anything less than an end to discrimination against breastfeeding mothers, than I am really failing you all.