Of Pumps and Pacification

Free breast pumps and insurance provided breastfeeding classes only replace our babies and female friendship

I keep getting text messages from the company I ordered my employer insurance-covered breast pump telling me it’s time to sign up for their “breastfeeding”classes. I resent it.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume the breast pump company breastfeeding class is going to put a lot of emphasis on pumping, also likely to focus on how to build up a stash before returning to work and the like. This isn’t actually meaningful help, it is pacification masquerading as help.

Please go away, Aeroflow

I used to work for WIC as a breastfeeding peer counselor way back in 2013-2014. This was before all insurance companies were required to provide breast pumps to women. Back then I was a staunch advocate for it. I thought, as a result of my state-funded lactation training, that things like free breast pumps and assigned closets to pump in at workplaces were the answer that we needed to achieve breastfeeding success for mothers who wanted to nurse their babies.

Now, after having had more babies and also more work experience in nursing and lactation, as well as just being completely fed up with *the state of things* for mothers in terms of work and infant feeding—I see that this is all crumbs.

I don’t want an insurance company breast pump website to teach me, a full grown female mammal, how to nurse a baby. I don’t want their contraption either, really. Yes I still took it, and I used it for about 4 days so I could syringe feed my baby after her nursing sessions while she figured out latching. They have their uses. The use of a breast pump should be in service of supporting the breastfeeding relationship though, not altogether replacing it simply so a woman can leave her baby.

Nursing a baby should not require some sort of corporate involvement. It shouldn’t be taught by companies hired by the companies we labor for. This is neither their job nor is it their place. I don’t say this because I don’t think companies shouldn’t have any responsibility toward their childbearing-age employees, I say it because it is just simply true. Working women using pumps means their earlier return to work for those companies-they are not doing this because they care about us, they are doing it because it makes them look “family friendly” and “pro woman”. In reality, it really is about optics and the bare minimum.

This is actually the place of fellow women in the community and the family, this is the place of the mother herself. Breastfeeding is learned socially, and it is learned over time with one’s baby. Sometimes professional help is warranted but the most common issues can be handled with patience and good mother-to-mother advice. It is basic instincts after all. There is a lot of talk about how breastfeeding is natural but not easy, which is sometimes true but I want also make clear that sometimes it actually is easy.

Being handed a free machine that replaces the work of the infant and which functions to prevent the body from malfunctioning while separated from that infant isn’t some sort of Utopian freedom for women and mothers. Free breast pumps aren’t the boon to modern motherhood we make them out to be. It’s a band aid solution to a widespread problem. The problem of the working lactating woman. The problem so many like to pretend isn’t a problem.

An 1882 illustration from Maw, Son & Thompson, Surgeon's Instruments, etc.

The other part of my annoyance is this idea that we need a company to teach us anything about mothering—that we need it so much that our workplaces include it in their employee “benefits”. I do not think it is beneficial for me to watch hours of PowerPoint presentations and lectures by experts on sleep training and “pacifiers-yay or nay?”. Not just because I am in my 4th kid and know where I stand on these things or because I don’t give a lot of credence to such experts, but because this is not the way to learn these things.

I think we overcomplicate the basics of the childbearing year, and as such, the tutelage that so many seek out about the topics involved in the childbearing year are similarly overcomplicated. Breastfeeding is not always a totally intuitive thing (sometimes it is, contrary to popular messaging!), but it certainly doesn’t always require specialized, professionalized expertise. The pillars of what is needed to be successful are simple. Anatomically functional breasts, an anatomically/neurologically functional infant, a willing mother, and time, patience and resolve.

True anatomical and neurological issues are real, do impact nursing, and do often require the help of experts such as not only IBCLCs but speech therapists and occupational therapists, among others. Willing mothers abound, but many have their wills sabotaged by a host of different things—poor expectations, partners that don’t get it, pediatricians that don’t know a thing about normal breastfed baby behavior, jobs that request their presence mere weeks postpartum, and now social media influencers selling formula by yapping about maternal mental health in a misleading and ignorant way. Time gets stolen by work and other obligations. Patience is a skill many are lacking. Resolve even more so, and often lack of resolve only becomes an option when there are alternatives, and there are many alternatives.

Simply put, if you want to breastfeed, you just need to do it. Do it and know that you likely will have some moments which are hard, you may cry, you may be in pain, your baby may cry, and you will feel like a failure. Do it and know that those feelings do not last, and if they do, there are options.

The first option should almost always be seeking the help of a woman who has done this before you, preferably a few times over, and for the long haul. This is ideally a family member or close friend, but things being what they are, it may be more of an acquaintance, or a woman who runs a local support group. That’s okay! That acquaintance you know from story time at the library who has nursed 6 babies over the course of the last 12 years is better than a woman with 20 letters behind her name that the insurance company hired to make presentations for you to listen to and probably only retain 20% of in a lot of ways. Your cousin who maybe didn’t nurse her first but doubled down and got it done with her second is better than a private practice IBCLC in a lot of ways.

Your fellow women are better resources than experts because they will give you common sense knowledge for free. They are better because they are going to cover the basics, and the basics are all you need when you are starting out. Horses not zebras, as they say. When nursing a baby and troubleshooting normal little bumps in the road, it is better to handle like horses than it is to go searching for zebras. Professionals are there for the zebras.

Relying on the women in your community for help is better not only for the practical reasons-it’s free, they can teach the basics just as well as an expert-but for reasons that reach more into the relational, social and cultural.

It is essential that we rebuild a heritage of collective female knowledge among us, the women. When seeking help with nursing our babies, I actually think it is really imperative to actively choose, in a very intentional manner, to first seek the love and support of women who actually love and support you, not people who are strangers and are paid to help you. Paid support should be the last resort.

breastfeedingart

A post shared by @breastfeedingart

Consider the power of learning to nurse one’s own baby whilst sitting next to the woman who is your teacher as she nurses her own. Consider further the power of young women and little girls witnessing this happen. Consider the power of no outside interference and no machines.

It is no coincidence that pumping is such a hot topic. Pumping is heavily featured in prenatal breastfeeding education of all sorts. It is focused on and often jumped to as a first line fix by lactation consultants. Pumping is marketed left and right by the companies that make them, it is lauded as a tool for the working woman by those insurance companies and the employers who pay for them, and it is widely featured on social media by influencers singing the praises of combo feeding and showing off their frozen milk stashes.

The way pumping is currently publicly discussed is nothing short of promotion of bonding with machines. We have a lot of Mother Replacer Tech currently. Snoos, baby shushers, that sort of thing. They are loved by many and criticized by some. I personally have not seen criticism of the other side of this though, how breast pumps are baby replacing technology. They are. And why, if it is not an absolute necessity, would we want to replace our babies?

This is just another industry that in providing something that is a true need, has found ways to capitalize on that need and turn it into a want. Every new mom needs a breast pump now, it is assumed that one will want one, even if they don’t need it. When in conversation while pregnant, other women will often ask which pump you plan on getting. It is in many ways, very trendy, especially with the new wearable options.

Pumping also means sales of things like breastmilk storage bags, those machines that heat milk up to the perfect temperature, and the pitchers to pour all of your daily pumping sessions into. This inevitably turns into the sale of the supplements women inevitably feel they need because what they pump doesn’t amount to the large, impressive milk stashes they saw on TikTok.

Pump companies get to make contracts with insurance companies and insurance companies get to make contracts with corporate entities who get to then tout their provision of a breast pump as an employee benefit. Notice who is invisible in this hierarchy of milking machines? Yes, the woman whose breasts will be milked and the baby who is being replaced.

Breastfeeding at the breast allows women to sit down and relax. It creates allotted time for skin to skin contact with our babies. It floods our bodies with hormones that promote maternal wellbeing and love and protection for our infants. It allows our babies to fully develop their faces and microbiome and immune systems. It allows for the personalization of the makeup of the milk via the interchange between mother’s nipple and baby’s mouth. Breastfeeding our infants at the breast is a unique experience. It is different than pumping, because milk isn’t the only thing that matters.

Like so many other things, this isn’t a judgement, it is a declaration of the truth declared to draw attention to the systems that diminish and sabotage that truth.

Making exclusive pumping for newborns a normalized thing that isn’t just reserved for absolutely necessary infant-mother separation like a NICU stay or to remedy legitimate medical issues like a baby with a cleft lip or hydrocephalus is making breastfeeding into a chore and into a less biological experience. It is turning away from what we are and overcomplicating something which should be largely an easeful experience which exists to make caring for one’s infant pleasurable, fulfilling and easy.

Free breast pumps and pumping closets and insurance provided breastfeeding classes taught by experts are just pacifying women. They provide just enough support so that we may not cry discrimination. They take us away from our babies and they take us away from the women in our communities.

Mothers do not need their babies to be replaced with machines, they need the freedom to be with their babies, however that may look. It may look like longer maternity leave. It may look like policy change. It may look like working from home. It may look like bringing back, in our own small way, the cottage industry right out of our own homes. It may look like doubling down on frugality, taking on less debt and husbands carrying the home financially. It may look like bringing our babies to work with us where it is practical.

Liberty to mother, and to breastfeed, can look many sorts of ways, what is imperative is that we don’t give it up in favor of corporate pacification.

Did you appreciate your free pump? Did you take breastfeeding classes? Do you think exclusive pumping as a matter of preference is a good thing? Have you noticed the social media trend of promoting these things? Most importantly, what does “liberty to mother” look like to you?