Exclusively breastfeeding is very challenging to do while working, for one. Even at my megacorp with a dedicated space, a hospital grade pump, and 2 hrs a day dedicated only to that, it was a substantial hit to supply. Considering that most women don't have those amenities and support I'm not surprised they don't breastfeed exclusively after their mat leave (for most women in the US, 6 weeks unpaid)
Not to mention - it can be painful (if I had no option of course I would endure pain for my child, but there is no shame in looking for something less painful) or the baby can not learn to latch (formerly known as "failure to thrive" and a driver of infant mortality)
I've recently become a father and I do wonder how much US maternity leave (or rather, lack thereof) accounts for your high formula usage.
While my wife is coping, it's still very draining to handle a newborn and pump at regular intervals, even at 10 weeks. If she was in the US and had been forced to go back to work already, she may well have given up on breast milk already.
Nursing is nearly a full time job. When I was doing it with a six month old via pumping, I tracked my hours spent one week and came up with 30 hours. With another baby, I was nursing in the evenings when home from work, and it was literally 3-4 hours a night. Every night. And often almost a full hour in the morning before work. It varies from baby to baby, but it's a brutal time commitment.
Also, when you're nursing full time, you can't leave the baby. Ever. Getting a haircut requires significant planning because if the baby gets hungry, it is your problem and yours alone. If you want to go shopping or see a movie or just leave the dang house for any reason at all, if you want to do any activity that occupies you for a length of time and is hard to interrupt, you need a baby plan. And for a period of months, when in love with a newborn, this seems totally fine and totally worth it. But somewhere on the road to a year? Being able to hand a baby to someone to watch for an hour or two and go do things is amazing.
Don't get me wrong, nursing is a wonderful experience and very important for the health of mother and baby. But the value diminishes over time. With a preemie, it is downright lifesaving. With a newborn it has proven lifelong benefits. But somewhere around the time they're eating cheerios and licking the floor and snacking on apple juice, and you have other things to do, you ask yourself if it's really worth what it costs. At least, I did.
Where you come down on the value of breastfeeding vs formula really depends a lot on your life circumstances and the relative priorities you place on mothering via milk, and mothering via other activities. When and where you leave off is very personal. Some women want to nurse toddlers, and I support that. Some women want to use formula from day one, and I'm not crazy about that, but life is varied and sometimes circumstances dictate and when they do, I'm glad we have the option. In particular, I think this is really common after a C-section, which makes sense -- mom is recovering from surgery and breastfeeding can involve resting a baby on a recovering wound! I'd certainly never second guess someone who thought it more important to have the energy to be emotionallypresent with the baby, even if that meant feeding baby a different food than they'd wish for in a perfect world. Milk has its benefits, but having an emotionally healthy mom counts for a lot, too. Probably more. And it's a long journey. Trying too hard to do everything perfect can result in mental health issues for mom, which isn't good for anyone, baby included.
Some women transition early, and I support that, some do late, and I support that, too. All parents try to do right by their children, and for some that looks like laborious custom homemade food and for some that looks like neighborhoods and education and opportunities. I do think we'd be better off as a society if it were more practical to nurse for the first year--I think a lot of women would choose it if it were easier. But that involves understanding it like the full time commitment it is. Can I put a year of "full time mom" on my resume? Three times? Can I take a year off of work? Is spending a year nursing seen as a normal and honorable career choice? That's essentially the ask. Whether the gap is made up by state or society or family or whatever, the world would have to look pretty different for me to find it a practical option to make such a commitment to nursing that formula was entirely unnecessary. For some people it's that important. Some would like to, but it's too hard. Some people aren't cut out to be full time moms. And sometimes even full time moms think it's better to use their energy for other things.
> "Also, when you're nursing full time, you can't leave the baby. Ever."
outside of the first few weeks (not months), a healthy baby can wait an hour or two to nurse. you certainly don't want to constantly deny feeding for hours on end, but a couple hours is well within the environment in which we've evolved over the past many millenia. our bodies are amazingly adaptive and tolerant, even as infants. mothers, nursing or not, shouldn't feel any guilt for not dedicating every single waking second to infants (after the first few weeks). that said, i fully support multiple months of paid parental leave (socially supported rather than employer supported) for both parents to adjust to the new human in their lives.
Yeah, I suppose I'm overstating it. It would be better to say that when you're full time nursing, going and doing things requires planning and support.
When I was directly breastfeeding exclusively, stepping outside the house for an hour felt crazy and scary. You're right that it got easier as the baby got older, and I knew the baby wouldn't die, but I wanted to be there for him!! Who wants to leave a kid hungry when they need you? So from a practical perspective, I rarely did anything.
When I was pumping, I worried about supply and timing and what I'd left behind and if I'd make it back in time to sufficiently support everyone's biology. It was doable but I was always planning around it. Better, and now hours on end became practical, but the hassle still made it hard to want to go out. You're always worrying, if you miss your pumping appointment, if that means ultimately baby won't get enough. I mean, you know that's not true, but you worry. The practical effect for me is that something fun and easy that doesn't fit perfectly in the schedule -- like seeing a movie -- just doesn't seem worth the stress. So you never see movies.
But man, the sheer freedom of being able to tell grandma "Here's the baby, here's a box of unlimited food" and not think about it. Man. If you want to know why people make that call, I'm sure that's a factor. That's really what I mean.
yah, the need to always be planning is definitely a drag, and it dampening the deisre to step away is completely understandable. it totally makes sense to me that parents often choose the hybrid approach (of supplementing with formula) because of this.
Check the female workforce statistics. We decided as a culture it was more important for women to be working than “wasting time” raising and caring for their children.
This development has occured in most of the world, including some rather conservative societies like Japan and Iran. The sad truth is that modern economies need a lot of educated workers.
