Back To Work
by Barbara Dehn - 04th October 2007
My patient was showing me pictures of her little girl. She’s four now and going to be a big sister. I remember when she was a newborn with a shock of jet black hair, that stood straight up, and now here she is in an adorable dress, with her tiny Dora backpack, ready for pre-school. Where does the time go? We talked about her current pregnancy and I asked her about her plans for breastfeeding. It’s something I talk about at the first visit, because study after study indicates that most women who breastfeed for more than two weeks, made their decision either prior to getting pregnant or in the first trimester.
Interesting? I think it means that breastfeeding requires tremendous motivation and a prior commitment that might be more difficult to achieve if the decision comes in the third trimester or later. How do we do that? Is it more education or more exposure prior to pregnancy? Do formula advertisements cause women to stop breastfeeding? I don’t think so. I think that there are multiple inter-related factors, like expectations, unexpected challenges, returning to work, to name a few. My patient stopped breastfeeding, when she couldn’t pump enough for her baby at five months because she had to return to work. Was she successful? Of course she was. At the time she made the switch to formula was she doing the best for her baby? Of course she was.
We live in the real world, where women juggle multiple tasks, including feeding newborns. Is it easy to integrate all the demands and breastfeed too? For some women, yes, it’s easy and they glide through. For others, it’s not, and they do the best they can.
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