Breastfeeding Utopia – part one

If we lived in a world that was truly supportive of breastfeeding, what would it be like?

Here are just a few scenarios I could see happening in this breastfeeding utopia.

Scenario one

Antenatal class, second session. Held not in a hospital, but in a local cafe or pub. A woman walks in with a piece of old cloth for each expectant Mum in addition to newborn-sized dolls for everyone.

“What are we learning today?” one asks.

“I’m not sure. You got your list?”

Another pregnant woman pipes up, “yeah, here we are. Hands-free nursing.”

“Ooh that sounds exciting!”

The woman, who has brought her own nursing toddler with her, shows all the women how to tie the knot tightly, how to check baby is at the right level, how easy it is to walk around nursing baby… just then, all eyes turn towards the window.

“There’s an example,” says the mentor. Two women walk past wearing slings, one of the women has a baby in hers, contentedly nursing away. (You can see a lot of breast, but no one bats an eyelid. That’s normal in this world.) The other woman is actually using her sling to carry shopping and a child, probably about four years of age, walks along beside her.

“You can of course buy a nice fancy sling if you want, you don’t have to use an old piece of cloth,” she says, smiling “and when your babe is no longer ‘in arms’ you can use it like that woman, to carry shopping.”

Actually, even as I write down this scenario, I start to think, “surely if this was breastfeeding utopia, these women wouldn’t even need this class? It would just be something that women know, just like women in this real world learn how to feed baby a bottle at a very young age.”

Maybe this is breastfeeding utopia, first generation?

Anyway scenario two.

A playgroup, in which little girls – and boys – are playing with dolls.

“Dollie hungry,” says one girl, and lifts her top to put her doll to her chest. All the other children follow suite, even the boys.

Scenario three

From outside the room, you can hear laughter and friendly chat. It’s like any other work canteen or break room. Actually, not quite. There’s a whirring sound, like an electric motor, from inside.

Let’s go inside and see what’s going on.

Women in suits sit round, eating their butties, sipping coffee (oh, what’s she drinking? Ah, I see, fennel tea) and chatting. And expressing milk. This must be an expressing room for work out of the home Mums.

No, hang on. They’re not all expressing. Three of the women aren’t, anyway… and who is that, in the corner? Oh gosh! It’s a man! In fact, now I look around, there are quite a few men. As many as there are women. And none of them look askance at the expressers. In fact – hang on a minute – I was right all along.

It is just a work canteen, where women just happen to be expressing milk for their babies. This is just normal.

(Perhaps a few generations down the line in breastfeeding utopia, the women have their babies with them in work?)

Scenario four

Millie’s baby never put on much weight; in fact he even lost weight several weeks running. After several sessions with her GP – who is, of course, fully trained, as is every GP in this world, in breastfeeding – she was diagnosed with a very rare condition; not enough milk.

She gets a free supplemental nursing system on prescription.

What should she supplement with? The supermarkets do of course sell totally unbranded infant formula milk which has gone through rigorous testing to ensure it has as minimal a risk as possible to infant health, although of course it’s not human milk, and it does still pose a risk.

Hang on, no, that’s not right. Although that’s a scenario that’s more acceptable than the one we have now, this is breastfeeding utopia.

She gets a prescription for human milk with which she supplements her own feeds. All supplementation is of course at the breast.

Millie’s baby grows happy and healthy.

What happens when he gets to a year old?

Her prescription doesn’t run out just because she “can” give him cows’ milk. It continues for as long as she and her baby wish to carry on nursing.

Ah, lovely. Pity this is the real world.