Why the saying "there's no right way to breastfeed, only your way" doesn't help
Telling women "there is no right way to breastfeed" doesn't help and sometimes even harms breastfeeding women and their babies
Many prominent breastfeeding support professionals and organisations still say that women need to find their own approach, and that this is empowering for women. They say there is no one style of fit and hold which fits all.
However, this belief condemns many new mothers to terrible nipple pain and damage, and many new babies to distress at the breast, which is preventable. I have the view that this belief disempowers women.
The adage "there's no right way to breastfeed, only your way" assumes there is a 'natural' way to breastfeed, which women can work out for themselves if only they are given the confidence to do so. There are many problems with this adage, which really is a breastfeeding ideology. Here are some of the problems with it.
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It's a phrase which sentimentalises breastfeeding as a 'natural' female activity. You can read more about the problems with this belief below.
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It's a phrase which originated in the second half of the 20th century, when we in the West had unrealistic and romanticised notions about non-Industrialised cultures and 'natural' bodies, including romanticised and unrealistic notions about how women breastfed. Because breastfeeding has been the evolutionary norm, breastfeeding advocates wrongly assumed that breastfeeding would fall into place if only hospitals interfered less and a woman had opportunity to tune in to her primitive instincts.
Managing a mismatch between evolution and culture requires high levels of education and clinical skill
It's now widely accepted that mismatch between Homo sapien's environment of evolutionary adaptedness and contemporary culture causes many common health problems and chronic diseases.
In our complex 21st century sociocultural contexts, we have the right to be informed about how we can live in a way that is sensibly aligned with the biological needs of our bodies, which developed in the human's environment of evolutionary adaptedness.
For example, most people accept these days that careful education about healthy diet and exercise, from as early in life as possible, helps us align our lifestyles and dietary choices with our bodies' evolutionary expectations, and protects our health.
But when I was a first year medical student in the late 1970s, a locally famous doctor and physiologist taught us that diet didn't matter. He told us that food was broken down into component nutrients inside the gut, so that the way it was packaged when it went into the mouth was irrelevant.
Still today, many healthcare researchers aren't anchored in the theoretical frames of evolutionary medicine (or any kind of clear theoretical frame at all, in fact) which means they are vulnerable to unconscious biases when they interpret their own data. This is true of breastfeeding and lactation research.
Our great health system blind spot concerning education of parents about the biomechanics of baby suck in breastfeeding will, in hindsight, seem as ignorant as that physiology lecturer's assertion to medical students that diet doesn't matter. Supporting parents to enjoy skin-to-skin contact or biological nurturing with their baby after the birth is an important advance, but it is just the beginning of effective help with breastfeeding.
In the absence of education, women and babies suffer unnecessarily. Suffering is a strong word, and I use it carefully. The physical pain a woman experiences with nipple damage, the physical pain a baby experiences with laser frenotomy under the tongue, upper lip, and upper cheeks, the distress that a baby with positional instability or a conditioned dialing up experiences at the breast, the stress and distress this causes a woman, the grief she experiences if she needs to wean but had wanted to breastfeed - each of these is an example of suffering. These kinds of psychological and physical suffering predispose to postnatal anxiety and depression.
Possums Breastfeeding and Lactation is an evolutionarily aligned, biologically aligned approach which aims to make breastfeeding as easy and enjoyable as possible. In the same way that we have the right to be educated about how to make healthy food choices in a society that surrounds us with refined, sugar-laden foods, so women have the right to be educated about what we need to look for as baby suckles, to help achieve biologically aligned, enjoyable breastfeeding.
Expecting a woman to sort out breastfeeding problems using her intuition sets many mothers up to fail
It's not fair to expect a woman to be able to breastfeed by switching on her 'right brain' and letting 'nature' take over.
This idea (which has become an ideology) misunderstands the human infant brain, which is uniquely and exquisitely moulded by cultural knowledge of the people in the world around her. You can find out about this here.
This idea also misunderstands how an adult female learns new skills such as breastfeeding, again through cultural knowledge sharing. It misunderstands the complexity of the scoiocultural phenomenon of breastfeeding, which is only in small part driven by genetic coding or 'instinct'.
I would definitely hope to encourage you to take back your own power and trust the subtle signs and feelings of your own body. For myself, I aim to tune into my own intuition and listen to my body, minute by minute, hour by hour, as I make decisions and find my way through life, and I hope to support you to do the same as you breastfeed.
But expecting 'nature' to take over (if only a woman could open up intuitively) sets a woman up to fail.
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Firstly, if the nipple pain continues on, or if the baby continues fussing at the breast, then a woman might feel it's all because she is failing to tune into her instincts. She might conclude that she is unable to behave 'naturally' (whatever 'natural' might be). You can see why I think it's damaging for health professionals to suggest that a woman should be able to find her way through breastfeeding problems using her 'instinct' or intuition!
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Secondly, telling women to find their way through instinctively is like expecting someone to make healthy dietary and exercise choices in the absence of 21st century dietary and lifestyle information, at the same time as we sit him in front of screens and bombard him with low-fibre, high sugar foods, salty snacks and energy drinks. Everybody knows this can't be expected to result in a healthy diet!
The human brain is far more complex than the outdated 'right-brained' and 'left-brained' model, and a woman's intellectual capacity not only remains intact throughout the perinatal period but is enhanced by the development of new neural pathways.
You can find out about the maternal postnatal brain here.
Women may be fatigued, and stressed, and sleep deprived after the birth of their baby, women may be in pain, but we remain smart and very keen for good, scientifically sound, properly communicated information as we navigate our way through this extraordinarily challenging new job.
That's not to say that women can't experiment with a wide variety of approaches to fit and hold - if something isn't broken, it doesn't need to be fixed! But nipple pain and a baby who fusses at the breast, with the resultant low supply, are widespread problems for breastfeeding women. I believe you have the right to understand how this might be best prevented at the merest hint of a problem. Otherwise, you and your baby may find yourselves in a nightmare cycle of more and more pain, damage, and distress, until breastfeeding is no longer possible.
The photo at the top of this page shows a little one breastfeeding with her lips visible, so that there is likely to be nipple and breast tissue drag. This could result in nipple pain and damage, or in fussiness at the breast. If all is going well, we don't need to change anything, but as soon as there is any problem, I believe this woman has the right to know about how to change the fit and hold so that the biomechanics of her baby's suck improves, and the problem resolves.