This morning while laying in bed listening to the squeak of the newly erected trampoline in the garden with my daughter jumping up and down on it, I came across an article about Adele’s four-letter tirade at Jamie Oliver over his intention to launch a campaign on breastfeeding:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/adeles-four-letter-tirade-jamie-7631999
If you don’t want to read the article, or think it may anger you too much, his wife is now expecting their fifth child so he has turned his attention to boobs.
He said: ‘We have the worst breastfeeding in the world. It feeds into all sorts of things like stunting, obesity, ill health.’
Speaking on a radio show he added: “If you breastfeed for more than six months, women are 50 per cent less likely to get breast cancer. When do you ever hear that? Never.”
"It’s easy, it’s more convenient, it’s more nutritious, it’s better, it’s free.”
Initially after reading the article I was outraged and determined to find out more so I researched his ‘campaign’ further and have found out he has now backtracked and said he is not starting one, he simply wanted to ‘support women who do want to breastfeed and make it easier for them to do so.’
Sorry but you have a P where you would need a V to make comments and support WOMEN who breastfeed.
Unfortunately Jamie is not alone in misunderstanding breastfeeding and he is not the only one in the world making ill-judged comments. So this is for all of those who are breastfeeding bashers, an education for small minded people who should really know when to keep their mouths shut.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all new mothers could whip out their breasts in Costa, latch their babies on while laughing with their other yummy mummy friends about how ‘easy’ everything is in between sips of an ultra skinny mocha chocha latte? Ah, the ultimate mummy dream.
Pregnant women and new mothers are not stupid, we all know how important breastfeeding is, our bodies make the milk, we don’t look down at our leaky nipples and say oh, what is with all of this white stuff?!
Jamie’s experience with breastfeeding is I imagine (correct me if I am wrong Jamie), through watching his wife feed their 4 children, now she is pregnant with her fifth he had decided to add this two pence about how he thinks women should raise their children.
I have taken his initial aim to launch a campaign about breastfeeding as a personal insult, and I imagine so have many other mothers. He may have now back-tracked but he said what he intended to do and has only backed down because of the backlash he has received.
Us mothers have all been through our own personal breastfeeding journey, my baby was in special care 7 hours after she was born. I tried to breastfeed and she would not take to it. She spent the night in SCBU, my eyeballs felt like they were going to fall out of my head as I had been in labour for days but still I tried to feed her myself at 1am, and 2am.
I was told to go to sleep and I would be woken in a couple of hours to try again. At 6am a nurse came in with my baby, they had decided not to wake me as she needed milk and was not taking it off me so they had to bottle feed her.
Any mother who hears that know that a baby is highly unlikely to take to breastfeeding after being given a bottle but I tried one last time to no avail, so I bottle fed my baby.
My daughter is not obese, she is not stunted in growth and she does not have any health issues. I was not breastfed, my daughter’s father was not breastfed and by some miracle we have grown up to be fully functioning adults. The only health issue I have is my hangovers are getting harder to deal with as I get older, but I guess that is just my own personal problem.
People who make comments about breastfeeding, and slam mothers who don’t breastfeed need to speak to not one, not 100, but millions of women to hear their stories about breastfeeding.
Thankfully I did not have post-natal depression; the most depressing thing I went through was having to throw away my maternity jeans because they ripped when my daughter was six months old.
Not breastfeeding, either through choice or for any other reason does not make anyone less of a mother. I don’t blame myself every time my daughter gets a cold and wonder if I had breastfed her then maybe she wouldn’t have caught it.
Similarly I don’t blame my mother for me putting my top on backwards twice this morning, I’m not slower because I wasn’t breastfed, unfortunately I have to accept that was just my own stupidity.
So enough of the boobie bashing, my boobs are MINE, they are none of Jamie’s business and your boobs are none of my business, let’s support breasts with good bras, not by starting ‘campaigns’.
Though I am thinking about starting a campaign on making every expectant father wear a pregnancy belly. I wonder who would have the balls support that?
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