Milk Samples Needed for Breast Cancer Research Study

African American moms are needed for a breastmilk study. Can you help?

As I've written before, I have the privelege of working with Professor Kathleen Arcaro at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, on her groundbreaking breast cancer/breastmilk research.

Kathleen analyses breastmilk to study DNA changes in breast cells, which are naturally present in breastmilk, and their relationship to breast cancer. It's very gratifying work because a better understanding of these patterns may one day lead to new early detection, prevention and treatment strategies for breast cancer. Here's a sampling of some of the recent press coverage about this research.

Our current goal is to recruit African-American mothers to donate milk samples. Why African-American moms? Because Kathleen wants to ensure that her findings apply to all women, and to do that she needs a diverse sample of mothers participating. Having African-American moms well represented in this research is of particular interest because we have different patterns of breast cancer than women of other races. You may know that black women are more likely to get triple negative breast cancer, which is more aggressive and more likely to reocur, spread beyond the breast and result in death.

One of my main duties is helping Kathleen recruit moms to participate in her studies. The response to her work has been incredible, but we still need more black moms to donate breast milk! So, the UMass Breastmilk Lab is currently seeking:

•African American mothers who are nursing

•Living anywhere in the U.S.

•Willing to donate a *fresh* breastmilk sample (shipped via overnight mail at the lab's expense)

•Willing to fill out a consent form and questionnaire

Participants will receive $25 in thanks - and the knowledge that they are advancing our understanding of breast cancer! I hope that you can donate, or help us find moms willing to donate milk for this important research.

To participate, or for more information, you can email Beth, or call Beth or Eva at (413) 545-0813. More information is also available at the UMass Breastmilk Lab website. You can also like us on Facebook where we're keeping you updated on the latest in breastmilk research and Kathleen's work!

We need help spreading the word about this study. Contact me if you'd like me to write a guest post, and link, share on Facebook, Pin, and Tweet to your heart's content!

And if you're African-American (nursing or not), PLEASE consider signing up for the Love/Avon Army of Women, who are funding this important research. Please select "Breast milk study" when asked how you heard about the Army of Women.

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Black moms needed to sign up for the Army of Women

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter you may have heard that I am working with Dr. Kathleen Arcaro of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst on her groundbreaking breastmilk and breast cancer study. Along with Tanya Lierberman, IBCLC of the Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog and Kathi Barber, CLC and author of The Black Woman's Guide to Breastfeeding. We are specifically recruiting black moms to give a breastmilk sample to be analyzed in Dr. Arcaro's lab. The response from you all has been amazing and the milk samples are um, pouring in. Because of you, we are on our way to ensuring that this important breast cancer research represents ALL women. We will eventually need more of you to send in milk samples, but today I am asking you for a different, but just as important, favor.

I want all of my African American women readers, whether you're breastfeeding or not, to sign up for the Love/Avon Army of Women.

What's the Army of Women? It's an effort backed by Dr. Suan Love and the Avon Foundation to focus on breast cancer prevention. Great strides have been made in the treatment of breast cancer, but little progress has been made in preventing women from developing breast cancer in the first place. The Army of Women connects women with researchers so that they can participate in research (if they choose) to help us understand how to prevent breast cancer.

How does it work? You register and provide very basic information such as your name, email, age, city, and state of residence. You will then receive email updates from us announcing new research studies looking for volunteers with or without breast cancer, just like you. If you fit the criteria and you’d like to participate, all you need to do is “RSVP.” You will be asked to go through an online screening process to confirm you fit the criteria for the study. Throughout the process, you remain in complete control and you self select what you want to do! You will never be pressured to take part in any study. The decision to take part is yours—and yours alone.

The most important part is that when you fill out the registration form you check "breast milk study" when asked how you learned about the Army of Women.

Why are we looking for African American women? Researchers want to ensure that their findings apply to all women, and to do that they need a diverse pool of particpants for their studies. A good example is the current call for African American moms to participate in the Jewels in our Genes study, which is recruiting African American breast cancer survivors now.

What can you do? Please go to the Army of Women registration page and please select "breast milk study" when asked how you learned about the Army of Women. We thank you!




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Beyonce, Blue, Breastfeeding & Blacktating

Did you hear the good news? It seems Beyonce is indeed breastfeeding her newborn baby girl, Blue. A waiter tipped off celebrity magazine US Weekly that Beyonce nursed her baby while out to lunch with hubby Jay-Z. What started off as a blurb on a website for celeb gossip has taken the world by storm.

First there was the awful post on Hollyscoop, likening breastfeeding in public to being milked like a cow and slinging snot at the table. Of course the words "whipping them out" also appeared. For the first time in the history of the Internet, the comments on a breastfeeding in public post were full of win. Moms descended on the post, letting the author know that nursing at a restaurant is natural, legal and of course perfectly appropriate. The smackdown was so harsh the author eventually edited out the most offensive parts of the piece.

By the next day the story had been picked up by ABC News, who quoted veteran breastfeeding experts Drs. Ruth Lawrence and Alison Stuebe. There was even a quote from breastfeeding advocate Emma Kwasnica who you may know for spearheading the movement to get Facebook to stop deleting images of women breastfeeding their babies. Although I was thrilled with such mainstream coverage of Beyonce nursing in public, I was more than a bit confused as to why ABC decided to interview these three women.

Let's see, the hugest celebrity on the planet, who happens to be black, is breastfeeding in public and we interview three white women, one of whom isn't even American, and don't mention race. Color me confused.

So as I am apt to do, I took to Twitter to vent.

Shortly thereafter, Kimberly Sears Allers of Mochamanual.com, published a piece on the same topic. In her post, Dear White Women: Beyonce is OUR Breastfeeding Moment. Please Step Aside she writes,

Meanwhile, with all the news reports about Beyonce, and all the breastfeeding “advocates” talking about its impact on the nursing world, not one advocate mentioned the particular significance to black women–which is so striking since many claim to be interested in our breastfeeding plight.

Shame on you.

The "shame" didn't stop there. Not only did many breastfeeding advocates insist that Beyonce breastfeeding in public was just as much their moment as ours (it's not) they also allowed their fans to post offensive, borderline racist screed on their Facebook pages. Instead of our "allies" rushing to our defense, I was told it was my job to educate the ignorant (it's not) and that my time would be better spent defending the WHO Code instead of criticizing the breastfeeding community for not putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to conversations on race. You can imagine how well that went over.

Kimberly said there was no mainstream press that reached out to an African-American women for her perspective, but that's not true. Both Time and USA Today's writers quoted me for their pieces on Beyonce breastfeeding Blue Ivy (my words even made their way in the March 19, 2012 print edition of Time). Both writers underscored how huge this is for the black community because of our lower initiation rates, and the level of Beyonce's celebrity. This is way bigger than even Angelina Jolie actually breastfeeding on the cover of W magazine and we don't even have proof, photographic or otherwise, that it even happened!

There is no way to deny that Beyonce breastfeeding hasn't had a huge impact. There was an hours-long conversation on black Twitter about breastfeeding in public after these headlines. Yet I cannot tell you how many white advocates insist that it isn't a big deal, or at least shouldn't be. Strangely enough, whenever I see posts about other celebrities who are breastfeeding and are, let's face it, downright D list, I've seen nothing but praise. Even posts about Jenna Elfman haven't elicited any anti-Xenu snark, for God's sake. Yet it's all eye-rolls and move along, nothing to see here's when BEYONCE breastfeeds in a restaurant? Excuse me if I can't help but think that race is playing a part in the attitudes and responses from moms I've seen online.

Still, I'm thrilled. The past few weeks have been amazing for breastfeeding and I give Beyonce all the credit. This story got picked up in major black interest publications from The Grio to Vibe and Essence magazine. The comments that I saw on those pieces were so positive and encouraging. It was so wonderful to see our community rallying around our girl, and to hear from black moms about how much they loved breastfeeding their babies.

This week really showed black lactivists what this community thinks of us and the work we're doing. Because believe me, these folks are quick to trot out the the statistics on how low our breastfeeding rates our. If Beyonce had mixed a bottle of formula at that table, everyone would have come out of the woodwork to say how sad it was, but not surprising since she is black and this is a problem for us. But when she breastfeeds we aren't supposed to celebrate this as our moment?

Right.

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Breastfeeding Makes Strong Babies

Although the city of Milwaukee has been villified (and rightly so) for their anti-bedsharing campaign that used images of babies in bed with dangerous items like butcher knives, I have to give props to this breastfeeding video put together by the city's newspaper.

Featuring the awesome Dalvery Blackwell, co-founder of the African-American Breastfeeding Network, this video highlights a program in Milkwaukee aimed at encouraging young African-American moms to initiate breastfeeding.

The video was put together as part of the Journal Sentinel Online's Empty Cradles feature, which covers the city's abysmal infant mortality rates. It's a huge problem for the city that has definitely reached epidemic proportions. From unsafe sleep sleep deaths and lack of breastfeeding to social problems like alcoholism and smoking, black babies in Milwaukee are definitely at an increased risk for death in the first year of life.

Hats off to Dalvery and the great work she is doing. I'm glad she is being recognized as she fights the good fight.

To watch the video, click here.


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Eric Benet: Lactivist

Eric Benet recently tweeted this beautiful image of his wife breastfeeding their newborn daughter, Lucia. The caption is "Lucia says 'peace!' for the first time!"

© Eric Benet

What a sweet baby. Mine tend to give me the finger.


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Tamera Mowry Drinks Sister Tia's Breastmilk

Have you been watching the new reality show, Tia & Tamera, that follows twin sisters Tia and Tamera Mowry? In the series, Tia is expecting her first child, while Tamera is planning her wedding. Throughout the season we've seen Tia planning for the birth of her baby by interviewing a doula, considering a home birth and talking about breastfeeding. Unfortunately a breech baby necessitated a hospital birth and a C-section for Tia, which was documented in the series finale which aired recently. We get to see the birth of baby Cree, as well as their early days at home.

At one point, Tia, who is pumping for the baby, highly encourages her sister Tamera to taste her milk.





What do you think, would you taste your sister's milk? I don't have a sister and although I did taste my own milk, I am not sure I'd taste someone else's.


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Seeking Submissions for the March Carnival of Breastfeeding: On Breastfeeding & Race

The theme for the March Carnival of Breastfeeding is breastfeeding and race. This month, we'd especially love to hear from moms of color about your breastfeeding experience and what role you think your race played in shaping that experience. Some topics that we'd love to hear you explore are:

• What are the cultural beliefs about breastfeeding amongst your race?
• Do you think your race played a role in how you were treated by health care providers, including nurses, lactation consultants, OBGYN and pediatrician?
• What are the breastfeeding rates like for people of your race, and how did this influence your decision to breastfeed?
• Any other observations about what breastfeeding is like in your community?

As always, we are looking for posts that are:

• Well-written and free of grammatical errors
• Directly on topic for the Carnival theme
• Submitted by blogs that cover topics that are of interest to our readers (breastfeeding, parenting, etc).

Submissions are due by March 7th and the Carnival will go live on March 14th. Please use this Google doc spreadsheet to submit your post. If your post is selected for inclusion, you will be expected to link back to each of the other participants in the Carnival. Examples of past Carnivals can be found here.


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New breastfeeding photos from the Indiana Black Breastfeeding Coalition

I'm very happy to share with you a collage of photos taken by the Indiana Black Breastfeeding Coalition as part of the Landscape of Breastfeeding Support project I wrote about a few months ago. You may recognize some of these photos from the Surgeon General's Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding. These photos are completely public and can be used by anyone!

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Three Generations of Breastfeeding

Welcome to November's Carnival of Breastfeeding! This month we're all writing about the history of breastfeeding in our families. Please be sure to click through to the other posts linked to at the end of mine.


I was raised by my mother as a single mom with help from her mother and aunt. I know very little about my father's side of the family and that includes any breastfeeding history. I can assume that as the descendant of Africans brought to South Carolina during the slave trade that there is probably a rich history of breastfeeding and some very interesting information to be shared. Unfortunately I don't know any of it, but I do think the history on my mother's side is as fascinating.

My maternal grandmother was born and raised in Lithuania. She and my grandfather (who I am named after) were Holocaust survivors, and my aunt was born shortly after the camps were liberated and the war was over, in West Germany. My grandmother breastfed my aunt until about age two, which would have been very typical for Jews at that time and place. My grandmother also probably had very little choice in this matter. My guess is that infant formula probably wasn't available there, and if it was, it would've been too expensive. The only options available to a woman who was unable to breastfeed were either to mix your own concoction of cow's milk and Karo syrup or hope there was another woman around to cross-nurse your baby. Thankfully my grandmother had plenty of milk. In fact, she used to hand express milk for a neighbor who was unable to breastfeed. She would express milk every day and bring it in to the woman to feed to her baby in glass jars. My mother isn't sure how long this arrangement went on, but her guess is that it was for at least 6 months, at which time solid food could have been safely introduced to the baby.

My mother is first generation born in America in my family. When my grandparents and aunt made the trek to America in the 50s, like many Jewish immigrants they ended up in New York, where my mother was born. In the hospital they were able to convince my grandmother that Similac infant formula was better than breastmilk and so she decided to bottle feed my mother. It seems strange in some ways that a new immigrant family would be willing to spend so much money on a product they could barely afford when breastmilk was available for free, but it was a different time, when modern medicine was saving and improving lives, medicine and doctors had become gods, and it was easier to believe that science could produce something better than nature.

When my mother became pregnant with me in the late 70s, she knew she was going to breastfeed from the start. She was reading books and going to Lamaze and wanted a natural birth. She was a hippie so none of this is surprising to me. My mom says she just instinctually knew that the milk her body would made had to be better than cow's milk for her baby. After a fairly quick and easy birth, she nursed me immediately. I was surprised to learn that in those days there was no rooming in at the hospital, so I was brought to her every 4 hours or so, around-the-clock so she could nurse me. This seems like just barely enough to create an adequate milk supply, but my mom says I was greedy and latched on and nursed like a champ. Because I was jaundiced we stayed in the hospital for 5 days. There were no lactation consultants and the nurses had zero knowledge of breastfeeding and no help, information or support was offered. No wonder only about 30% of women were breastfeeding!

Although my mom suffered from some sore nipples, she said after a few weeks everything seemed to have worked itself out and she never had any problems with supply. She says my father had no opinion on whether or not she breastfed but my grandmother thought she was crazy and backwards for wanting to breastfeed. She said bottle-feeding was easier, but my mom said she thought the idea of having to sterilize bottles and nipples, buy milk and mix and prepare it sounded like a lot more work so she continued to nurse. She did get strange looks and cause folks to whisper and point when she nursed in public, even with a blanket. She said it was a very bold thing to do in those days and something people were definitely not accustomed to seeing. She decided to wean me when I was about 18 months because she had returned to school and was working part-time and it became too much work. She weaned me by telling me there was no milk left and I never asked again and she was amazed at how easy it was to stop. By that point, friends and neighbors had been expressing their disgust for months that she was still breastfeeding me, but she said that didn't factor into her decision, she just had a lot on her plate and breastfeeding had become more of a chore.

Interestingly enough, I remember thinking that everyone always seemed very positive about the fact that my mother nursed me into toddlerhood. For me, it was always a source of pride. In fact, when I had my son, my goal was to "beat" my mom's record and nurse him until at least the age of two. Growing up I had heard so many wonderful stories about breastfeeding that I always thought it was normal and natural, even though I never really saw it around me. There was never a doubt in my mind that I would breastfeed.

I am curious about what breastfeeding will be like in 30 years or so when my generation's kids are having kids. My son is being raised in a bottle-feeding culture and has told me before that babies drink "baby milk" from bottles and that "milkies" are for big boys. When he hears a baby cry in the store he will say, "Mommy, he needs a bottle!" He is in daycare and it's what he sees. I'm hopeful that he will have some memories of our nursing relationship and will remember me breastfeeding any subsequent children we may have. I hope that breastfeeding will be the norm if and when he decides to have children and that he will be supportive of his partner if she decides to do it. It's difficult to think of him having a child and that child not being breastfed but of course that is out of my hands. I do know that my children will grow up knowing about the legacy of breastfeeding in our family and my hope is that it continues on for many generations to come.


Check out the other fantastic posts from this month's Carnival participants.

Christine @ Christine's Contemplations: Carnival of Breastfeeding- My Family History of Nursing 

Judy @ Mommy News Blog: My Family History of Breastfeeding

Jona @ Breastfeeding Twins: Beer & Bottles (and other motherly advice)

Jake Aryeh Marcus: Breastfeeding? Not in My Family

Mama Mo @ Attached at the Nip: How Women in My Family Feed Babies

Alicia @ Lactation Narration: Only the Hippies Were Breastfeeding

Dr. Sarah: Breastfeeding, Circa 1950s

Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog: An Unbroken Chain

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The Landscape of Breastfeeding Support

I'm not sure how I missed this one, but I just stumbled upon the fact that the Centers for Disease Control contracted the United States Breastfeeding Committee to create a library of images of how communities across the country support breastfeeding.

The project is titled "The Landscape of Breastfeeding Support,"and called for breastfeeding coalitions to submit proposals illustrating how they are supporting breastfeeding in their community. Only eight states were selected for inclusion, with my state of Florida choosing to focus on how businesses support their employees who are nursing moms. The Florida Breastfeeding Coalition's photo campaign is called "Get Pumped" and features women who are pumping at work.

The Indiana Black Breastfeeding Coalition was also chosen and their local news covered the story and included some of the fantastic photos they took for the archive. You can see a clip from the news story here.

The projects all had to be completed by the end of September so I'm guessing (hoping!) we'll get a glimpse of the full collection soon. I also hope there will be a lot of diversity in this campaign and that moms from all races, ethnicities and walks of life will be represented. The images will be part of the national archive and I'm guessing available for use in breastfeeding promotion by WIC, authors of breastfeeding books, La Leche League and bloggers alike.

Had you heard about this project? And are you as excited about it as I am?

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Little Known Black History Fact: The Fultz Quads

During the opening plenary at the Black Mother's Breastfeeding Association's third annual conference, I learned about the Fultz Quads, quadruplet girls born to a tenant farmer named Pete and his deaf, mute wife Annie Mae on May 23, 1946. I'm not sure how I'd never learned about this important piece of African-American history, but I'm happy to be able to share it with you, in case you've never heard of them either.

You can imagine the chances of a couple conceiving quadruplets in the 40s, decades before the availability of fertility treatments, and the fact that the family was poor and black made this a sensational story that garnered nation-wide media attention. The Fultz's already had six children at home when Annie Mae headed to the hospital to give birth to her babies.

The white doctor who delivered the quads, Fred Klenner, gained world renown for attending the birth of the first recorded set of black quadruplets. Dr. Klenner decided to name the girls himself, calling them Mary Ann, Mary Louise, Mary Alice and Mary Catherine. All of the names were for women in his family. The black delivery nurse was quoted in a newspaper article as saying, "At that time, you know, it was before integration. They did us how they wanted. And these were very poor people. He was a sharecropper, Pete was, and she couldn't read or write."

As much of a media circus as the girls' birth was, it seems no one wanted in on the action more than the infant formula companies, whose business was exploding due to the post-war baby boom. In addition to making the girls guinea pigs for his "Vitamin C therapy," Dr. Klenner also negotiated a deal with the PET milk company, which agreed to provide the girls with formula, food, medical care, a private nurse and a farm when they reached adulthood, in exchange for using their image in promotional materials.

This is the beginning of the aggressive marketing of infant formula to African-Americans in this country. Surely the wife of a poor sharecropper would have breastfed her children had PET not come into the picture. And of course black women were breastfeeding their children at this time because they really had no choice. Formula would not have been an affordable or viable option for most people. So although white women were turning to formula in droves, the formula companies were missing a huge portion of the market because black women were still breastfeeding. So how do you change their minds? The image of four beautiful black baby girls "growing up strong" on formula was probably pretty convincing.

The images of the girls as they grew up could be found in ads in black interest publications like Ebony. They even made the cover when they turned one.

They got to meet Presidents Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Althea Gibson, appeared on television shows, and in hundreds of ads for PET milk.

You probably won't be surprised to find out that things didn't work out so well for the Fultz Quads. They were eventually adopted by the baby nurse provided to the family by PET. The farm they were promised turned out to be in the middle of nowhere on land that couldn't grow weeds. They grew up embittered over the way PET profited from their image while they remained poor. The public eventually forgot about them and they lived quiet lives.

But what were the consequences of being fed "baby milk" in infancy? Well, the three eldest of the Fultz quads were all dead of breast cancer before they reached age 55. The youngest sister, Mary Catherine, also has breast cancer. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

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This Time NY WIC Gets It Right!

I know some of you liked the breastfeeding ad promoting weight loss as an extra benefit of breastfeeding, but here's an ad I think gets it right.



A grandma praising her daughter for breastfeeding! She acknowledges that in her day everyone used formula, but she's proud of her daughter for being determined to breastfeed and is going to support her.

What do you think? I say it's a hit!

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Surgeon General's World Breastfeeding Week Statement

Surgeon General Dr. Regina M. Benjamin released a statement on Friday in honor of World Breastfeeding Week about her hopes to reduce disparities in breastfeeding rates. Dr. Benjamin is an African-American woman from Alabama, a state with one of the lowest breastfeeding rates, particularly among black women. Currently, less than 45% of black mothers in Alabama initiate breastfeeding. The CDC's Healthy People 2010 goal is for a breastfeeding initiation rate of 75%, with 50% still breastfeeding at 6 months, and 25% at one year. We've got a ways to go.

World Breastfeeding Week provides an opportunity to highlight the benefits of breastfeeding and to make people aware of how we can lend support to mothers who want to breastfeed.

I am committed to promoting and supporting optimal breastfeeding practices with the ultimate goal of improving the public's health. This is because breastfeeding is the best source of infant nutrition, and it provides immunologic protection and health benefits both to breastfeeding mothers and to the children they nurse. 

The Affordable Care Act that was enacted earlier this year takes some significant strides in support of breastfeeding.  The new law requires employers to provide time and a safe space for women employees who want to express their milk.  It also requires health plans to offer certain preventative services without cost-sharing requirements, including counseling and support for mothers who want to breastfeed and for nursing mothers. 

This fall, I will release a Surgeon General’s “Call to Action” that will draw from the best available science to explain how all sectors of the community can help create an environment that is supportive of mothers who choose to breastfeed.  It will show how a community-wide approach can help reduce disparities among breastfeeding mothers and children of all backgrounds, and how to improve support for nursing women in their workplaces and communities.

I hope World Breastfeeding Week will help Americans become more aware of these resources and use them throughout the year.

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Guest Post: Breastfeeding Counselor Chronicles: African-American Moms

Today I am pleased to present a guest post by Saray Hill, an IBCLC who worked with low-income African-American moms as a WIC breastfeeding counselor. Here she recounts her experiences working with the moms, shedding some light on the low breastfeeding rates in this community.

Working as a breastfeeding counselor with African-American moms in California in a disadvantaged area posed many barriers. Women had to deal with the lack of food on the table, often the absence of a partner and multiple children in the household which, in some cases, were with multiple partners. There was also an overwhelming lack of breastfeeding support among family members, friends and employers. When discussing breastfeeding with them, I frequently heard the reply, “Breast is best, but I’m not going to do it.

”

 When I questioned them further as to their reasons, answers ranged from, “I have to go back to work”, “Breasts are for my man, if my man’s sucking on them, I don’t want a baby sucking on them”,  to “I will be leaking.

”

 For many of the moms, there was even the fear of having sexual thoughts or sensations while nursing. Many sexual connotations were brought up that gave my idea of breastfeeding a whole new meaning. Also, the baby’s gender was frequently a factor in whether the baby would be breastfed. If the baby was a girl, possibly. But a boy? No way. 

Every piece of information given to these moms that contradicted their breastfeeding beliefs was not enough to change them.

After a counseling session, some of these moms would come out with a new breastfeeding mentality that would lead to them pumping their breasts and bottle-feeding the breastmilk to their babies. Even though this was a huge improvement, it still wasn’t direct breastfeeding. Remember, breastfeeding is not just about nourishment, but also about nurturing and bonding. Realistically, how would a mom be able to establish a full milk supply for her newborn by exclusively pumping and with all of the barriers they were up against? That’s right. Not very easily.

I remember a case where a mom decided to pump and bottle feed her breastmilk to her baby and, in the end, became dedicated to fully breastfeeding. However, her situation was a bit different as this was her first baby, she had a family support system and there was a partner present. But, they knew nothing about breastfeeding and didn’t identify much with it.

There were also expectant moms who were very excited about breastfeeding. It made my day whenever I met one of them. I would share resources and we would have a seemingly great connection, but I would never hear from or see them again after they left the office. Their phone would be disconnected or they wouldn’t return my phone calls. Basically, they would disappear, only to reappear a few months later after they had their baby, who was now being formula fed. When I would ask what happened, the responses I received were that it hurt when they breastfed, or the baby was crying all the time, or he/she was always hungry, or the hospital gave the baby a bottle and many more. These are sad situations as the reasons given could have been explored and prevented if I would have been able to follow up throughout their pregnancy and given them the anticipatory guidance needed to avoid these situations. Where were their OBGYNs, nurses, pediatricians and lactation consultants when this happened?

There were some truly excited moms who would breastfeed. These moms were typically younger than 25, it would be their first child and they would have a mom and family support to count on. It would not matter if the partner was involved, as long as her family approved of her decision to breastfeed her baby. Usually, somebody in her family had breastfed and recommended it. In some other cases, the baby's father was involved and wanted the baby to be breastfed.

I would sporadically encounter a mom who had breastfed her first child, but didn’t want to breastfeed this child or would breastfeed him/her for a shorter length of time. Things become increasingly more difficult when there’s more than one child in the household and a lack of a solid support system.

I met a mom who said she would not breastfeed because it was very painful with her first child. After counseling with myself and other staff members, I helped her achieve a comfortable latch. She said, “You just helped me get over my past trauma about breastfeeding...thank you, but I’m still not going to do it.

“

I believe that some of these women who refused to breastfeed were listening when we discussed the risks of artificial infant feeding, but they didn’t want to publicly admit it as they were scared to try breastfeeding. They knew it was best for their infants, but if they decided to try, who would they turn to if and when a challenge should arise? Their families either had never done it or were unsuccessful. The pediatricians? They have no time for breastfeeding problems. The breastfeeding counselors? We just weren’t available 24/7. All these factors make artificial feeding more attractive and enticing.

I believe the best way to help African American moms embrace breastfeeding is not just by educating them, but by educating their family members as well. Building a support system with breastfeeding-friendly healthcare professionals. Connecting to community members -- real people, just like them, who care about how artificial feeding is affecting the health of their youngest and future generations. These community members need to work on creating a breastfeeding family acceptance support system to encourage and support the young mothers to breastfeed and help design a more caring and humane society, from the very beginning, through bonding and nurturing. They simply can’t do it alone; it takes a village.......

Saray Hill, BS, IBCLC, RLC is the Founder/President of Mother's Utopia , an organization focused on supporting, protecting and promoting breastfeeding. She is also the creator of the only Twitter breastfeeding support party in Espanol, El Club de Lactancia.

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A Crisis in the Crib & A Blogging Challenge

I have written twice, quite briefly, about a campaign created by the Office on Minority Health starring Tonya Lewis Lee about the disparate rates of infant and maternal mortality in this country called "A Healthy Baby Begins With You." The campaign was created to help raise awareness of the fact that black babies are three times as likely to die in their first year of life as white babies. In addition, a recent NY Times article stated that black women in New York are seven times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. In fact, a recent article in a University of Wisconsin alumni magazine offered up the sobering statistic that babies born in Sri Lanka have better health outcomes than black babies born in Milwaukee do.

These unacceptable statistics are what prompted Ms. Lewis Lee and the Office on Minority Health to create the documentary Crisis in the Crib: Saving Our Nation's Babies in 2009. I have been wanting to see the documentary for a while and although there were screenings held in NYC, I never saw any screenings in my area. But the 36-minute documentary is now available for you to watch online and if you are about issues like women's health, motherhood, birth advocacy, breastfeeding and feminism, then you should watch it. And not only should you watch it, but you should blog about it.

I, along with Jill of The Unnecesarean and Courtroom Mama*, want you to take 36 minutes to watch this documentary and then write a blog post about any aspect of the film that speaks to you the loudest. After you've written your post, link to it here by July 2. Jill & Courtroom Mama will choose their favorite post, and on July 4th it will appear on The Unnecesarean blog, along with links to all of the bloggers who participated.

Are you up for the challenge?

*Thank you to Courtroom Mama for writing this excellent blog post and inspiring a host of bloggers to write about this issue that is so important, yet is not being discussed enough. 

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Black Breastfeeding: You have to see it to believe it

Today someone asked me if I knew of any public service announcements or campaigns to promote breastfeeding featuring black moms and babies or other women of color. Why, yes, I do, and I pointed her to a recent few of them. It got me thinking about how rarely in my day to day life I see women of color breastfeeding. Of course I hardly see ANY women breastfeeding, but when I do, they are always white. I think that is one of the hurdles we face in trying to get more black women to breastfeed. If you don't see women who look like you doing it, you think this is something that isn't for you.
Thankfully there have been a lot of breastfeeding awareness campaigns that have featured women of color. And although sometimes I am disappointed in the images used in many ad campaigns selling products for breastfeeding moms, lots of companies get it right and use diverse models.

So with this in mind, I decided to create a resource for those of you who work in breastfeeding support or are doulas and childbirth educators that feature pictures of women of color, particularly black women, breastfeeding. I will link to the original source whenever possible and update this post and leave a link to it in my sidebar. If you find any others that you think should be included, please email them to me.


California Department of Public Health- Mother's Milk for Daddy's Baby campaign
California Department of Public Health- Formula. Mother's Milk. Not the Same campagin
Ontario Human Rights Commission- A Baby's Right to Eat

INFACT Canada- Benefits 101 Series

USDA- Fathers Can Support Breastfeeding

New Zealand Ministry of Health- Nursing in Public PSA (features Maori women)
Shelby County, TN- Babies Were Born to be Breastfed
Texas WIC- I'm a proud breastfeeding dad amongst others
Texas WIC- African-American Breastfeeding Promotion
Austin WIC- I breastfeed because....

Companies that use moms of color in their ads

Motherwear

Medela

Ameda

Glamourmom

Bravado

Hygeia 

There are a few, but it's not enough! If I am missing a brand you know and love, let me know in the comments and I'll add them to the list. If there is another PSA that you know of, tell me about it so I can spread the word.

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