Why I am Boycotting Nestlé (and: my breastfeeding story)

Preface: This is not a tirade against formula feeding or against formula feeding moms and dads. This is only about predatory marketing. It is just my story.

There are many good reasons to boycott Nestlé, from their predatory marketing in 3rd world countries, to their misleading "breastfeeding support" hotlines and websites, to their 30+ years of violation of the WHO code for marketing breastmilk substitutes. What finally pushed me over the edge, though, was my own experience. Selfish, I know.

Midwinter in early 2010 or late 2009, I needed to buy some maternity clothes. Since there aren't a lot of stores that carry plus sized maternity clothing, I went to one where I knew I could find a few decent, if overpriced, maternity jeans, sweaters, and t-shirts. My mom went with me to Motherhood Maternity in Southdale. She bought a couple things for me as birthday presents and I bought the rest. At the checkout counter I gave my usual "no, I don't give out my personal information" when the clerk asked if I wanted to sign up for their marketing list. But this lady was pushy. They were offering a discount on the clothes (I think? It's hard to remember back that far) and a $50 "gift card" for restaurants.com. Naiive young pregnant woman that I was, I believed that it was worth the $50 to give her my address. Anyone who's used restaurants.com knows that it's not a gift card, it's a coupon. $50 off a purchase of $100 or more, or you could instead buy $25 off a purchase of $35 or more, which is what I did to get a slightly better deal. I was annoyed, but it wasn't like I was out any extra money, yet.

(Side note: the website has a limited selection of restaurants where the coupon can be redeemed, none of which were in our neighborhood aside from the s****y "Mexican" bar across the highway. They specialize in the cuisine of "southern Colorado", and everyone who works there is white and bitchy. They had a sign that said "We Say Merry Christmas" that year, a thinly veiled "Jews and Muslims Not Welcome" sign. We lived in a neighborhood with a lot of Muslim immigrants, who were in general good neighbors, so I was annoyed. Not like they would have eaten there, since, you know, pork, but the sign was visible from the highway and the idea of making my good neighbors feel unwelcome was really upsetting to me. We didn't go back, and lost that extra $25 worth of coupon. Ugh.)

About a month before Sam was born, I received in the mail two small cans of Enfamil. I was livid. At the time I had no idea who had sent them or why. Was it thebump.com? My doctor or the hospital where I'd preregistered? The retailers where I'd registered for baby gifts? I had no idea but I was pissed. I'd always known I'd want to have kids and breastfeed those kids. It is the main reason why I put up with decades of back pain rather than get a breast reduction and risk my chances of being able to breastfeed. The idea that anyone would think I would want this stuff in my house (and I already knew that just having it available was risking my success at breastfeeding) made me angry. Not because I hate formula. Because I hate the pusher aspect of the companies who sell it. Here's a free sample, just enough to get you hooked on a highly processed food that will be your baby's sole nutrition for 6 months. No way. I'd planned to give both cans to a friend who happened to have stopped breastfeeding and was giving her daughter formula at the time, but then I went on bedrest. And didn't see her again until the hospital, and by the time I was able to actually give her the formula it was far too late.

Sam latched pretty well in the hospital. There were a couple hiccups here and there--a psycho nurse who insisted on pumping his stomach and giving him a small amount of formula through a tube, because of "low blood sugar". Yes, he was a little lethargic. He was barely a day old and it was the middle of the night. I probably should have asked to pump, or just put him straight on the boob after the mucous came out of his tummy, but I was tired. I hurt everywhere. Ladies, this is why you need labor and post-partum doulas who know your choices and can stand up for you. Your partner is not going to do it unless you've gotten him to do his own research and get enthusiastically on board (and well versed) with the plan, which didn't happen in my case.

Both of us were reasonably uneducated about breastfeeding a newborn, and honestly I think that first "he's got low blood sugar, it's not working" killed my confidence. In the next few days, rather than nursing on demand 24 hours per day, I let Dan take him for a few hours each night so I could rest. Again, everything hurt--especially my right wrist, where they finally got the IV to go in for my pitocin. The hep lock was poorly managed after Sam was born, and I'm not exactly sure what happened, but it hurt all the time for a couple of months, making it super-difficult for me to hold Sam to my breast. So. We slept in shifts. Bad, bad idea. Sam needed to be on the boob more or less at all times and I was so frustrated with the whole thing because he was always crying. I thought it wasn't working. I couldn't understand why my baby was so angry all the time. (As it turns out, crying is a very, very late hunger cue. Any time a newborn is awake, he or she should be eating.) We were writing down everything, timing everything, and he wasn't having quite enough wet diapers by day 4.  I broke down. Dan's (very pregnant at the time) sister took him to the store to buy a double electric pump and her husband watched Sam while I lay down and cried for a bit.

At 5 days old, Sam weighed almost two pounds less than his birth weight. He was dehydrated. I nursed him at the doctors office and he gained an ounce. That day we were sent here, there, and everywhere, to try to get someone to help us get the breastfeeding thing working. It was exhausting and by the end of the day, I had learned some useful things about getting Sam to latch but had not gained any confidence, and was still encouraged to record *&^$ing everything. Because there would be a test. So it seemed. At that point I was more afraid of having my baby taken away from me for not feeding him "right" than anything else. Irrational post-partum-brain nonsense? Sure. Did anyone attempt to replace those assumptions with anything else? Nope. And the $300 bill for the hospital lactation consultant took for freaking ever for the insurance to pay. Obviously I didn't go back, even though I probably needed to and it was technically covered. (LLL was unreachable when we tried that morning. I was sent to a WIC peer counselor and then a LC at United/Children's.)

Sam had his first bottle of formula that night. I strongly suspect that if Dan had needed to go the store and pay $14 for that tiny can of formula, which seemed to last forever when Sam was so small, he would have thought twice about using it when there was pumped milk in the fridge. It kept Sam asleep longer during the night. (Dan disagrees with me on this point. He thinks he would have been fine with the formula either way because Sam needed to eat, period. Which is true. But it put us on a bad course that neither of us really understood.)

By the time Sam was two months old, he was 100% bottle fed with pumped human milk from me during the day and a bottle or two of formula from Dan at night. Pumping all the time was a great way to measure things, but it was killing me. Sam was gaining weight well (funny how drinking something intended to turn a 50-100lb baby animal into an animal that weighs a literal ton as an adult will do that) so...I took a risk and tried to get him back on the breast. It worked, sort of. Sam was always a contentious nurser. I struggled so hard with anxiety over whether he would willingly breastfeed that he was always annoyed with me, unless it was the first feeding of the morning, when we were both sleepy and I had a ton of milk (from not feeding him all night). Most other feedings I had to hold and rock him in a specific chair or lie down in bed, and sing to him to keep his focus. As the months went by, he breastfed less and less and started on formula bottles earlier and earlier during the day, until we only had one feeding at the breast in the morning. About a month after we'd introduced solids, I decided that maybe it was time to give up so I could change my depression meds. Pretty much the next day Sam got a nasty cold and actually wanted and needed to breastfeed. We lingered along doing that one or two feeding a day thing until about 10 months when I called it quits. Funny thing--a day or two after weaning is the only time I ever experienced any engorgement at all. So you can see why I doubted my supply somewhat.

All told, we probably bought well over $1000 worth of formula over time, starting with Enfamil and then moving to the generic brand from Target. We also bought a ton of Gerber baby food (also Nestlé.) That $50 "gift certificate" and $32 of "free" formula was a good investment over time, don't you think? There were also the $5 off "checks" that they'd send in the mail for their $30 cans of formula.

That's right. The salesgirl at Motherhood had been paid some sort of commission to get the names and addresses of pregnant women who planned to breastfeed. Here's the thing. Formula companies don't send free samples to women who plan to formula feed. They don't need to. They're already going to get that person's business. They send free samples to women who plan to breastfeed, knowing that that first week can be hell, and women or their partners will cave. The other thing is that that $30 can of formula costs maybe $5 to produce, package, and deliver. It's not worth $30. It's not even worth the $19.99 that Target charges for the generic. It's purely based on corporate greed and the amount of money those companies spend marketing the stuff, which in the end, hurts the families who need the formula more than anyone. They charge that much because they can. Because once you've decided to stop breastfeeding and switch to formula, it is practically an impossible decision to reverse. They've got you. And they've been controlling the conversation about infant feeding for over a century.

Sam had a sign on his bassinet saying that he was to be exclusively breastfed. He was born early because of my pre-ecclampsia. Newborns have undeveloped digestive tracts without the beneficial flora needed to digest foods other than breastmilk. It is no coincidence that preemies fed formula are at a high risk of necrotizing enterocolitis. Sam wasn't technically premature but I would have appreciated a chance at keeping his "virgin gut" a bit longer. Apparently the nurse wasn't aware of these risks, and neither was I, so I let her give him formula even though I would have preferred donor milk. There is no milk bank in Minnesota which is a tragedy.

While the conversation has been changed from "Formula=Science! Which is better than breastmilk, which eww, that's gross, what are you, a cow? And won't your husband be sad he has to share your boobs? And besides, that's what those dirty immigrants do," to "Formula=almost as good as breastmilk, and really, breastfeeding is for crunchy-granola hippies who have nothing better to do than have a kid on their boob all day," or "Breastfeeding is nice, but formula feeding is normal," that's frankly not much improvement and it's not the truth. But it's still what formula companies are putting out there. You know where they get the DHA and ARA they tout as "important pre-biotics (a made-up word) like those found in breastmilk"? Fish oil and GMO seaweed. And there is no evidence that babies can even absorb them in those forms.

Now, lest this become a diatribe against formula feeding mothers, I assure you it is not. After all, I am/was one. I am also aware that combinations of lack of family support, needing to return to work, needing to take certain medications, having had breast surgery of any kind, etc. can interfere with breastfeeding. And it doesn't have to be all or nothing. It is also not about guilt--all parents do the best we can with the information we have at the time.

I just wish that formula companies would comply with the rules intended to protect babies from unnecessary early weaning. I started out wanting and expecting to breastfeed well over a year, potentially at least two years if I could. The first week Sam was born I figured I'd be lucky to make it to six months. When I was exclusively pumping, it became three months. Fortunately I was able to continue to nurse Sam at least part of the time past those last two goals, but I am still angry that I didn't meet my own personal goal from before Sam was born. Maybe it wasn't meant to be--maybe Sam's sensory issues were the real culprit--but I'll never know for sure. It wasn't just Nestlé, but the whole system of booby-traps that sabotaged our breastfeeding relationship. However I can't keep throwing money at a company who is willing to throw babies under the bus for a profit. I just can't.

And it's hard. Nestlé is into everything. There's the obvious: Crunch bars, Butterfingers, Drumsticks. Wonka and Cadbury. Then there's Lean Cuisine and Stouffer's, Edy's and Häagen-Dazs. A lot of dairy-like products like Coffeemate and Nescafe, and Nesquik. All Gerber food products. Tons of bottled waters, though I try not to buy those as much these days so I can't remember which. Luckily we don't have any pets because they are all over the pet food industry--Purina and several others. And they still own a 30% share in L'Oreal so none of that plus Maybelline, Garnier, and several others. Almost all of these were products I bought regularly. My coupon habit has become more difficult since Nestlé does so much marketing--at least a 3rd of the coupons I get are for Nestlé products. We love Drumsticks, and I miss them. Lean Cuisine makes frozen pizzas and sandwiches that Dan liked to take to work. I'm getting bored of International Delight.  But that's part of what makes it important. It's not an easy boycott like the Chik Fil A thing would have been. It's stuff that we used to use, a lot, and now we don't.

So if you ever see me checking labels, or saying that I'm not interested that Lean Cuisines are on sale at Target, that's why. Next baby, whenever that is, I'll be armed with information and support. You may notice that many of the resources and articles I've linked to here were from 2011. Too late to help Sam, but not too late for his potential little brother or sister. And I'll buy my maternity clothes online or use the ones I already have.

Book reflections: A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans

Special thanks to Mom and Dad for getting me the book I asked for for Christmas.

I was going to write a big long post about how great it was, but I've got some writer's block in that department. I think I'm just still digesting its awesomeness. May need to read it again. I kind of plowed through it in a matter of 3 days.

A few thoughts, nonetheless:

1. The stories of women from the bible at the beginning of each chapter were a major highlight for me. Tamar. Did not learn about her in Sunday School. Wowza. And she was supposedly Jesus' great-great-umpteenth-great-grandma.

2. I was impressed by the academic and biblical scholarship that led the author to design her project the way she did. I am inspired to read the bible again for the first time in many years. So far I've mostly read online, but Dan has a copy of the translation that I'm interested in studying, so I'll probably start on the dead trees version eventually.

3. I was annoyed that she complained so much about not cutting her hair. This is probably just because I am jealous. Ladies with thick hair that requires layers, I will never understand your pain. I recognize that you experience it; I just can't imagine what it would be like to have too much hair.

4. As I noted here, reading this book inspired me to take on a year-long project of my own. Breaking up a spiritual project/experiment/mission/whatever into monthly installments makes it feel more manageable. I'm thankful for the idea! I'd been feeling rather blocked by how settled my life is right now--having a family and responsibilities here, means I don't have the freedom to just give up a year of my life to mission work somewhere else. (I don't have any experience or credentials, either, but that's besides the point.) But I can do what I can, where I am. If my goal is to just do something by the end of the month each month, I can do that.

5. I love the concept of taking back Proverbs 31 and putting it back in its proper place as a praise of character, not a list of roles to be fulfilled and rules to obey. Don't be surprised if I call you "Eshet Chayil" sometime! It's a compliment. You can read about other Women of Valor on Rachel's blog. I fully intend to be this mom.

That's all for now. I know I had way more thoughts while I was reading it but I honestly didn't want to put it down long enough to write about them.

Advent and Pregnancy, Mary and Breastfeeding

So I had this half-baked idea in my brain about how advent could be considered a celebration of pregnancy. It begins with Mary and Joseph, and Zachary and Elizabeth, being visited by an angel who tells them they are going to have babies. (Jesus and John the Baptist, respectively.) That pregnancy, not birth, is the beginning of the story in two of the gospels seems significant to me. I also remember being pregnant during advent. I think most Christian women who have experienced pregnancy, during advent or not, have pondered what Mary's actual experience might have been like. Both advent and pregnancy are times of waiting, planning, preparing, excitement, and anxiety.

In my planning and preparing this year, however, I've run out of time to fully flesh out these ideas. Instead, I'll share a few links which had gotten the idea rolling around in my brain.

I also had wanted to write about how Christians used to view Mary breastfeeding Jesus as a powerful image of both physical and spiritual nourishment and sacrifice, but that sadly, sexual repression and the sexualization of the breast  in the 19th century quashed that and now women get harassed for breastfeeding in church (in some places.) So there's some of that here, as well.

Mary, the Mother of God by Rachel Held Evans
Why I’m Glad Matthew’s Infancy Narrative Isn’t Literally True and Jesus was NOT Born in a Manger by James F. McGrath
Where was Jesus born? posted by Mike at The Aleph and The Omega

Did Paul Invent the Virgin Birth? by James D. Tabor

The Birth of Jesus, Part IV. The Two Versions of the Birth Story by John Shelby Spong

Mary Breastfeeding Jesus: Christmas's Missing Icon via Religion News Service by David Gibson

Breastfeeding in Church: A Picture of Christ's Sacrificial Love, by Ruth Engelthaler, and Breastfeeding in Public: A Christian Father Speaks Up, anonymous, both posted at Peaceful Parenting

Modesty and Hating Oneself: The Darker Side by Dianna E. Anderson

Standards of Beauty

My freshman year at Concordia College I wrote a research paper on Standards of Beauty and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. It contained a lot of high-minded ideals about sexism, racism, and internalized self-hatred. Lots of criticism of the media and barbie dolls and everything else. At the time I knew racism=bad, but I knew nothing about the concept and reality of white privilege, partly because that's inherent in it: If you have it, you are probably unaware that not everyone has it.

The perspective of the paper was, "Shame on the media for making non-white non-blonde non-blue-eyed people feel bad, and shame on those people for not loving themselves as they are!" I got an A. My professor was, as I later found out, a total bigot. Feminist, yes, but also bigoted. A student walked out of one class I had with her two years later, after a fierce debate about whether students should be forced to say "under God" during the pledge of allegiance. Point is, I was a fair-haired, light-skinned, blue-eyed moron and got rewarded for it. Anyhow, back on topic.

At that time I lived down the hall from a very pretty girl who did "prom hair" every freaking morning. Even I rarely left my dorm without at least mascara. I colored my hair frequently over the next 3 years or so, until my scalp became so damaged I had to stop. In high school I had bleached my hair to be a lighter blonde than it really was, which my mom loved. In college, I went carrot red and fire-engine red and fuchsia and almost purple. What a rebellion. I was still burning my head with chemicals once a month.

Who was I then versus who I am now? I married a man who hates the look of lipstick, which is convenient because it dries out my lips. I prefer regular Chapstick or Burt's Bees. I didn't color my hair often for several years after my marriage, but recently I started using a demi-permanent ammonia-free color, partly due to boredom with my darkening mousy brown hair, partly because I started to see gray hairs in front. That's actually my barometer for when I ought to do it again: when I can see gray. (Let's not talk about ageism and double standards for women, at least not today, OK?) I rarely blow-dry and have never flat ironed my hair, and I very rarely curl it. Brushed out and parted or pulled back in a pony-tail or bun is pretty much my repertoire. Maybe I'll use a barrette on occasion. As for makeup, I've stopped using "base" altogether, though that's mostly just because I tend to sweat it all off anyway (and the sweat proof kind ruins my skin). I recently have been buying eye makeup with the intent to use it, but I basically never do. I think the last time was Halloween, and it's now late November. The frazzled mom look has sort of taken over my life, and I'm starting to feel a bit bad about it, and then a bit bad that I feel bad about it.

Where is the line between looking neat and presentable, i.e. caring for oneself, and attempting to conform to unrealistic standards of beauty? I don't have long dark eyelashes. My hair is thinning and starting to go gray. I get stress acne. I'm obese. Should that stop me from taking any pictures of myself, or should I try to hide these things in pictures? This blog post suggests I should record myself as I am, which is how my son will remember me. Every time I try, though, I hate the way I look. I don't hate the way I look in my mirror, just the way I look in pictures without makeup and where you can see my scalp. Like this:

Photo credit: Butch Gerde on Facebook

Totally cute picture of Sam. But my hair is a mess, you can see my chins, my acne is showing since I'm all sweaty, bleagh. I may actually be wearing mascara there, though. I'm not wearing a bit of makeup in this next shot, though.

Photo credit: Jill Book on Facebook

I actually like this one. Someone needs to hand me a newborn baby every time I need to have my picture taken. I think that's part of it. In the second picture, I'm relaxed, I'm excited, and I'm feeling this joy over holding Emma for the first time. Of course, Jill has a very fancy camera and the lighting was better. Also, in the first picture I was completely worn out and overheated after chasing Sam around the community center almost half the time we were there. (The other more than half was graciously done by Dan and some of my cousins.)

To me, though, that's what beauty should be. Capturing a moment of utter glee. You're not going to catch it on film every day, but if you don't try, you won't get anything at all. Digital cameras have saved us a lot of money on film and developing fees, but they've also allowed us to hit delete, delete, delete, until there is no proof of our existence at all. So I'm not perfect. No one is, unless you count absurd amounts of retouching. But I can be beautiful, and I don't have to work as hard at it as I think. I just have to feel joy, and be in the presence of a friend with an amazing camera. :P

And here is me, late Sunday night, just as I am, sick as a dog, staring at the computer screen. Crummy webcam and all. I took this right before I got ambitious and started taking crummy webcam pictures of myself in scarves. But that'll be another post.

Crafting for charity? Or, The best laid plans...

More late night madness from me. On Friday and Saturday nights Dan and I have a tendency to stay up very late at our computers, goofing around, reading and playing games.

Today I made a pair of baby booties that I originally intended to donate to a local charity. At the beginning of this year I made a small resolution to craft at least one charity item a month this year. The first one was a small blue cotton cap for the Knit One, Save One campaign by Save the Children. Unfortunately I didn't notice until I was looking for the address to mail it to, that I had missed the deadline. Even more unfortunately, I missed the announcement on their website that the deadline had been extended until about one day too late. So, I'm not off to the greatest start.

I had some really cute leftover baby yarn that is green with rainbow flecks, in a nice soft washable acrylic, so I thought I'd try making these booties for the unnamed local charity. I figured what the heck, it's a nice short project and I have the yarn and the time, why not?

But once again, not thoroughly researching the charity in question has been my downfall. Part of the reason I haven't mentioned their name is that I've discovered that they support a local "crisis pregnancy center" which is another word for an anti-choice non-medical clinic designed to frighten and coerce pregnant girls and women (who are already terrified enough, if they are going to a crisis center) not to have abortions.

Now, I'm not for or against abortion itself, but I am of the opinion that it is up to each individual human being to make that choice for herself. (Either way - I'm against women being forced to continue pregnancies in countries where abortion is illegal, and I'm also against state-ordered abortions like in China.) What is more disturbing about this particular propaganda center is that on their website they list in their "topics to discuss" something about when birth control is abortion. Which is another way of saying that the birth control pill, and emergency contraception, are abortions. Which is medically inaccurate, because hormonal contraception can not terminate an existing pregnancy. These are the sort of people that believe that women do not have the moral agency to decide when and whether to bear children, and who see all unwanted pregnancies, regardless of the circumstance, as a positive thing. That all young women should be compelled to start popping out babies as soon and as often as possible. That contraception should be illegal or at least inaccessible. (I'll get off my soap box now.)

The upshot is, I'm not going to give my cute little green booties to this particular charity. My cousin is having twin boys this spring, so I'll probably make a set in green and a set in blue and give them to her. And maybe make a little green hat to match the little blue hat, so they can have those too. I guess I don't feel too terrible about things, since taking care of one's family is as noble a cause as any. But I'll definitely stop and do my research, the next time I decide to make a charity project, before I start stitching.

Finally!

Today President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It's about damn time. I am so excited that good things seem to be coming from the new president, so far. It is such a relief after these last eight years of wrongy wrong wrongness.