IT is often assumed that the modern, safe, practical way for a working mother to feed her baby is by bottle.
That, while it might be helpful to breast feed for a few weeks at the beginning, once a mother re-joins the workforce, breast feeding would be too much trouble.
At least this shows that people are considering breast feeding for a few weeks, which indicate how far we've come this country, against a back ground of near abolition of the practice over a few decades. During the years 1940 to 1975 or thereabouts, breast feeding went from being the norm to being the despised option of the unsophisticated.
But then, medical opinion began to swing towards the realisation that breast feeding provided benefits for both mother and baby, except that quite often it was pushed on young mothers as a complicated duty. Most of us are pretty good at avoiding difficult duties, so breast feeding continued to be a minority practice, predominantly of the middle class.
Where it happened successfully, it often happened because of women helping other women friends talking to friends.
When I was expecting my second baby, I found it being talked about a lot and I couldn't remember more than a mention the first time I'd been pregnant. Doctors and nurses were telling me how important it was, both in terms of giving the baby an extra boost to fight off infections and to help bonding between baby and mother. So why, I asked, didn't I hear this when I had my first baby? Well they said, the evidence wasn't as clear, then.
What changed my mind about breast feeding was an accumulation of comments, mentions, recommendations, from a GP, from nurses at pre-natal clinics and from friends in La Leche. When my first son was born, there were about 12 new mothers around me, two of them breast feeding. When my second son was born, the reverse was the case. Many of the new recruits were, like me, working mothers.
IN 1979, I was Minister of State for Consumer Affairs at the Department of Industry and Commerce, where the Minister was Desmond O'Malley. I went to the Minister and indicated I needed a room for this purpose and the Minister provided a room.
I quickly discovered that, as a working mother, not only was breast feeding not a complication but, on the contrary, it was a simplification
. No carrying of bags, filled with cans, bottles and sterilising solution.
. No measuring and mixing.
. No heating and testing.
It could and did happen anywhere. Mostly in the State car. For the first six months of his life, my second son was arguably the most travelled baby in Ireland. There was no county he didn't visit.
He didn't have much respect for the schedules of other people, either, up to and including the Pope. At the beginning of the Papal visit to Ireland, I was standing with the rest of the government in Dublin Airport, waiting for the Pope's plane to land, when the baby notified the world that he was seriously, urgently, irresistibly hungry.
An Aer Bianta staff member found me a room from where, standing outside to ensure privacy, she could see the tarmac and the touchdown of the Pope's plane. "Don't worry,"
she called in to me. "Soon as the door opens, I'll tell you and you'll have plenty of time to get out there."
By the time His Holiness appeared at the top of the steps, the baby was fed, winded and happy as Larry.
Breast feeding made my life as a working mother easier, not more difficult, and I would like to put that thought into the heads of working mothers who may view breast feeding as an option suiting only stay at home mothers. Having said that, I would never seek to pressurise any woman one way or the other. It's every mother's own choice, made in the light of her own preferences and circumstances and the circumstances, in terms of creches and nurseries at or close to the workplace, are rarely ideal. Nonetheless, we're making progress on encouraging women to consider this option.