72: “Breast is Best” is the Worst with Mallory Whitmore
If you are a parent or have spent time with expectant and new parents, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “Breast is best.” The phrase is used to promote breastfeeding as a superior way to feed a baby, and it has terrorized many new parents along the way. My guest is Mallory Whitmore, “The Formula Mom,” who is a passionate advocate for formula-feeding parents. Join us for the discussion!
Show Highlights:
● How and when “breast is best” originated and became a popular slogan
● The tragic and manipulative history of formula marketing
● How “Breast is best” has come to symbolize superior parenting choices and not merely nutrition
● How breastfeeding is often the first failure in parenthood and one that causes extreme mom guilt
● Mallory’s take on the question: Is breast best?
● Why most parenting choices are a cost/benefit decision
● The truth about the data behind “Breast is Best”---and why the research is skewed
● KC’s personal experience of struggling to breastfeed and switching to formula
● Why the fundamental issue here is a woman’s bodily autonomy, something most people support in every other circumstance
● Why the “lacti-vism” movement is wrong in assigning moral superiority to the act of breastfeeding
● The realities of life around breastfeeding on the job and a lack of empathy
● Why Mallory’s mission is to support and empower formula moms to combat the shame—not to convince people not to breastfeed
Resources and Links:
Connect with Mallory: Instagram, TikTok, and Milk Drunk
Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.
-
KC 0:05
Hello sentient ball of stardust. Welcome to Struggle Care. I'm your host Casey Davis and I am here with Mallory Whitmore, also known as the formula mom on tick tock. I am also here with mouse who has a 15 year old Chihuahua, my mother's dog who I am dog sitting at the moment and I will be cradling her in my arms for this entire episode. So if you hear any sniffling, that's her, she's on the way out. Mallory, thank you so much for being here having me. We're going to talk about breast is best and how it is the worst? Let's start with if you're not a parent who's listening to this, or if you've never heard this term before, this is a term that is used to promote breastfeeding amongst parents. So can we just start with like, where did this term this term has personally terrorized me. But where did the term come from? Yeah,
Mallory Whitmore 0:53
that's a great question. So breast asbestos is typically associated with the rise of the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, they go hand in hand, the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative was put forth in the early 2000s, in order to increase breastfeeding rates among parents within the hospital setting after birth, knowing that the number of parents who initiate breastfeeding in the hospital will affect how many are still breastfeeding at six months or three months or a year, the breast is best phrase came in as a way to make sure parents were aware that breastfeeding and formula feeding are not entirely identical. There's a pretty spotty unethical history of baby formula marketing, particularly in developing countries. But also here in the US where formula companies really did a lot of work to convince parents that formula was a nutritionally superior choice to breastfeeding, it obviously is advantageous for them from a profit standpoint for parents to believe that and so they leaned in to that very heavily. There was a lot of decades where the breastfeeding rate was really, really low, or the formula feeding rate was really, really high. And parents on the whole held a lot of misconceptions about the benefits of breastfeeding. So breast is best was born from a place of trying to encourage parents to breastfeed and promote the benefits of breastfeeding as an alternative to formula feeding, which was the default, particularly in the 70s 80s. And into the 90s. And,
KC 2:37
you know, the stories that I heard about, like formula marketing were horrific, like they would go into underserved neighborhoods where there was a lot of poverty. And they would give out free samples of formula just long enough for a mother's breast milk to completely dry up. And now it's like they were hooked, they had to purchase the formula. And they did a lot of pushing a formula in rural areas in countries where someone did not have access to clean water. And so a lot of babies were made sick or even died. Because if you don't have access to clean water, then you're making formula with dirty water and babies were getting sick. Absolutely.
Mallory Whitmore 3:21
Yeah, it's a really unfortunate history. And certainly some of the stigma that we see today around formula and formula companies is justified because of that history. And breast is best started as a great way to try to counteract and undo some of that narrative around the superiority of formula. But since then, it has sort of taken on a mind of its own and come to mean something much different for a lot of families.
KC 3:52
What's interesting to me is the phrase itself, breast is best, which obviously, it's shortened. Because it makes a nice little alliteration. But it originally like the phrase in its fullness is breast milk is best, meaning like breast milk is nutritionally superior than formula if you were to put them both side by side and a lab and look at you know, protein versus this versus that versus whatever. But I feel like it has come to mean, breast feeding is best as a parenting choice.
Mallory Whitmore 4:26
Absolutely. And occasionally, you'll hear folks that will argue from a scientific standpoint that breast feeding is best because there's an exchange of microbes from skin to skin and things like that. But ultimately, you're right. What people by and large want to say is that breast milk is best from a nutrition standpoint, from a giving your baby the best start at life standpoint, which, you know, we can talk about whether that's accurate or not. But yes, it's been co opted by particularly in mom spaces on the internet to mean breastfeeding as a parenting choice. And everything that comes along with breastfeeding as a parenting choice, which also tends to include things like baby wearing, and attachment parenting, it's closely tied to like the natural birth movement, it's all wrapped up in one that a certain segment of folks really will argue is the best, the ultimate ideal for everyone. So,
KC 5:30
you know, I, as someone has two kids I, breast fed, I am pumped exclusively and I formula fed. And I will never forget, like, in both cases, there was a lot of difficulty with breastfeeding. And I, the decision to switch to formula was agonizing. Like, I truly felt like I was failing, like, I was failing myself, like, I was failing my kids, like, what mother, and here's the thing, I mean, like three, five years down the line, I now My oldest is five, like, I am no stranger to like, mom guilt, and but I also have had like five years of realizing that like life is life, and you do the best you can and like, you're gonna fail in a million ways. And at the end of the day, like, you just need to be good enough mom. But like, you don't have that experience, when you're straight out of the postpartum or like this is the first failure for many women. And men, I guess, ready parents who are breastfeeding, like, this is the first failure of like you You spent all this time reading blogs and books and researching, and I'm going to do everything the right way for my baby. And this is the first experience with I am not giving my baby the best. And what a piece of shit that makes me. So let me ask you that. So is breast best.
Mallory Whitmore 6:55
Personally, I don't think that anything can be best for every single person. And so from that standpoint alone, no, I don't think breast is best. I think breast is best for some families. I think breast is best. In some cases, I don't think breast is best. On the whole on a macro level, I think that there are certain benefits of breast milk that are amazing, and that are things that formula can't replicate. And I think that it would be great if every baby in the world had access to those benefits, but not at the expense of what some families have to go through in order to provide those benefits. And that really is born out of my own experience where I realized now My oldest is seven that I sacrificed so much, and that she lost so much of me and our relationship on account of those benefits. It cost her and it cost me more to provide that breast milk than it benefited her. So for me breast was not best, what was best was choosing to use formula. And that choice allowing me to be an engaged and supportive and loving parent. Because when I was breastfeeding and pumping, I couldn't be that way. I was detached I was dissociated. And I felt threatened every time she cried. I had like a threat response because she needed me again and I had to pump again. And so for us breast wasn't best, and for a lot of people breast isn't best. That doesn't mean that breast milk is not nutritionally ideal. It just means that the benefits of breast milk do not outweigh the consequences that sometimes occur when you ask someone to breastfeed.
KC 8:43
I think that's what I really dislike about the phrase breast as best is that like there are so few things that truly are best in every circumstance, especially when it comes to parenting. Literally every decision is a cost benefit decision.
Mallory Whitmore 8:59
Right? Absolutely. Yes.
KC 9:02
So like, you know, think about car seats. Like it is absolutely the safest in terms of like when you get in a crash for your kids to be rear facing as long as possible. That is true. We know that. However, that does not take into account that not all cars can fit a car seat rear facing behind the driver's seat safely. When the kid gets to a certain you know height. It doesn't take into account what kind of car seat a person has, and whether it taps out at a lower weight because that's the one they could afford. It does not take into account a child who is autistic and is losing their minds because they cannot get the sensory input from facing forward in the way that they want it for whatever reason it does not take into account some of these like real life nuances. And I don't know Know that I've heard people talk about the benefits of formula. It's always like, here's the benefits of breast milk. But you know, what, if you can't pull it off formulas, okay, when it's like, there are a lot of benefits to formula,
Mallory Whitmore 10:12
there are so many benefits, so many benefits. And not just for the person who had previously been breastfeeding or who felt pressured to breastfeed, there are benefits for the entire family, there are benefits for the baby. It's yeah, I agree with you that a lot of the time it's framed as benefits of breastfeeding versus risks of formula, when in reality, there are benefits and risks to both.
KC 10:42
And what are some of these quote unquote risks and benefits that people talk about? Because I feel like some of them when it comes to breast milk, it's so overblown, like, I have read that, and I personally loathed the term obesity, but that's the term used, which is only reason I'm using it, but like, Okay, your child is more at risk for obesity and heart disease and gastrointestinal issues, that they're going to have a lower IQ, if you formula feet, I mean, all sorts of things. What is your experience with the actual data behind those
Mallory Whitmore 11:15
claims? Yeah, first, I like to remind parents who are digging into this and are wondering if they're doing their baby a disservice by switching to formula that it's basically impossible to have really good evidence based research around this topic. The gold standard for scientific research is the randomized control trial. And it's simply not ethical to craft a study where you force half the people to breastfeed, and you force half of the people to formula feed. As a result, the research that we have about breastfeeding outcomes relies on folks who opt into breastfeeding and those who opt into formula feeding. And we know on a macro level, that there are differences in those groups. Generally speaking, people who breastfeed tend to be higher income, largely because they can take off the work in order to breastfeed for a year, they tend to be or
KC 12:13
they have a higher paying job, that is more likely to give them their protected benefits around like a place to pump at when they're at work.
Mallory Whitmore 12:21
Absolutely, they tend to have a higher education level, they tend to have more support, they tend to have access to better health care, they tend to not live in food deserts, they tend to not be on the women, infant children support program, government support program. And so so much of the time these studies will try to delineate benefits that are seen infants in these two groups, and assign them to the breastfeeding of the formula without adequately dealing with all of these confounding factors that also influence outcomes like intelligence, overall health, obesity, number of infections. In all
KC 13:03
cases, it seems like people who breastfeed and not every single time, and not every single one, but if you took a big group of them 1000s and 1000s, or whatever, hundreds and hundreds, you're going to find a larger percentage of people that have economic social class race privilege, than people who are not breastfeeding. And when you think of it that way, to say that people the more privileged you are, the fewer health problems you have, is not that like groundbreaking of a statement. No, like, you know, and, you know, I read was it crib sheet or expecting better one of the books by Emily auster, where she like, goes through all of the studies on breast milk, and like, translates like what they're saying, and I will never forget, like it was all of these numbers and figures about like gastrointestinal problems. And she was like, basically, what they found was that babies who were on breast milk, were having one fewer instance of diarrhea every six months. And I remember reading that and I was like, so sleep deprived, so depressed, so like, haggard, and like, miserable. And, you know, my baby had a hard time latching and couldn't tell what she was drinking. And she was little and it was like, that's what I'm killing myself for. Yep. Talk about the like, twice as with the numbers, twice as likely to
Mallory Whitmore 14:39
Yes, yes. Oh, my gosh, this kills me. Oh, so there's a framing of breast milk benefits that parents tend to see in books on message boards, even from their pediatricians, or their OBS, where they'll talk about the increase in likelihood of a certain outcome happening if you use form Well, and they'll say things like your baby is twice as likely to get an ear infection. And as a parent, that sounds horrible, doubling your baby's risk sounds terrible. But what these folks don't tell you is what the absolute risk looks like, that's the relative risk, your risk goes up by two, or by double the absolute risk, you've changed from 2% to 4%. So yes, you've doubled your baby's risk of getting an ear infection. And also, this is due to the fact that you're bottle feeding, not because there's formula in the bottle. But even so, even if you've doubled your risk, you've only gone for 2% to 4%, there's still a 96% likelihood that your baby will not get an ear infection, no matter how you feed them. But we tend to not hear that absolute risk positioning, because it's not compelling, right. And I have literally had people say to me, Well, you can't tell that to folks, because then they won't breastfeed. And I'm like, You have betrayed yourself, you have told me that you want folks to be manipulated by the data in order to breastfeed, and that if we tell them the truth, they might make a choice that you don't want them to make. That's not ethical. And so that's a big thing that I do on my platform is really dig into what is the absolute risk here, because if you're going, in some cases, from like a point 05, risk, 2.08 risk, that's not a meaningful increase in risk for the benefit that some families feel switching to formula, it's just not,
KC 16:40
I went to some breastfeeding support, glide classes when I had a baby. And first of all, when I had my first baby, she would not latch and we could not figure out why she wouldn't stay on the breast for more than like three seconds. And so I was told, as I was sent home, right? Bleeding, bruised, sleep deprived, that I needed to do something called triple feeding, oh, they said, Well, what we want you to do is we want you to put her on the breast, the left side for 15 minutes, and then put her on the right side, the right breast for 15 minutes, that I want you to pump for 15 minutes, then feed her three ounces of like the breast milk that you get, then I want you to feed her topper off with however many ounces of formula. Okay, so if you're listening to that at home, let's add that time up right there. Okay, 1515, that's 30. But that's just at the breast, that's not the extra, let's say 10 minutes of like, getting the baby up, sitting down, getting comfortable getting situated, whatever. So we're at what, 40 minutes now, then you want me to pump 15 and 15. Okay, so there's another 30 plus at least 15 minutes to set up and break down your pump supplies. So we're at 4050, sort of our hour, I can't do math, I can't either, we're a little over an hour at this point, then you want me to feed the baby three ounces of formula. Okay, let's say that takes another 15 minutes. So I'm sitting at an hour, 20 hour 30. Because you also have a newborn that might need to be rocked, or handled or put back to sleep or picked back up or whatever it is right. And usually what I would do is before I got the baby up, I would wake up, I would pump so that when the baby was up, you could just bam, bam, bam, feed in succession, and then you put him back to sleep, right, but an hour and a half. I don't know if people at home are aware of how often they tell you to feed your baby overnight, every
Mallory Whitmore 18:43
two to three hours, every two hours. It's
KC 18:48
not by the way for you listening. It's not every two hours, from the time the baby goes to sleep. It's every two hours from the start of the last feed.
Mallory Whitmore 19:01
Yes, people don't realize that it's from the start of the last feed, not the end. That's 30 minutes for me to sleep. Yeah, or to wash your pump parts before that starts again or to get
KC 19:13
the baby to sleep, or do whatever, right. So that's between 30 minutes and an hour and a half for me to sleep. Now, I am so exhausted. And it's like it literally took me one night before I was like, I'm not doing this. I will just pump the breast milk. And it's insanity. It was insanity that we would ever tell someone to do that. And so my point was is I went to a breastfeeding class when I had my second and there was this woman there this mother who wanted to breastfeed and was trying to breastfeed and she had an even more like intense thing that she had been given by her pediatrician which was to pump the breast milk and then put the breast milk into little baggie like an IV bag. And then there's this little bitty tube that would come through the bag and she would tape it onto her nipple. This baby had like some medical reasons why it was difficult to breastfeed so that way, when the baby was latched on to the nipple, she was not only pulling the breast milk from the breast, but there was extra milk coming into this little tube, right? Except, like, babies aren't still. So like, every time the baby moves, she she would be holding the baby with one hand, holding the bag in the air with the other end. Like it was just this, it was so so so difficult. And then after that, she would have to top off with formula. And I remember staring and listen, if you're listening. I'm sure she's not. But like, if her dying wish was to breastfeed, like, I support that I will hold the bag for you. But I remember like, I couldn't help but wonder like, has anyone in this woman's life just pulled her aside and been like, Hey, you
Mallory Whitmore 21:01
don't have to do
KC 21:01
this. It's okay. You don't have to do this. This is crazy making like, and she had two other kids. Oh,
Mallory Whitmore 21:09
gosh, that's so hard. So it's
KC 21:14
just wild to me that like nobody told me. And when I told about when I talked to my friends about like, I'm thinking of stopping breastfeeding. Everyone was supportive. Nobody shamed me. But I only had one friend, that was excited for me. Everyone was like, It's okay. It's okay. They gave me permission. But I had one friend in particular that I call it and she goes, Oh, Casey, I'm so excited for you. Your life is about to get so much
Mallory Whitmore 21:39
better. Oh, everybody deserves that friend. And it did.
KC 21:43
I could go places. I got more sleep. I had a spouse that could help me feed overnight. So I didn't have to always be the one to wake up. Like it was incredible. But there's really this issue. And I always sort of called it lacked of ism. And I use that in a derogatory sense, like people who are activists, this idea that like, and it's not, I'm not criticizing people that breastfeed I'm not criticizing people that promote breastfeeding. But like I do have a lot of criticisms of this movement that does so many harmful things. And I can you sure one of the things you said when we were talking before this podcast, that really was something that I had not considered, which I'm sort of embarrassed about is you talked about, like, the main or most important issue with the breast is best being coercive when it came to a mother's bodily autonomy.
Mallory Whitmore 22:34
Yeah. And that's interesting, because generally, we have an idea in our heads of the issues that fall into the bodily autonomy space, it tends to do with abortion or termination of pregnancy, it tends to do with like domestic partner violence and wanting to have control and self determination about what we do with our bodies
KC 22:56
has to do with medical commitment, you know, you can't make me get a medical procedure.
Mallory Whitmore 23:01
And generally speaking, everybody, no matter where you fall on the spectrum, politically believes in some way that people should be able to do with their own body what they want to do. A for some reason, though, breastfeeding is often not included in that conversation. And so often what parents feel, and they're vulnerable, they've just had a giant medical event hormones are everywhere, they haven't slept in this very, very vulnerable time, is someone coming in and saying, You need to use your body in this particular way, even if you don't want to. And there is basically no other instance, where that's an acceptable thing to say to someone where it's acceptable to say, the betterment of this person is worth more this person being your newborn is worth more than your right to choose how you use your body. And that's just that's not a conversation that we tolerate elsewhere. And when I started to think about breastfeeding, and breastfeeding pressure, in the vein of bodily autonomy, it changed something in me, it became less about everybody should get to do what they want, which they should, and more about, there's a fundamental issue here with how we honor and respect new parents, as it relates to how they feed their baby. Because if we are pressuring, if we're manipulating, if we're withholding the truth, so that they make a certain choice with their body that they don't want to make or wouldn't make, if they had all the information, that's not ethical. It's not and it is
KC 24:43
coercive like it is, you know, that in a perfect world, nobody would be that way. But like, there are horror stories of nurses and, you know, lactation consultants and doctor like coming into those As post recovery rooms and asking mothers, why are you not breastfeeding? Don't you know, breast is best? You know, and the mom being like, I have breast cancer. Yes. Right. And it's like, it's not that it's this idea that like, you have to have a good enough reason. That's what really terrorized me because it was like, I know it's okay to quit, but only if I have a good enough reason. And I was constantly seeking this validation for is this good enough? Is this have I suffered enough? Have I suffered enough? Is this enough? Is this supposed to be and I mean, the truth is, is like most people would agree like breast cancer is an okay enough, but we get down to like, do I have to disclose my disability to every single person? Do I have to do do you have to say I'm autistic? And I can't take the sensory input? Do you have to say I'm a sexual assault survivor? And I don't want a baby on my breast? Do you have to say like all of these various things, I have back pain and being hunched over like, this is painful for me. It truly is this like one place where we're still so backwards. So misogynistic, so patriarchal, like, it's no wonder that fast forward, and we have generations and generations of mothers who believe that sacrificing their own well being is part of the job description, because we start out with that message.
Mallory Whitmore 26:23
Absolutely. And I think so much of that comes from the lack of ism ideology, that breastfeeding is not just a choice, but the morally right choice, the good choice. And something that you say constantly that I love that really changed. The way that I talk about breast affordable feeding, is that how you feed your baby is morally neutral. I love that so much. When I saw you say that on Tik Tok, I was like, Casey Davis is a genius. This is exactly right. This is exactly right. And that's what the lack of movement gets wrong is that they assign this moral superiority to the the act of breastfeeding. And that is what forces parents to try to come up with some reason that feels even more morally better, for why they're not going to do it. They want, you know, so often parents feel like they have to, to have a reason that justifies being a bad mom, you know, quote, air quotes, or a bad parent for choosing formula. And the fact of the matter is, they don't wanting to choose formula is enough reason to choose formula. And even if you do have a reason that's related to your health, or your baby's health, or what works for your family, or your finances, or the realities of your job, I want to get to a point where parents don't feel like they have to share those pieces of themselves in order for people to validate that formula is a good choice for them. Because often those reasons are really personal and really vulnerable. Because at the end of the day, anything dealing with your breasts is going to be vulnerable and personal. There's no way for it not to be when you're, you know, looking at a body part that even on its own is stigmatized, and you know, can induce shame and all of that. Yeah.
KC 28:23
And I think that that's one of my biggest criticisms about people that I would consider, like activists or whatever is it's like at any cost. And there's this flippancy and this shame. And they always have an answer for every I mean, this is real, like these are genuine comments. I've gotten online about you know, if you really wanted to make it work, you would, you know, you're feeding your baby poison. You know, everyone is able and you bring up these issues of like classism, you bring up these you know, not everybody can get a safe place to breasts, to pump at work, and it's like, well, there are protections you should be allowed to you just tell your boss that you're in, it's like, I'm sorry, have y'all really never worked retail Have y'all never worked fast food. They don't give a shit. They will fire you. And then you want to come in with? Well, but it's illegal to fire you for Okay, what do y'all think hap like? This is what drives me nuts. Like what do you think happens when somebody breaks an employment law? Genuine? Do you think a fairy appears and goes, you know, like little buddy faux food down came a fairy, you said, Little manager of McDonald's, you're not allowed to do that. Take it back right now. That's not what happens. What happens? You get fired and you go home and then what? Yeah,
Mallory Whitmore 29:35
do these people have the money to pay for a lawyer to fight it? Do you have the time? No. Something that I think a lot of people don't consider as well in this vein, is that if you are an hourly employee, your pump breaks just like your lunch breaks just like any other breaks are not paid. When I had our second child. I was an hourly employee working part time, and I had a great job. I loved it. it. But if I had stopped to pump three times a day, I would have lost at least an hour's worth of income, you multiply that over the course of a week over the course of a month over the course of baby's first year, people talk so much about the cost of formula, oh, you know, it might cost $1,000 to formula feed your baby, the amount that we spent on formula was less than the lost wages, I would have accrued. Had I pumped, it was cheaper for our family to formula feed, because the way my job worked, and because I wouldn't have gotten paid for those breaks. And that's true of everybody who's an hourly worker. And also a lot of hourly workers will qualify for WIC benefits, and they'll get formula either entirely or partially subsidized. Yeah.
KC 30:48
And even if you're, you know, you can report your workplace and is that in the other and I mean, worst case, you have the time and money to fight it. And then you get rehired to what to have your boss treat you like shit. Also, that's even if they were ever forthright about it. Like, usually what happens is like, if you're inconveniencing someone and you're working retail, or you're working in the food industry, you're just going to get fired, or you're not going to get the good shifts anymore, and they're not going to come out and say that that's why and when someone doesn't come out and say it, it's very difficult to prove that that's why they'll just have another reason. I mean, these are like real life stories that happen. It's not as simple as well, you're allowed to have it. And so you could and so yeah, I mean, when you're a lawyer, it's easy to do it, because you just shut the door to your private office. It's not as easy when you're working at JoAnn Fabrics. And the only rooms there that aren't the main store is the break room, the storage closet, or the bathroom and the bathroom rose. Yeah. So it's not as easy as people like to make no,
Mallory Whitmore 31:58
and honestly, I think that is the crux of it. There's a lack of empathy. And a lot of these lack of ism spaces. There's an unwillingness or inability to consider that other people might have factors in their life that these people don't that make breastfeeding not possible or not workable. There's just a lack of understanding that there may be things that these people can't consider that they don't personally experience. But that are real, that would lead someone to make a different choice than they do. It's an empathy gap, in my opinion, and
KC 32:37
there's kind of this emotional intelligence piece that's missing where like, like if you're wanting to breastfeed, and that's really important to you, for whatever reason, like, then pointing out, you can do it. Like you can do it. There are protections, there are ways there are there's free support, there's low cost support, there's online support, like pointing out all the ways that someone can meet their goal is a great thing to do. It's not the same thing as pointing out all of these things to someone saying I want to stop Absolutely. And going well, but there's low costs. What do you mean it costs money? There's low cost support. What do you mean, it's, it's what you have protections like that's different?
Mallory Whitmore 33:20
Yes. I often feel like that, like these folks who are so breast as best who are so anti formula, are spending their time and energy in the wrong place. People who don't even want to breastfeed, yes, there's a difference between supporting breastfeeding parents and parents who want to breastfeed, and antagonizing people who don't. And so often, all the time and energy goes to antagonizing the people who've already made up their mind, and not actually helping and supporting the people who are committed to breastfeeding. Sometimes I think that me as the formula mom that I do more to help encourage folks and whatever. Because, you know, I'm just staying in my lane. Like, I'm not going to go and tell somebody not to breastfeed. I don't know why anyone feels like it's their problem to tell someone not to formula feed.
KC 34:15
Well, it's interesting because you know, you're on a mission to empower formula moms to combat the shaming of formula, all of this kind of stuff. But one of the things that happens in conversations about breastfeeding and formula feeding, and it's happened to me as well when I've made videos about how like you know, feeding your baby is morally neutral and like breastfeeding doesn't make that big of a difference when it comes to a nutritional standpoint. And I've even said before like looking back of all of the parenting decisions I've made, whether or not I did breast milk or formula or like let me say it this way. Switching to formula is the least important parenting decision I've made so far. Like it felt like the most important and it's like such as nothing burger have a decision now like it had no impact on my kids, I think, absolutely. But one of the things that happens when you start to talk about this stuff is that breastfeeding parents will start to say, I feel shamed. You know, here's this thing that I worked so hard for that i Blood Sweat Tears off, like I gave up so much for this. And you're saying it doesn't matter? You're saying that comparatively, like, it doesn't matter. And that's always a really interesting response to me.
Mallory Whitmore 35:25
Yeah, I agree. I think for anything that's hard, whether it's breastfeeding, or writing a book or running a marathon, the only way to get through it, is to believe that there's some outsized benefit on the other side, that makes the work of doing it worthwhile. I think sometimes for parents who choose to breastfeed, that they feel like that has to be something external, that there has to be some sort of external objective, something that they can grab on to and say, This is why I'm doing this. Because at the end of the day, you might start doing it because somebody guilts you into doing it, but you're only going to continue, if you think, in your heart of hearts, that you are bettering your baby because of it. Or you just like it, or you just like it, I can't relate to that, truly, that thought never crossed my mind.
KC 36:24
But I do know, I do know so many parents that really, really like it. And that's the thing is, it's like, if you did this really hard thing, and you it's never the ones that are like this was easy for me. And I liked it like they're never upset. It's always the ones that are like I fought through really fought for this. And now you're saying that I fought for nothing. And it's like, well, if you fought for something, based on information that isn't true, I'm not the one you should be mad at, like me pointing out that you fought for one less instance of diarrhea in six months. And that doesn't actually matter in the grand scheme of things. If that takes the wind out of your breastfeeding sales, that is not on me, that's on whoever sold you the bill of goods, that it was this big, huge deal that was gonna make this big, huge difference. Like, if that takes that away from you. That's not me. And here's the thing that being said, like, and I kind of relate to it on that aspect of like, I had an epidural with my first baby. And I did not have one with my second, I decided that I wanted to do a non medicated birth. And I had reasons for it. And actually, one of my reasons was I wanted to breastfeed, I had reasons why I thought it was going to be more beneficial to what I wanted through the experience for myself. And for my kid, I don't have any belief that that is a better way of doing it. I don't have any belief that it is a superior way of doing it. I think it worked for me very specifically, in my circumstances. And it was so so, so, so hard. And I am so overwhelmingly proud of myself. And it doesn't make any difference in the outcome for my like, kids. Turns out like they're both like no difference at all. And I'm so proud of myself. And I think when you mentioned running a marathon, that to me was like the perfect example. Because sometimes people I would say like, I'm really proud of myself, and they'd be like, you don't get an award for pain. Yeah, there's no award. And I'm like,
Mallory Whitmore 38:26
I'm not asking for an award. Yeah,
KC 38:29
I'm not asking for one. Second of all, yeah, there is it's called a marathon. Do you know how many men voluntarily decide to shit their pants on the Boston Street? Because they decided that they wanted to do some ridiculous feats of strength and endurance that no human was built for. That shit is painful, and hurts. And it's hard work. And then you get a medal at the end. Nobody's asked them to do that. They didn't need to do that. And there was maybe no benefit, except they wanted to see if they could and you know what, good on you. That's fine. You still get medals for that. And so like, you can be proud of yourself if you wanted to breastfeed. And you did. And you worked so hard at it, because like, nobody can take that away from you. And you you mentioned to me also, like there is this aspect of like, it's not to say that breastfeeding parents don't have
Mallory Whitmore 39:20
barriers. Yes, absolutely. And I think where we end up sometimes in this sort of deadlock between breastfeeding parents and formula feeding parents, it sometimes feels like a who has it worse situation where formula feeding parents say, I feel shamed. I feel stigma. I have to lie to my pediatrician. I don't know anybody who's formula feeding. On the other side, you've got breastfeeding parents who are like my mother in law asked me to cover up I don't my pediatrician doesn't know anything about breastfeeding.
KC 39:52
We get shamed for extended breastfeeding, but your kids do over that.
Mallory Whitmore 39:57
Yes, like I don't feel comfortable. Doing this in public, I always have to remove myself. And so I think really the reality is that both groups of people need more support. And when we get into this dialogue into this conflict about who's support, who needs more support, it defeats the purpose everybody
KC 40:20
needs. And if that support comes in the form of just saying, You're morally better, it's like, I'm not going to actually fix any of the problems. I'm not going to actually address any of the systemic barriers, socially, societally to like, why it's difficult to breastfeed, and like you're getting yelled at in public. I'm just going to tell you that like, You're so much better than those other moms who like took the easy way out. It's like, we just galvanize the injustice as a badge, instead of actually addressing societal issues. Yeah,
Mallory Whitmore 40:53
because at the end of the day, the goal, in my mind is not that everyone breastfeeds and it's certainly not that everyone formula feats. The goal is that everyone can feed the way that they want to ideally, and the way that works for them with the support that they need. That's the goal.
KC 41:10
Well, now I really appreciate everything that you bring to this conversation and everything you bring to the internet in general, where can people find you if they want to
Mallory Whitmore 41:18
follow you? Yeah, so I'm on Tik Tok at the formula mom, but I'm primarily over on Instagram also at the formula mom. I also write for milk trump.com on a variety of feeding and baby related topics. So that's where you can find
KC 41:31
me. Awesome. Well, this has been a great conversation, and I hope you have a great day. Thank you. You too.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai