Slate: How not breastfeeding preserved my mental health
Deep dive: The overlooked parental health costs of breastfeeding
Dear community,
When I became pregnant with my first child, my psychiatrist recommended I not breastfeed — to protect my sleep and prevent a bipolar disorder relapse. Looking back now, choosing not to breastfeed played a key role in my entering parenthood as the healthiest version of myself and in my son thriving.
But it was initially a tough pill to swallow. You see: As a pediatrician, my peers and I were never trained to explicitly consider the parental health costs of breastfeeding as part of deciding on a feeding plan with families, and we were trained to over-estimate the benefits for the baby.
Though breastfeeding can be wonderful for many, it can also exacerbate sleep loss, parenting inequities, and health risks for the breastfeeding or chest-feeding parent — which can also adversely impact the baby and others in the family.
As a medical community, our approach to feeding doesn’t yet routinely account for these costs, or take a holistic view of the entire family’s needs. And despite there being no evidence of long-term harms from formula feeding, ready support for families making choices other than exclusive breastfeeding is lacking, both within medicine and more broadly in society.
Thank you for the wisdom you shared with me for this piece, Dr Nancy Byatt, Dr Crystal Clark, Dr Joanna Jarecki, and Ms Ann Mary Olson. To hear parts of these conversations, check out the latest episode of Spread the light with Dr Devika B. And a big shoutout to Mia Armstrong-López for her stellar editing.
Finally, to anyone considering parenthood with a mental health condition:
Know that you absolutely can be successful.
Consult this website and ideally, a perinatal psychiatrist, to guide your care. Many psychiatric medications are safe and important to continue in pregnancy and postpartum.
If sustained sleep deprivation could put you at risk for illness, I empower you to think about all your feeding options. Remember: The only ‘right’ feeding choice is the one that allows you to be the best parent you can be. In my own case, I’ve never regretted formula feeding: It allowed me to enter parenthood as the healthiest version of myself — and for my son to thrive.
Wishing you light and freedom to chart your own course,
Dr Devika Bhushan
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Oh I have a personal story about this, too! So many women are pressured to BF at all costs, and make drug choices predicated on shaky or nonexistent clinical trial data. Thanks for telling your story in Slate. It made me think: I should pitch my story, too!
Great piece in Slate.Thanks for sharing.