Breast-feeding benefits still kept under wraps

If a drug came on the market which made our babies and children less prone to allergies, gastroenteritis, colds and middle-ear infections, reduced their risk of being or ever becoming overweight or of developing high blood pressure, and aided brain development, it would surely make its inventor rich. In fact, the drug has been discovered, but it's not for sale - it's called breast milk and it is available free from the breasts of nearly every woman when she has a child.

Its benefits have been widely accepted for a good 30 years. But in Ireland, we prefer not to use it. We prefer to buy commercially-modified cow's milk which has none of the above benefits and give it to our babies.

When I say "we", I don't mean "newly-delivered mothers", I mean we, as a society. Breast-feeding, effectively stamped out in the 1950s and 1960s by false medical advice, can't be brought back by individual mothers desperately attempting to get that nipple into their babies' open mouths. As has been seen in other countries, it takes political will to mobilise the health services so that they can, in turn, support women. Throughout Europe, this process has been happening, but here we have barely bothered.

This is all the more shocking when you think that administering nature's wonder-drug also helps mothers - it lowers their risk of developing breast cancer and it can help with pre-menstrual tension. In the short term, it helps them get their figures back after pregnancy, fills them with lovely relaxing hormones and forces them to sit down and take what is often their only rest during the day. The Food Safety Authority's Recommendations for a National Feeding Policy, published this week, confirmed that Ireland has the lowest level of breast-feeding in Europe. Only 10 per cent of women are still breast-feeding exclusively after three months, although some of the benefits of breast-feeding kick in fully only after 15 weeks. Sixty-two per cent of women are not breast-feeding at all by the time they leave hospital.

In Britain, 66 per cent of women leave hospital breast-feeding. In Sweden, the overall rate is 97 per cent, and they take it so seriously that women are required by law to breast-feed for the first 10 days. In Norway and Denmark, the rate is 98 per cent.

This trounces the notion, common in Ireland, that many women "don't have enough milk". It's a supply and demand system - you let the baby suck and you produce enough to match the need - and it has been so important to our survival since time began that nature doesn't let it go astray that often. But Irish women can't be expected to know that. If they try to breast-feed, they have to face down a medical establishment which is in theory supportive, but in practice, sometimes even a saboteur.

I know this from experience. I am well-educated, middle-class, relatively elderly and I was bloody-minded about breast-feeding, and that's why I have gone on to feed my son for seven months. But I have been shocked by the ignorance of medical personnel.

Even in the National Maternity Hospital, which was otherwise excellent, only one nurse on my ward was truly encouraging. One said: "It's great - if it works." Another offered the baby a bottle of water, which might have confused the baby as it learned to suck, another actually came out and said: "Bottles or breast - it doesn't make much difference as long as the baby is fed."

Since then, I have been told by nurses in local health centres to give the baby supplementary bottles of formula while feeding was still being established (which would have made the baby less hungry, so he would have sucked less, and I would have produced less milk and the whole thing could have ended, as it does for many, in tears). I was told that I should never let the baby suck for more than 10 minutes, although it is now known that a baby may not get to the real food until he nears the end of the feed.

When I complained that my feverish baby had diarrhoea, a public health nurse in one far-flung corner of Ireland told me: "That would be typical of a breast-fed baby, to be more frequent." The same nurse looked at my baby in wonder and said: "He's doing very well, isn't he, considering he's breast-fed." A doctor I visited was surprised that I continued to breast-feed at four months and expressed concern for my welfare.

All of this advice and attitude completely contravene the National Breast-feeding Policy for Ireland's recommendations, which were published in 1994. That's not surprising, since hardly any of its recommendations have been implemented, including the one which states that healthcare personnel should have "the skills to give up-to-date advice (on breast-feeding) to mothers" and should do so in a "positive, supportive" way. It was also recommended that 30 per cent of mothers should be breast-feeding at four months by 2000, which will be a tall order considering the figure is now well below 10 per cent.

There are some believers working away furiously and the number of breast-feeders is edging upwards. But, in a State about to put itself through the wringer over the rights of the unborn, there has been no political support and this amounts to a public health scandal. Ireland's low level of breast-feeding has even come to international attention - the Committee on the Convention on the Rights of the Child expressed concern about it last year.

Some believe that our politicians' lack of interest in breast-feeding stems from the value to the State of formula production. By next year we will be producing 100,000 tonnes of the stuff a year, making us one of the world's biggest producers. In a way, that would be less sad than what is probably more likely: that it is not a priority because it is seen as a women's issue, and that there persists the belief that breasts should remain under cover.

Recently writers like Julie Burchill and the Sunday Tribune's Brenda Power have argued that breast-feeding is a tyranny which stops women getting up the corporate ladder. Well, the Scandinavian women seem to manage pretty well. In fact, it is in European societies where women's needs are most overlooked that breast-feeding suffers: Ireland's breast-feeding rate and its length of maternity leave are rattling around together at the bottom of the European barrel.

Some women will always choose not to breast-feed. You can't do it if you don't like it (but nature has ensured that it's hard not to like it once the difficult initial stages are over). Some women have simply too many demands on them to give all that time to one baby.

In Ireland, the choice exists only for highly-educated, highly-motivated women with superb support structures of their own. The rest are left by the healthcare system to scramble through the backwoods of blind ignorance.