The Incomplete Picture of Breastfeeding

How can we do better on social media?

How we talk about the logistics of breastfeeding among ourselves used to be something that was an “internal” conversation for lactation care providers.

Today, because of social media, the conversation is happening right in front of the people who want to breastfeed, and that transparency can lead to confusion and frustration for all of us.

Let’s look at it through the stories of 3 people: Sarah, the 28-year old mother of a 3-week old baby; Kaya, a 40-year old IBCLC; and Len, a 34-year old IBCLC and the parent of a 3-year old and a 9-month old, both of whom were fed expressed milk and formula after harrowing latch experiences early on.

Kaya and Len are connected professionally on social media, so they see each other’s posts and videos regularly. Sarah happens to follow both of them and sees their posts among her incredibly diverse feed of parenting input on social media.

Kaya and Len both recently posted about triple feeding, and Sarah has been paying attention because the lactation consultant she hired yesterday talked about it. She’s still so confused and overwhelmed that she hasn’t really figured out if she’s going to try it.

Kaya posted a Reel talking about the dangers of triple feeding for a long period of time, detailing how challenging it can be with all of the tasks and keeping track of things and just extra work in general.

Len posted a carousel of graphics that explained what triple feeding means, in what situations it might help, and how to get help if it’s a strategy you’re considering.

After seeing Len’s carousel, Kaya commented publicly right on the post that triple feeding is unrealistic for most new parents and that it can damage mental health for many.

Len replied (also publicly) that it’s not fair to demonize triple feeding when it’s a strategy that so many have used successfully.

Sarah saw all of this. Her mind is really attuned to this topic right now, and the algorithm is feeding her more of what she is paying attention to.

She’s more confused about triple feeding now than when she first heard about it from her lactation consultant.

What Sarah does not know is that she has been taking in information from two effective and well-intentioned lactation professionals.

She doesn’t know about the personal lactation journey of Kaya, who, despite difficult and poorly supported breastfeeding experiences was able to feel successful at breastfeeding. Kaya needed to find information about lactation in order to accomplish it, and it ignited a fascination with human lactation that led her to train and ultimately earn the IBCLC credential.

She also hasn’t heard Len’s backstory, a tale of pregnancy loss, discriminatory medical care, inadequate lactation care and a gap in culturally-appropriate community lactation support, all of which led to their desire to transform the environment for others.

Both Kaya and Len are dedicated, committed, educated professionals in the field. Their perspectives offer their potential clients a wealth of wisdom and clinical knowledge. Any client would benefit from the care they provide.

Public “debates” about clinical lactation topics are offering the general public an incomplete picture of the topics we are discussing.

Social media is not private.

Whether we are out there on social media debating things like triple feeding, tongue tie, methods of supplementation, the impact of breastfeeding on mental health, or anything else, we are confusing the public.

It’s like letting strangers see you argue with the person you’ve been married to for 15 years and make a decision or judgment based on that one interaction.

These are nuanced clinical conversations that are happening without the nuance.

The general public does not know what they don’t know, and sometimes it feels like we forget that.

It’s not easy. Take the example of how our understanding of the composition of human milk is expanding, and we’ve learned that milk produced during the nighttime hours has more melatonin.

This gets explained as “Night Milk is different from Day Milk” and then warped into the question “Should I avoid feeding my baby milk I pumped during the day when I’m trying to get them to sleep in the middle of the night?”

When someone asks us about this, we gently, kindly talk to them about how ALL milk is ideally suited for their baby, and that though there are going to be differences like this that we can see in a lab environment, it doesn’t mean as much in the larger picture as it seems. In other words, they certainly don’t have to change everything about their routine to meet this new information, especially if it makes everything more difficult OR leaves them with not enough pumped milk for their baby at certain times.

Those are the nuances that we are here to explain.

This is not to say we should never talk about these things to parents - of course we should! Of course there are many parents who will, like us, be fascinated to learn more about how human lactation works, and there will be many for whom the fact that this is a tiny part of the overall picture of human milk is not lost.

The problem is that social media does not permit nuance. Social media is meant to be consumed quickly

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Social media is consumed in brief soundbites that are repeated frequently thanks to the algorithm, and when we post incomplete explanations of things having to do with breastfeeding or lactation, we are not meeting our obligation to inform the public about breastfeeding.

We have a responsibility to help the general public see and comprehend the bigger picture of how breastfeeding and lactation fit into human development.

It’s within our training and expertise to do so, and it’s part of our scope of practice.

So which social media post about triple feeding is “right” or “better?”

There’s truth in both of them. Seeing the strategy defined, a list of times when it could help, how to get assistance with it from someone qualified to do so, as well as the reality that triple feeding is challenging for most and not sustainable for some, and some have found that it was not supportive of their mental health - these are all true.

Neither post is actually wrong, but both are incomplete snapshots.

The general public needs to be exposed to ALL of the information, and while that may seem radical, it really is what would need to happen in order to change the culture surrounding modern parenting.

I offer this possibility: are we trying to explain things that don’t really need to be explained on social media? If your first reaction to what I’m saying in this article is that “well, you’d have to have 20 slides in a carousel to explain all that!” - well, maybe we are not using social media properly.

If our objective is to inform expectant and new parents and the general public about breastfeeding, why are we so focused on the complexity? What we really need them to know is that breastfeeding is important and that help is available.

Lots of things about lactation can get very complicated. Are we actually helping people by focusing so much on the complexity?

Another truth: to shift the culture, we would need to collectively accept a lot of “Both can be true” statements.

Exclusive breastfeeding can be very hard, and exclusive breastfeeding is achievable.

Feeding your baby directly from your body can feel wonderful, and feeding your baby directly from your body can feel weird or painful or draining.

Exclusive pumping can be complicated, and exclusive pumping can be simple and straightforward.

Working outside the home while maintaining breastfeeding and milk production can be empowering, and it can be unreasonably difficult.

We’d need to look much more critically at the whole of the public conversation about breastfeeding.

That would mean fewer posts about lactation problems that are relatively rare, and more posts about the positive aspects of the experience of breastfeeding.

It would require fewer posts about contrived controversy (like fake “mommy wars” and “formula vs breastfeeding” and more posts about what the evidence actually says.

We would have to consistently re-assess what we are seeing, look for the gaps in information and education, and trust that everyone in the field was working toward the same goal: a more informed general public.

That wouldn’t feed the algorithm, though, and as a lactation care provider, it wouldn’t help you get your posts in front of more people. It wouldn’t get you clients because you couldn’t stand out, and it wouldn’t be interesting enough in the midst of all of the rest of the online noise.

The current conversation about breastfeeding is not working, and something needs to change.

Here’s YOUR Call to Action regarding this:

If you are on social media talking about breastfeeding and human lactation, take a deep dive into your own narrative. What message(s) are coming across? If you can’t see it yourself, ask someone else to look at it for you and with you.

What could a viewer learn about breastfeeding from you?

What message might they take away?

How hard would it be for them to be able to see and understand that breastfeeding is important and that help is available?

Would it be possible for you to create a balance of information about breastfeeding that would serve the public better

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While I fully understand that the purpose of you being on social media as a lactation care provider is almost certainly to attract potential clients, I implore you to think deeply about your responsibilities as an IBCLC, trained lactation care provider, or other healthcare provider.

Our first priority and duty is to inform the public about the importance of breastfeeding. How does your overall narrative serve that duty?

*If you are not personally actively posting on social media about breastfeeding but you are looking at what is out there, I invite you to spend a little time looking at a few accounts and thinking about their overall message. Perhaps this could be your local public health department, a local lactation colleague, or someone whose account you have followed for a long time. Click on their profile to look at all of their posts in one place. What does that “grid” look like?

If you’d like to scrutinize me and my social media, here’s some advice: I am on Instagram as @IBCLCinCA. However, my audience for that account is not potential clients. It’s you. If you want to see an account I run that IS aimed at parents and the general public, check out @BabyCafeBakersfield. I’d love to know what you think about the tone and message there because I am always interesting in making it better!