NEW YORK—After a breastfeeding mother was given a ticket by the transit police for public nudity, local mothers got organized in 2004. Now, in their fourth year breastfeeding advocates held their annual Breastfeeding Subway Caravan on Friday. The aim was to highlight the importance of breastfeeding and reinforce women’s right to breastfeed wherever they have a right to be. The convoy of about 25 breastfeeding mothers, advocates and supporters began at the New YorkPresbyterian Hospital on 168th Street. They boarded a busy A Train and proceeded to nurse their babies and toddlers to raise awareness about the issue.
“They get threatened by everyone. They have been thrown out of malls…a man called us, very upset. He could not believe that women were aloud to breastfeed in his country club,” said organizer Kathleen Carpenter, Deputy Director of the New York Breastfeeding Promotion Leadership Committee.
Breast-fed infants have lower rates of hospital admissions, ear infections, diarrhea, rashes, allergies, and other medical problems than bottle-fed babies, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“There are 4,000 species of mammals, and they all make a different milk. Human milk is made for human infants and it meets all their specific nutrient needs,” said Dr. Ruth Lawrence, M.D., professor of pediatrics and obstetrics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in Rochester, N.Y., and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The Friday event ended with a rally in Brooklyn, where those on the subway joined around 150 others to celebrate the beginning of World Breastfeeding Week from Aug. 1 – 7.
One New York mother, Michelle Grate, was most bothered by the pressure and comments she got from her own relatives.
“What’s been bothering me are remarks from people who are close or family who say, ‘are you going to stop!? You have to stop now, she’s one,’” said Grate. Another time a man friend who took the train with Grate was shocked when she started nursing her daughter on the train after her daughter started getting upset and hungry. “He said, you’re gonna do that here!?”
Breastfeeding began a sharp decline in America in the 1950’s, reaching an all time low in the early 70’s. After that, women’s groups started campaigning to bring back the dying tradition. According to the Center for Disease Control’s 2004 Survey, 70 percent of mothers breastfeed after discharge from the hospital, but that number drops dramatically at six months of infant life to 14.4 percent for white mothers, 15.7 percent for Hispanic mothers, and 8.6 percent for African American mothers.
Liz Brooks, public health nutritionists for the New York Department of Health, said breastfeeding is ‘the golden standard’ of infant feeding. She feels the main reason why breastfeeding declined and statistic numbers are so low in the country is a combination of things.
“One of the reasons why it has declined is that people are kind of conservative, especially in this country, and there’s a lot of people who just aren’t educated on it, who don’t really understand the benefits. They might have a family member who tries to dissuade them from breastfeeding,” Brooks said.
Breastfeeding Law
This year, breastfeeding advocates are focused on the passage of State Senator Liz Krueger’s Breastfeeding Bill of Rights (S1674-D). The legislation solidifies mothers’ right to public nursing and curtails formula companies from injecting their products into hospitals.
“Senator Hannon has kept the Breastfeeding Bill of Rights bottled up in committee for too long,” said Senator Krueger. “The bill was passed in the Assembly for the last two years, this year unanimously. New York’s families cannot afford to have this bill languish in the State Senate for another year.” Senator Hannon is a Long Island Senator and Chair of the Health Committee.
The new bill bans commercial interests, namely formula providers, from pressuring new mothers while in maternal facilities without an express request from the new mother. They believe it is mostly a matter of educating mothers and the general public to understand the importance and health benefits breastfeeding plays in the first stages of a baby’s life.
