Tapu Misa: Caution - the content of this column might offend

This is a delicate issue for many people, I know, so I feel bound to warn that this column might be highly offensive to those of a sensitive disposition.

In fact, if you're at all like the squeamish bloke who told a focus group he was so bothered by images of breastfeeding that he made his wife breastfeed their child behind a closed door - which he would no more dream of opening than if she were in the toilet - then it's definitely time to turn the page.

He was reacting to a poster of the actor Michael Hurst baring his womanly breast and breastfeeding a wee babe.

Evidently, the vision of a baby suckling at a man's breast was too much even for some breastfeeding fans to stomach, and even during World Breastfeeding Week. (Although a male friend and avowed fan of the female anatomy makes it clear his objection was on the grounds that Hurst's breast wasn't as aesthetically pleasing as the real thing.) Still, it did focus our attention on the state of the nation's mammaries, and specifically on the lactating, functional kind which appear to engender so much distaste and discomfort among some people.

It's odd, really, how worked up we can get at the merest glimpse of the feeding breast with infant attached when we're so accepting of images of the sexual breast.

A few months ago an Australian MP caused a ruckus in Canberra when she tried to breastfeed her baby in Parliament. Kirstie Marshall explained that she'd been running late for a vote and, as 2-week old Charlotte was due for her feed, she just whacked her on the breast. As you do.

Television cameras recorded the event for Australians, who were overwhelmingly unsupportive of Marshall for daring to expose her lactating mammaries.

"Sure, breastfeeding is natural, but so is going to the toilet," raged one woman. "You don't see people relieving themselves in Parliament."

I'd never thought of breastfeeding as being anything other than my inalienable right until I ventured out into the shopping malls and discovered that you were expected to breastfeed your babies in the toilet, or risk disapproving looks.

Throw in the difficulty - or in the case of many women, the sheer impossibility - of combining breastfeeding and working, and it's easy to see why so few women persist with breastfeeding, particularly Maori and Pacific women.

Most of us know that breast is best, and that it mostly produces healthier mothers and babies. But as many new mothers find, it's hard - and sometimes just impossible.

They're not helped much by campaigns that promote breastfeeding as sexy and end up making them feel inadequate.

Last year's breastfeeding poster of former Xena star Lucy Lawless breastfeeding her son as she perched seductively on the side of a chair, garbed in fishnet stockings and short skirt, was a case in point.

Apparently, the aim was to get away from the idea that breastfeeding is mumsy and old-fashioned - though I'm not sure why, since that's exactly what it is.

But had I been in the first throes of breastfeeding, struggling to stuff suddenly enormous areola into an impossibly tiny mouth, needing expert help even to get my newborn to latch onto the breast, and nursing nipples so sore and cracked that I dreaded every feed, I'd have found the glamorous image of Lawless as sex-goddess/all-nurturing mum more than a little hard to swallow.

And what exactly is sexy about slapping cold cabbage leaves on painfully engorged breasts, or leaking milk through your best outfit at the mere thought of your baby being hungry?

Perhaps they were aimed at those women my maternity nurse friend is always telling me about - the ones who blithely assume that their babies will slot effortlessly into their careers, who can't breastfeed either because they've had surgical augmentation or their husbands don't want them to ruin their perfect breasts, or who simply have to go out for their daily espresso while they put their babies into the nursery.

For most of us, though, the effort to breastfeed is often fraught with difficulty and guilt. I know a mother of twins who struggled for months to breastfeed her babies. She tried to emulate a picture she'd seen in a breastfeeding book of a mother feeding both twins at once, holding her babies as you would a rugby ball.

It took us a while to work out that her babies were much larger, and that it was in fact physically impossible to breastfeed them that way. That meant she had to do them one at a time, which left her little time to do anything else.

Months later, an exhausted, weepy mess, she finally conceded defeat and put her strapping babies on the bottle, suffering enormous guilt as she did so. It's only just starting to sink in that her babies are beautiful, bright and healthy despite her deficiencies.

There's no doubting the benefits of breastfeeding, but it shouldn't be pushed at all costs. Better a sane and functioning mother than one who feels inadequate and guilty.