Breastfeeding a risk in bear country?
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Given the numerous times I’ve been in bear country and kept in mind all the usual precautions, I confess that had I been asked, while standing over fresh bear tracks, if a woman should worry about lactating while hiking that trail, I would not have had a ready answer.
A lactating woman, however, while camping or on the trail, might have to grapple with one piece of equipment you don’t usually see in the gear section of an outdoors magazine: a breast pump. She will get the scent of milk on her hands, clothes, possibly the ground, and possibly inside her backpack. The odor of food is always a risk for bears, like that very healthy grizzly, above.
The excellent “Ask a Bear” feature at the Backpacker Blogs tackles this very issue today, as “Bear” answers a question from a backpacker whose wife is breastfeeding their three-month-old child. The main issue is safety, and how to dispose of unneeded breast milk while in the woods:
As long as you dispose of the milk properly [while camping or on the trail], your wife should be good to go on that backpacking trip. There’s no evidence to suggest that lactating females would attract bears any more than those who aren’t. If it’s inside your body, a bear probably can’t smell it; any food or external odors left on your skin or clothes are more likely to attract bears.
As for disposal: You can treat it much the way you would treat dishwater. Scatter it broadly at least 200 feet away from water sources, and well away from your camp (strain it, if need be). This way, impact should be minimal. If you want to truly reduce your impact to zero, however, you should probably wait to go backpacking until your wife stops lactating. It’ll certainly cut down on her discomfort.
That all makes sense to me. I might wonder about any odor of milk getting on a woman’s clothing. Surely, this happens, even while just hiking or climbing.
The amount of any milk a woman might get on her, however, is probably negligible. Bears do have super-strong noses. Human hikers, however, probably give off so many odors of food — on their hands, in their breath, or in stains on their clothes or gear — that small spots of milk on a new mother’s clothes end up meaning nothing.
Large food caches, quantities of cooked food, and left-overs are what you worry about, as far as I’ve learned. The bears know where the most food is. If a bear smelled food stains on a person, or smelled the very strong odors of a food cache or a pile of scraps, which way do you think that animal will turn? Bears, black and grizzly, are extremely smart omnivores and scavengers, and they’re inclined to expend the least energy for the biggest payoff. So, attack a human who smells like her own milk (and risk human counter-attack), or sneak in at night, rip open a cooler, and grab and go?
Grizzlies and black bears have on very rare occasions tried to snatch campers out of tents. Did this have to do with opportunistic predation on a smaller, obviously edible animal, or did a single human-generated scent trigger such an attack? Who knows? No level of research will ever figure this out.
Should this couple who wrote to “Ask a Bear” wait to go backpacking until the wife stops lactating? No, not for that specific reason, because I can’t perceive anything for the couple to seriously worry about in terms of the wife herself attracting bears. “It’s fine, honey,” says the husband. “You go first — I smell worse and should stay downwind of you.”
I am unaware of lactation-related data derived from bear attacks on women campers or hikers, although it might possibly exist. Bear attacks on women, however, are so rare that I don’t think any information about lactation of victims would be statistically relevant; we’d need at least 500 women a year, of all walks of life, to suffer natural predatory attacks from black and grizzly bears (polar bears, too?) to figure out a sliver of data relevant to lactation, and the massive horrors of such a situation are tempered by the fact that this would also be impossible.
Outdoors people have well learned those behaviors that can reduce bad encounters in bear country, and also learned about those stupid things that we sometimes do to put ourselves at risk. Finding out the level of possible risks posed by specific details about ourselves and bodies — for instance, do smelly feet attract bears? — isn’t really possible.
Stay as clean as possible? Yes. Keep a bag of beef jerky in your tent at night for nocturnal snaking? No.
Take your new-mother wife backpacking? Yes, go — you’ll look back on it as a great time.
via Backpacker Blogs – Ask A Bear: Breastfeeding Around Bears?.
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Any mother backpacking is probably not going to worry about packing a breastpump. It is amazing how babies are the most effective milk pumps ever designed. When baby is nursing, he or she stops when they are full, negating the need to “dispose of unneeded breastmilk.”
For those who insist on pumping and using a bottle to feed their babies, breastmilk is not contaminated and it does not need to be strained. It is liquid… there are no solids that need to be removed. It would not contaminate waterways. If it is being disposed of in the woods, I would think anywhere far enough from camp would be sufficient to prevent unwanted animals from prowling around.
Toni — Thanks for the comment. I didn’t understand that part in the Backpacker blog about “straining” it, but that’s what the Bear said. The question the husband posed, in the blog, was obviously worth asking, but the answers are common-sense answers. Or, rather, camping common sense.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’ve been wondering this myself as summer is approaching and I am breastfeeding my new one. I think Toni missed in the original post that the couple planned on leaving the baby at home, thus the need for the pump. I also plan on leaving my lil one at home. I think I am more concerned about diapers than anything. If not just for the smell, but the added weight coming out! I’ve decided that by wearing pads in my bra I can contain leaking milk from getting on my clothes, and dispose of the pads as I would any other solid waste or pack them out in sealed bags.
Backpackingirl — Indeed, “leave no trace” camping would be complicated a bit by having to pack out the used diapers. Who gets to tote the Scent-Lok bag?
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] http://trueslant.com/scottbowen/2010/03/17/breastfeeding-a-risk-in-bear-country/ [...]
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Hi, so what about actually breastfeeding in bear country? I’m planning to do some camping with my little one and wonder whether I have to stop breastfeeding him in order to be safe. Or could I safely breastfeed him in the tent at night? There would likely be spilled milk. What do you think?