"Sorry — You Can’t Guilt Trip Me About Bottle Feeding My Kids" (Jezebel)

[REP]

Sorry — You Can’t Guilt Trip Me About Bottle Feeding My Kids

Sarah Fister Gale

Bottle-feeding my babies was one of the best parenting decisions I ever made. And while this simple statement will likely enrage men and women across America, I won't be made to feel guilty about it.
Fourteen years ago, when I was pregnant with my oldest child I was fairly certain I did not want to breastfeed. I didn't have a medical problem that prevented lactation, and I wasn't planning to return to an office. It just wasn't right for our family. I didn't like the idea of whipping out my breasts in public, or attaching a milking machine to my nipples, or being the only living source of food on the planet for my child.

I did however like the idea that my husband would be able to participate in the most intimate act of feeding our son from the day he was born. I liked that I might be able to sleep for more than four hours at a stretch. I liked knowing exactly how much my child was eating, down to the very last ounce. And (I admit it) after nine long months of total sobriety, I liked the idea of drinking the occasional glass of wine without worrying that I was getting my newborn hooked on cheap chardonnay.

Despite my confidence in this decision, a caterwauling mob of concerned friends and lactation zealots convinced me that I absolutely had to at least try to breastfeed.

"Oh no," frowned one close friend. "If you don't breastfeed, your child will lose IQ points."

"The baby won't bond with you unless you breastfeed," tsked another.

"He will almost certainly die of typhus, or swine flu, or some dastardly childhood disease that breast milk can absolutely prevent," warned the lactation consultant. "Plus formula is made from nicotine and tequila and mashed up dung beetles."

rest of the essay

What's really astounding is the venom in the comments directed at this woman for the choices she made in raising her children.

[ejpoeta]

1. good for her. i breastfed 2 of 3 kids...

and did try to breastfeed my oldest too but didn't do very good and dried up. The thing is, no one I knew was breastfeeding. IT was kind of the opposite feeling. I felt like the odd one out. I have always hated judgemental thinking about breastfeeding. Don't like people being pushy about it either. It's a hard painful thing and it should be a conscious decision to do it. Not be yet another thing women need to feel guilty about. Like we don't have enough crap already...

[pnwmom]

3. So you were feeling pressure not to breastfeed, because breastfeeding would make you be

the "odd one out."

It's too bad women put these pressures on each other.

[ejpoeta]

4. i think it was more me. When I had my middle child I would go

off in another room and feed her and always felt isolated. No one told me not too do it. I just felt odd about it. But for me it was cheaper.... and I got WIC too.

[pnwmom]

7. I think that's why some women become champions of breastfeeding.

It IS cheaper, and contains antibodies and other ingredients that formula companies can't make, and yet some women feel odd about doing it.

[pnwmom]

2. Why should you be surprised at the "venom" in the comments, when she started it all

with the venom in hers?

"whipping out my breasts in public"
"attaching my nipples to a milk machine"
"caterwauling mob"
"lactation zealouts"

She was trying to pick a fight and she got one.

My sister chose to bottle feed and I breastfed my children. Neither of us argued about it or insulted each other with comments like this.

[Warpy]

5. She does have a point

Women in the 40s through the early 60s were pressured into bottle feeding as the more "scientific" and less "animal" way to feed their infants. My generation came along in the late 60s and early 70s after watching our mothers having to fuss with bottles and nipples and heaters and sterilizers and said to hell with it and tried to breastfeed. Now the pressure is on to breastfeed and it's unfair. It's up to the woman whose body is involved. Some can, some can't and it's nobody's business but theirs which kind of nipple the kid has in its mouth.

[pnwmom]

6. She might, but she framed it in an insulting manner. n/t

[Warpy]

8. I'm sure the provocation was extreme

and ten people too many tried to shame her for bottle feeding one of her kids.

If there's one phrase every girl child needs to hear and have ingrained and feel empowered enough to use it's, "This is none of your business. Back off."

[pnwmom]

9. In this thread there's another woman who felt like she was the "odd one out"

because she DID breastfeed.

The pressure works both ways. How many times have I seen DUers complain about other women nursing in public? Many times, and that's disturbing.

Who started the feeding wars? The formula companies, when they started mass-marketing formula, and making false medical claims about the "scientific" benefits of formula over breast milk. They also took advantage of the fact that many women, in puritanical America, felt shy about nursing in public.

The La Leche League and other organizations sprang up to help support women who wanted to breastfeed, despite all the social and "scientific" pressures not to.

[REP]

10. She's allowed to own those feelings after the treatment she received

The first two quotes are how she feels about actions with her own body. I don't think I have the right to tell another woman how she should feel about anything, especially what she does with her own body.

And after the treatment she received after the birth of her son? Yeah, I get where she's coming from.

[pnwmom]

11. And the women who made comments to her are allowed to make them after the treatment

nursing mothers have received ever since the formula manufacturers started pushing their "scientific" feeding program and people began to shame women who wanted to nurse in public.

It isn't the nursing mothers who started this argument -- it was the formula manufacturers and their marketers, who worked to convince mothers that if they couldn't measure how many ounces their babies were receiving, they could be malnourishing them; and if the babies wanted to nurse more than every 3 or 4 hours, then the mother wasn't producing enough. If some mothers got defensive, who could blame them?

[REP]

12. Okay then. I think they're batshit for going all out on her. I mean, who gives a flying fuck?

I don't. Bottle feed, breast feed - ain't my kid, ain't my business.

[pnwmom]

13. As I said, my sister bottle-fed and I breastfed, and neither of us insulted the other one

or argued about our choices. But this woman was picking a fight so I'm not surprised she got one.

[REP]

15. Good to hear you didn't get static!

One of my dearest friends is due any moment now, and I've been letting her know that whatever she ends up doing she's doing right and has my full support.

[kdmorris]

16. In late 80's/early 90's, I chose to breastfeed all three of my daughters

and I got all kinds of shit for it (how can you turn yourself into a cow like that???, etc). I breastfed them for 6 months (Daughter #1), 1 year (Daughter #2) and 18 months (Daughter #3)....

Everyone always feels like they have the right to tell other people how to parent and how they should be doing things. If you are a SAHM, people act like you are going to be fat and stupid and dull and never be able to talk to other adults. If you are a WOTHM, people act like you are abandoning your child.

If you breastfeed, you are turning yourself into a "cow", if you don't, you don't care about your baby. If you choose to have the baby with no drugs, you are a masochist. If you choose to give birth with drugs, you don't care about your baby.

If everyone would butt the fuck out of everyone else's lives, they would realize that no one is a bad mother for doing these things. Except in cases of abuse/neglect, the choices you make about your body and the children that come from that body (or even adopted ones) are your choices to make, without judgement from a bunch of other people who don't agree with you. "Liberation" was supposed to be about having choices about having children, not having children, staying home, not staying home, how they are birthed, how they are fed without having the other half look down on you because you just "aren't good enough".

[REP]

17. What you said!

It also seems to me that some of the judging doesn't start organically within the "woman" sphere - Susan Faludi identified these sources much better and more eloquently than I'm able to in her book "Backlash." I do agree with her observation that every time women make any movement forward, there always seems to be something that nags at our basic insecurities turned into an issue we tear each other apart over.

Another thing I've noticed: at those "nurse-ins" at Targets, Starbucks, etc - there never seems to be any attention given to whether the workers at those places have lactation breaks, etc. I'm all for non-stigmatized nursing, but the concern of these protests seems to stop at one class.

[LeftyMom]

18. She sounds like an asshole.

I feel bad for her kids. Not because of what they were or weren't fed, but because this is their role model. Yikes.

[REP]

19. Yeah, I used to hear that about my mother