Mother Shock by Andrea J. Buchanan

Author:Andrea J. Buchanan [ANDREA J. BUCHANAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2012-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

Confessions of a Bottle Feeder

Here’s how pro-breast-feeding I was: when my daughter was born, I hadn’t even purchased a bottle, I hadn’t even purchased a pump. I would be at home, I would not need to be pumping, that’s the kind of breast-feeding mom I was going to be. Sure, I had taken a breast-feeding class and talked about my concerns that it might not work, that there might be complications, but I hadn’t seriously thought anything would go wrong.

Here’s the reality: fair-skinned and flat-nippled, with a baby who would neither latch nor suck (not that she could find anything to latch onto), my breasts so sensitive after delivery that the breast shells I used tore off my skin when I removed them, the pump a cross between a vacuum cleaner and an angry porcupine, the pain of attempting to pump worse than actually giving birth. And here’s how it ended: with the lactation consultant staring me straight in the eye and telling me, “Feed your baby. Formula is not the end of the world.”

I remember being four months pregnant and visiting with a friend who had a small baby. My friend told me a cautionary tale, the moral of which was: in case the breastfeeding doesn’t work out, don’t worry, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. She told me her story, how she tried for a month, stuck it out despite the pain and her baby’s screaming and weight loss. The point of it was that her pediatrician finally told her the objective was a healthy, happy family unit, not a dehydrated baby and a resentful, guilty mom. But I tuned it out. I know I smiled and nodded my head appropriately, but I remember thinking to myself, “That’s nice, but it’s going to work for me.” We were on opposite sides of that gulf between the newly pregnant and the newly delivered, and my side was the one characterized by blissful ignorance. I saw the issue the way it was presented to me in everything I read about breast-feeding versus formula feeding: it was black and white, good mom or bad mom. But being unable to breast-feed my baby led me into a world of gray.

Successful breast-feeders might find fault with my lactation consultant, they might say she let me down by encouraging me to go with formula when it became clear that breast-feeding was not working for us. Militant breast-feeders might say it was a matter of will, a matter of morality: I could have done it and I should have done it, and the fact that I ended my suffering prematurely is an indication of my maternal deficiencies. I don’t mind that avid breast-feeders have an opinion about formula, but I do mind that they cast judgment on women like me, women who have chosen formula, without experiencing the debate from my perspective.

Wielding a bottle these days is tantamount to hitting your kid in the supermarket. I have had women in the park confront me

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