For the last couple years it has been my joy to write about my life experiences and my parenting journey and to share those writings here. I am by nature a right fighter, so I haven’t shied away from expressing what may even be controversial opinions on topics that pertain to parenting. I have written about why as a fairly crunchy/granola mama I feel vaccinations are important. I have written about our decision to send our child to public school and some of the concerns I have from my previous experience homeschooling. I have written about our open adoption experiences, my c-section, my concerns with the current international adoption climate, the struggles and beauty of transracial adoption, and I’ve written about why foster parents should be fairly compensated. While some of these conversations have resulted in a spirited debate, by and large they have been civil and respectful. But there is one topic I have written about that gets me a steady stream of. . . I don’t even know what to call it. “Hate mail” seems like too loaded of a term, but I’m not sure how else to phrase it. People write to tell me I’m heartless, I’m an idiot, and (bafflingly enough) a racist. What topic is this, you ask?
Breastfeeding.
I’m not joking.
I’m not sure how it happens, but a post of mine regularly gets passed around a group of people who “hate-read” it and then leave comments. I had to make a decision about how to handle those comments because generally I will post everything without much moderating. I decided that if someone is talking to me in a way that if we were talking face to face I would end the conversation, then I’m not posting that comment.
So that’s the context for why I have pretty strong feelings about some elements of the breastfeeding community. I have not breastfed a child in nearly two years, nor have I written about breastfeeding in a year or more, but once a week somebody writes to me to tell me I’ve got it all wrong. And they’re generally not too gentle about it.
Because I have just started deleting the rude comments that come (initially I had tried to respond via email to the commenters to have an honest discussion, but it turns out most of them entered fake email addresses), I would like to give a response here. I want to admit up front that I’m a little cranky about all this, especially with the impending birth of my second child. I am fully intending to breastfeed, but if I get all this heat for the mere suggestion that women should be able to choose what works for them and their family, what will happen if my plan isn’t what ends up being best in this situation? So let me get a few things off my chest (sorry for the bad pun. Sometimes I can’t help myself.)
*I have wonderful friends and readers who are passionately pro breastfeeding. This is not necessarily directed at you. If you have never left a comment calling me the “b” word, then maybe don’t take this too personally.*
Shaming loving mothers for how they feed their baby is ridiculous. As a foster parent I see the impact of REAL abuse, REAL neglect, ACTUAL bad parenting decisions. If you are responsive to your child’s need for nutrition, don’t beat yourself up about where that nutrition comes from. When someone tries to tell me formula is poison or not breastfeeding is some form of neglect based in selfishness, they lose a lot of credibility with me. There is real neglect in the world and people who do intentionally cause physical harm to their children. Let’s not lose perspective by equating bottle-feeding with abuse, even if it’s just through our subtle attitudes and implications.
What worked for you is not a universal solution. It’s great that breastfeeding was easy for you. It’s lovely that even though the first couple weeks were tough, you worked through it and then it was so natural and lovely. I’m glad that the herbal tea you tried worked wonders and you went from not producing enough to overproducing. But that doesn’t mean your solution will work for every mom in every situation. You can’t use your personal experience to invalidate the struggles of other people. I don’t have a problem with people offering potential solutions, but not when the implication is that if everybody just did what you did, things would magically be fixed. That’s not reality.
If what you’re advocating is a gentle parenting method, why are you being such an aggressive jerk about it? This is the part that boggles my mind. Why the name calling? Why the shaming? You want to talk about bonding and love and nurturing and inspire moms to make the same choice you did, but you do it by demeaning them? That doesn’t add up to me. If you want to convince other women that breastfeeding is the way to go, please do it with kindness. Make women want to join your club because you show so much grace, you’re so gentle, you express understanding for the difficulties they’re going through.
Your opinion of your baby’s temperament/good health/intellect may have less to do with your boobs than you think. People have a lot of anecdotal evidence about how breastfeeding has created this amazing bond with their child or has made them super smart or they never get sick or whatever. The studies I am most interested in have to do with families like mine— families where some kids have been breastfed and some kids have been bottle-fed. It’s in that context that it’s easier to see how much of an impact breastfeeding has or doesn’t have. My five kids have five different sets of birthparents, five different ethnicities, five different feeding histories (some bottle-fed entirely, some breasted entirely, some breastfed and then bottle-fed) and they are very different people. BUT they are all very bonded to me, they are happy kids and they are rarely sick. I get the chance to see that when a virus comes through our family, it doesn’t skip over the breastfed kids. They have different intellectual capabilities, but I know their genes and prenatal environment play a major role in that aspect of their lives. I’m not saying breastfeeding doesn’t have an impact, I’m just saying that few parents are going to be genuinely unbiased judges of their own children and we all want to believe the kind of sacrifices involved in breastfeeding must have a big payoff.
When you are talking to an adoptive parent “attachment” and “bonding” don’t mean what you think they mean. This is one of the major turn-offs to me of some of the literature on breastfeeding. I resent the implication that by not breastfeeding a child, that will have a negative impact on bonding. I am beautifully bonded to a child who was deathly ill as an infant, taken from his native country and culture at ten months-old, thrown into a home with strangers, and bottle-fed. Bonding and attachment are so much more than breastfeeding or bottle-feeding. If bottle-feeding your biological child means your ability to bond is compromised, what hope do those of us have who can’t breastfeed our adopted child or adopt a child after that age has long since passed? Because you FEEL bonded to the child you breastfed doesn’t mean the bonding process is less real or special or intense for those who didn’t breastfeed.
The emotional health of a mother matters a great deal. I feel this way when it comes to sleep strategies, too. And discipline for that matter. A mom who is exhausted or guilt ridden or physically in pain is going to have a hard time enjoying her baby, being responsive to their needs, and doing it in love. It isn’t right to imply the nutritional value of milk should be the defining factor in every woman’s decision. If the decision is between a woman spending 40 minutes nursing in great pain, curling her toes, flinching, crying or that woman deciding to bottle-feed and is then able to enjoy that 40 minutes snuggling with her baby and singing to him, what is the better option? What is really going to facilitate bonding? We can’t always put ourselves in the shoes of the women making these tough decisions and much grace needs to be given.
I am an advocate for breastfeeding. I think it is beautiful and good. And less expensive! I also know that what kept me going when things were hard was the validation I got from other mothers (and my pediatrician and my lactation consultant) that this was TOUGH STUFF. When I felt like I had the freedom to quit if I needed to, that’s when I was able to make a decision that felt healthy to me. It wasn’t about feeling pressured or guilted or shamed, but about doing what I thought was best even though it was hard. I want to give other mothers the ability to make the best choice for their child and their family from that place of freedom.
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