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Washington Babies
Guilt over not breastfeeding
Formula feeding moms...how much guilt do you feel over not breastfeeding? My girls are healthy and wonderful, but sometimes the whole Breast is Best campaign gets to me. When I hear all about how much some women struggle to breastfeed but still succeed, I feel like if I were a better mom I would have tried harder. When I see messages over and over again about how formula is unnatural and virtually the equivelant to poison, it is hard not to feel like a second class parent. This is not a comment from anything I've ever seen here. It is a comment on messages I've gotten from many of my non-bump friends. When I'm among certain crowds, I feel like I have gotten the side-eye for pulling out a bottle.
I'm totally supportive of breastfeeding. Breastfeed as long as you like. Breastfeed wherever you like. Certainly there should be more resources for breastfeeding. I just wish there were a way for this message to be out there without me feeling badly (and I don't even have a kid on formula any more!). But perhaps I am hyper-sensitive and that is simply not possible.
What pushed me over the edge this weekend was a person (who I like and respect) who complained that formula being the norm for feeding babies is so terribly sad because it is like some utopian sci fi movie. No matter how meritous her points, it is difficult to get over the negative connotation that conveys for me and my children.
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Re: Guilt over not breastfeeding
This exactly! There is nothing wrong with FFing your babies. I don't give two you-know-whats if you EBF, FF, or BF and FF, as long as you feed your baby. That is the only thing that should matter. And formula is not poison! Those comments are ludicrous. You have two beautiful, healthy, strong little girls. That is the only things that should matter.
The only Easter Bunny I can get behind.
Maxwell Joseph 4/09 Lucy Violet 10/12
Ahhh... don't beat yourself up for this! You're a good Mom and know what is best for your family.
I think most of the formula vs. breastmilk comments people make are directed at people who don't even consider breastfeeding. They don't realize that everyone has different situations and quite honestly it doesn't seem like many people I know would try to do something that was not in the best interest of their child. I BF Ella for 9 months and when I started using formula definitely felt like when we were out and about the general public was judging me for giving her formula a couple times. I think a lot of people don't think about the various reason why someone might formula feed unless they have been in the situation themselves.
Your girls may have been formula fed, but they are healthy happy kids and they are luckier than the majority of kids because they get to be with their Dad all day!
I also still feel guilt about not being able to EBF. We tried everything under the sun to get my milk supply to increase and it just never did enough. I partially BF for 5 months and felt SO guilty when we switched completely to FF - I think mostly due to the stigma placed on FF these days.
Like PP you are an awesome mama with 2 healthy little girls - and you did what was best for YOUR family. People need to stop judging for EBF/FF etc... ultimately we all have to do what works best and is in the best interest of our families/children!
I feel your pain! I struggled with this for quite a while after Lucy was born, and it was a big part of my PPD.
My MIL and FIL were the main voices of complaint when it came to formula, which really pissed me off. I tried so.d@mn.hard to BF, but Lucy could never get latched on correctly (short tongue & recessed chin) and my milk supply was never enough for her. Even when I pumped I never had enough milk. I did Fenugreek, I did Reglan, I pumped, I saw the Lactation Consultant many times. I did everything I possible could to try and BF. So, when people say that formula is a matter of convenience I beg to differ.
Here is what I figure: my options are a)BF and let my child starve because my body is not producing enough milk, b)feed my baby formula. No brainer! You feed your baby!
And, if anyone tries to tell me that formula feeding is not acceptable or wrong or for people who are lazy or whatever; I am more than willing to give them an earful. There is no reason to feel guilty about it! You feed your babies, you care for them and it does not make you any less of a mom (or those who BF more of a mother) to formula feed!
Ah thanks ladies
I will say that I think there are many ladies who tried harder than I did, so maybe that is part of my guilt. After days of Jillian screaming at my boob, I just gave up trying to nurse. Between pumping every three hours (and getting less than half of what she needed) and a newborn who was a poor sleeper and colicky, I just gave it up after three weeks. With Hayden I put even less effort in. So maybe part of it is that I see how hard they tried and can't help but think they are better than me. But in the end the girls are happy and we went a route that did work well for our families.
Sometimes, I hate the internet though. I makes it way too easy to compare ourselves to other moms sometimes.
Jen - Mom to Jillian (10/2008) and Hayden (4/2010)
My Blog
Ah thanks ladies
I will say that I think there are many ladies who tried harder than I did, so maybe that is part of my guilt. After days of Jillian screaming at my boob, I just gave up trying to nurse. Between pumping every three hours (and getting less than half of what she needed) and a newborn who was a poor sleeper and colicky, I just gave it up after three weeks. With Hayden I put even less effort in. So maybe part of it is that I see how hard they tried and can't help but think they are better than me. But in the end the girls are happy and we went a route that did work well for our families.
Sometimes, I hate the internet though. It makes it way too easy to compare ourselves to other moms sometimes.
Jen - Mom to Jillian (10/2008) and Hayden (4/2010)
My Blog
Just wanted to empathize. I still feel guilt over not going med-free with Isaac's birth. I fully support the education around "natural" birth, and I tried, but I ended up giving in. I often think I could have tried harder.
The truth is he's fine, he's speeding ahead developmentally, and (as far as I know), the only last impact is the calcified lump on his skull from the vaccuum. And yet, every once in a while I get this rush of guilt.
I think it just comes down to wanting to do the "best" for our children, and feeling guilt when we can't. I have a feeling we have many more of those feelings ahead of us! It's funny, I always gave my mom a hard time about guilt-tripping me. Now that I'm a parent, I realized I did it to her first, and far worse!
I'm going to make an AWESOME big brother.
We also received a few comments from folks. DD was started BF-ing, but at four months decided she didn't want it anymore no matter what I did. We had been about half and half for a month before she decided she liked formula better as I was back at work and there really wasn't any way for me to pump at work (it always took me 45 minutes and I just couldn't justify that much time three times during the day). There wasn't anything I could do to get her to BF again and then my supply dried up.
She is happy and healthy and I don't care what others think. Although it is hard sometimes to respond to the comments, but it really isn't any of there business.
What they said. I too knew it was "best" and tried my damndest, but it just wasn't happening. I BF'd for 3 months and then there just wasn't enough. I wanted a natural childbirth too - and 2 weeks late, failed induction - you can only control so much. There was a Mom in our group who felt a LOT of pressure to EBF, and her daughter was under nourished and sickly. When she finally "threw in the towel" at around 5 months - her daughter flourished. SHE felt guilty for not making the change sooner. We women need to get over the guilt and support each other.
Side note - I just finished "BossyPants" and the section on breastfeeding was A-W-E-S-O-M-E. I ? TinaFey...
[START EXCERPT] "Invented in the mid-19th century as a last-ditch option for orphans and underweight babies, packaged infant formula has since been perfected to be a complete and reliable source of stress and shame for mothers. Anyone who reads a pregnancy book knows that breast milk provides nutrition, immunities and invaluable bonding time. The breast is best.
When I was pregnant for the first time I asked my mother for advice. "Don't even try it," she said. This is a generational difference. This is the same woman who told me to request "twilight sleep" during delivery. (Twilight sleep is the memory-erasing pain medication that doctors gave women in the 1950s whenever they had to take a baby out or put a body snatcher in.)
As a member of Generation X, I was more informed, more empowered, and I knew that when it came to breast-feeding I had an obligation to my baby to pretend to try.
There are a lot of different opinions as to how long one should breastfeed. The World Health Organisation says six months. The American Association of Paediatrics says one year is ideal. Mothering magazine suggests you nurse the child until just before his wedding rehearsal. I say you must find what works for you. For my little angel and me the magic number was about 72 hours.
We tried the football hold, the cross-cradle hold, and one I like to call the Bret Michaels, where you kind of lie over the baby and stick your breast in its mouth to wake it up. [StellaZ: I almost peed myself at this point]. We didn't succeed, so that first night the nurses gave my little one some formula without asking. I tried to be appalled, but I was pretty tired. Once we got home, we tried again. I abandoned all vanity, as one must, and parked it shirtless on the couch. Here we experienced another generational difference.
Gen X wanted to succeed at this so she could tell people she did it, and little Gen Z wanted me to hand over that goddamn formula, and she was willing to scream until she got it.
One of my 500 nicknames for my daughter is Midge, which is short for Midget, because she was a very small baby. She was born a week early and a little underweight at 5lb 7oz. My obstetrician suggested the next day at her bedside visit that perhaps I hadn't rested enough during my pregnancy and that was why she was so small. "What a ***," I thought to myself in what was either a flash of postpartum hormones or an accurate assessment of my doctor's personality.
So we started supplementing Midge regularly with formula. She was small and I didn't want her to get any smaller while I mastered the ancient art of breastfeeding to prove how incredible and impressive I am. Of course, I still provided her with breast milk. You must, must, must provide them with breast milk. You owe it to your baby to get them that breast milk. Here's how it works.
If you choose to not love your baby enough to breastfeed, you can pump your milk using a breast pump. I chose to pump every two hours while watching episodes of the HBO series Entourage. Over the whir of the milking machine, I could almost hear my baby being lovingly cared for in the other room while Turtle yelled across an SUV, "Yo E, you ever a girl while she has her period?" I was able to do this for almost seven weeks before running out of Entourage episodes and sinking into a deep depression.
Shortly thereafter, we made the switch to an all-formula diet. If you've ever opened a can of infant formula mix, then you know it smells like someone soaked old vitamins in a bucket of wet leaves, then dried them in a hot car.
Also, formula is like $40 a can. They keep it locked up behind the counter with the batteries and meth ingredients. That's how bad people want this stuff!
However, the baby was thriving. I was no longer feeling trapped, spending 30 out of every 90 minutes attached to a Williams-Sonoma Tit Juicer. But I still had an overwhelming feeling of disappointment. I had failed at something that was supposed to be natural.
I was defensive and grouchy whenever the topic came up. At a party with a friend who was successfully nursing her little boy, I watched her husband produce a bottle of pumped breast milk that was the size of a Big Gulp. It was more milk than I had produced in my whole seven weeks ? I blame Entourage. As my friend's husband fed the baby, he said offhandedly, "This stuff is liquid gold. You know it actually makes them smarter?" "Let's set a date!" I screamed. "IQ test. Five years from today. My formula baby will crush your baby!" Thankfully, my mouth was so full of cake they could not understand me. [END]
Personally, I find this whole "BF babies are smarter" ridiculous too. There is NO WAY these studies can be done in a bubble. There are SO MANY outside factors to take into consideration. Breast is best - sure, absolutely, it's nature's way - and the majority of parents who really care have researched and know this - and are more likely to TRY - and parents who don't give a *** in general are more likely to NOT TRY. The parents who TRY and it doesn't work - they are going to go on and keep doing the things that are best for their child (ie teach, read, play, interact, love). The %'s just might be skewed a little. I despise "studies" - there is always a slant.
I always assumed I was breastfed as an infant and it was only a few weeks before Court was born that my mom told me I was a formula baby (not that this was a big secret, I just had never asked her before) Some claims against formula are the babies develop allergies, are not as smart as bf babies, tend to be overweight as adults, you can't bond as well with formula, etc. Today I hardly have any allergies (just the occasional seasonal one), while I would like to lose 10 lbs I am not overweight, I graduated college with honors, and I am really close with my mom. None of those claims were true for me.
Hello, my name is Stacey and I'm a formula survivor
OMG - the guilt is SO intense. I have cried so many, many tears over this whole issue and wondered if I were more self sacrificing if I could have pushed through it - if I were just a wimp and selfish for not wanting to be in pain or so limit my eating (both of my kids had/have allergies) or not wanting to be tied to a pump round the clock.
It has been a huge, huge issue for me.
And sometimes our family doesn't help or understand. I have a sister who looks down her nose because I went to the bottle (she's the same sister that send out an email to the ENTIRE EXTENDED family that her children would not accept gifts made of certain products, like plastic, unless they were puchases from specific manufacturers because the research was out there pointing out the health hazards. No joke.)
I have other folks, like my parents, who do not understand why I attempted pumping as long as I did, because they were raised on formula, as was I, and in their mind we all turned out well.
Feeding your child, however you do it, is such an emotional topic and I'm finding it doesn't end when they move from the bottle to solid food - and it won't for many, many years.
And that makes it OK how?
I just wanted to offer you a big, big hug. There is no way I could have continued to EBF if I worked, I have had had some supply issues that make me pretty much unable to get jack when I pump so FFing would have been absolutely necessary. I was a FF baby and I like to think I turned out all right- just as your girls are healthy, thriving and fantastic. You need to do what is best for your babies and it sounds like you made the choice that worked for your family. And what's just as important is you gave it a shot. Every drop of breast milk or colostrum contains valuable immunities, so just by BFing even once you gave your girls a great gift. Personally, I have a very hard time understanding moms who don't even want to try (BFing or pumping and bottle feeding, barring certain extenuating circumstances like being on medicine or whatever,) because like I said even a little milk offers some great benefits. But it is not the be all and end all of being a great mom, which you are, and there are so many reasons that people need to use some or all formula at some point.
As PP said there are probably a lot of times and situations that will cause us all to feel some degree of mommy guilt, and as hard as it can be we all (me included) just need to try to remember that in the big picture, these are nothing to worry so much over. I think we are all raising some pretty fantastic kids who are loved beyond measure and will grow into amazing adults. And in the end, that's all that really matters.
I completely understand where you are coming from! My whole pregnancy I thought I would BF A, I never planned on FF. Then after he was born we tried to BF and he struggled with latching. We met with the LC before leaving the hospital and she said everything seemed to be going ok. Once we got home everything went down hill! A would get so worked up and impatient that he could never latch properly which left me cracked, bleeding and in pain. We spent the first 2 days at home with me crying every time I would feed him. I would have DH sit with me and rub my back because I was so upset. I finally broke down and called the LC and when they called back I couldn't even talk I was crying so hard trying to explain what was going on. She told me not to worry and to go to formula for a couple days and then to make an appt to come in. We saw the LC 3 times before we finally agreed that A could not latch properly and that I was not producing enough to do 100% BF so we would have to supplement with formula. I started pumping full time but the most I ever got was 5oz. We tried that and it worked for a while but I was exhausted and then A started to refuse the BM bottles but would suck down formula. We finally decided to go to FF full time.
I wanted to BF so bad but it didn't work for us. To the people who judge me, I say they weren't there the entire time we tried or the hours I spent pumping or the times I was in tears because I felt like I failed. No one can really judge a person decisions because they don't know the story behind it. If I could have BF I would. A is growing like a champ and is developing wonderfully! Am I sad that I couldn't BF? A little yes. But do I feel like I missed out on bonding with him by giving him formula? Not for a minute! I made our feeding time still a bonding experience and the nice thing was DH also got to experience it.
You are a great Mom who made decisions based on your family's needs. Just because you didn't BF doesn't mean you love your children less or don't want the best for them.
THIS! I am a great PG person....my body is awesome pregnant. But when it came time to post delivery, it failed me on milk production. Only one time have I contemplated the decision and that was when someone told me the reason why DD had reflux was because she was FF. This is utter BS after I saw her barium swallow. I never looked back. My babies are healthy, they are thriving, and in retrospect, with all the feeding issues DD has, I never would have been able to BF her anyways. Don't beat yourself up. The Boob nazi's are crazy....don't let them get in your head. You are a great mom!
I'm sorry you're feeling guilty about this! You are a wonderful mama and your girls are healthy, happy and beautiful! It definitely seems like BFing is "the" hot button issue these days. While I was lucky enough that BFing worked out for us (and I think it truely was luck!), there are PLENTY of other things I feel mama guilt about! I think us mamas all need to spend less time feeling guilty for all the things we feel we aren't doing "right" and focus on all the wonderful things we do and all the sacrifices we make for our kids!
I could have written your post, word for word. I know exactly how you feel. It's SO hard to not feel guilt about it, even though you know it was the best thing for you and your family. I still feel bad about it from time to time, and it's been a struggle to just let it go. I too think it was a big factor in my PPD.
You know what? We're gonna be ok, and our kids are gonna be ok. What matters most is how much we love them, care for them, and give them the best life we can. That's all we can do, and that's enough!
Jen - Mom to Jillian (10/2008) and Hayden (4/2010)
My Blog
I think formula rules. I BF'd Cam for about 6mo - 4mo EBF then supplemented before we switched completely but honestly if I had to do it over again, I would strongly consider FF from the begining, or at least once I went back to work. I HATED my pump, and BFing made it so the childcare duties were not 50/50 at night since I had the food! Formula made life MUCH easier. Sure, sometimes I fall into the mommy guilt trap too, but then I think of how much less "tied to baby" i felt once we were on formula full time. Date nights, and drinks and last minute dinners w/ friends! Best choice for my family hands down.
I too felt massive guilt about not being able to BF. Jake did great in the hospital and latched really well. After we got home, it was miserable. After we got home DH was google searching breastfeeding videos and trying to figure out how to make him latch. Within hours of coming home from the hospital I was in tears and sending DH to BRU to buy a pump. I was exhuasted and miserable that things weren't as easy as I thought they'd be. I continued to pump and we also started feeding Jake formula as well.
Then the real fun began. Jake started projectile vomiting. So I was left questioning if it was my milk that was causing this problem. So I stopped giving him my milk and continued pumping to create a supply in case it wasn't the problem. He started getting better. So we gave him less and less BM and I continued pumping. 3 weeks in I had a complete meltdown, bawled my eyes out and told DH I was done. Jake continued projectile vomiting and we determined he has issues with dairy/soy.
I spent months beating myself up about it making my PPD worse and worse. Now I'm at the point where I realize I did the best I could for my baby and he's a happy little boy now and that's all that matters. I refuse to beat myself up about it if it doesn't work with the next one. It's not worth the tears.