Ok, here’s the deal. I get it.
I get the argument for normalizing breastfeeding. I get that women’s breasts are sexualized beyond belief and some people get all oogy and weird when they see those “sexual objects” exposed in public. And I totally get that this ooginess and weirdness is all sorts of ridiculousness, since breastfeeding is a thing that has literally been occurring since the dawn of man. And also because the people who condemn public breast feeding are likely the very same people who fed off a breast at some point and time in their lives. (How’s that for irony, Alanis Morissette?)
But I guarantee that for every person who’s fired up about seeing a snippet of boob in public, there’s another person who’s shaming a mom for choosing to formula feed her baby. And it’s this damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t mentality that’s the real motherhood mind fuck.
Myself? I am a bottle feeder. I tried to breastfeed both of my kids. I wanted to breastfeed both of my kids. But life had other plans. Also, I just wasn’t any good at it. An augmentation surgery I had in my early twenties combined with two C-section births posed significant physical hurdles to successful breastfeeding. My wiring is weird and my production is low, so both my boys literally fell asleep at the wheel, so to speak. Plus with my second, I endured a killer infection that pumped me full of antibiotics, sent me back into the hospital three weeks postpartum and ultimately ended in a surgery to remove a kidney stone. By the time I recovered from all that, it was time to go back to work. Add an attention-craving 4 year-old into the mix and, well, my breastfeeding career went to shit real fast.
And can we just take a minute to talk about how breastfeeding is really fucking hard, even without any extra hurdles? I’ll admit that I had a romanticized and unrealistically easy vision of breastfeeding prior to both of my births. From what we see and hear in the motherhood world, the act seems all natural and healthy and loving and nurturing and good. And it IS all of those things. But it can also turn out to be a logistical shit show. Sometimes your baby doesn’t latch or your nipples are the wrong shape or their tongue is weird or your milk doesn’t come in when it’s supposed to or the pacifier gives them nipple confusion. (Yes, nipple confusion. It’s a thing. Look it up). Don’t forget you’re literally their only source of food, which means you’re on call 24/7 while your partner just sits there, or sleeps there. Either way, they’re just there, NOT feeding the baby. And don’t even get me started on the pumping situation. During the few short months I breastfed, I had daily fantasies of going all Office Space on that fucker.
Anyhooters, I digress from why I started this post in the first place. And that’s this: breastfeeding is beautiful and good. But do you know what else is beautiful and food? FEEDING YOUR CHILD by whatever means possible. When breastfeeding didn’t work for me, I turned to some pretty amazing women who had extra breastmilk to share, which meant my baby got some pretty amazing nutrients. For that I’ll be eternally thankful. But when milk donations were no longer a logistically viable option for us, we turned to formula, and I’m forever grateful that was an option. What would it have meant for our lives if it wasn’t? Would our baby have just gone hungry? How could anyone argue that NOT letting my baby starve wasn’t the best choice? Yet I heard the comments. I saw the articles. I scrolled the Facebook pages. I received the pamphlets. Our society spends so much energy on normalizing breastfeeding and convincing mothers that breastfeeding is the right and only way to go that I fear mothers like me—who can’t or don’t want to breastfeed—are getting dangerously overlooked. Or worse, we are getting shamed into believing that we’re doing our babies a major, life-long disservice by feeding them formula. And that’s just plain wrong.
So it’s great that photographer Ivette Ivens has the time to pose like a magical fairy imp in a perfectly styled glamour shot in an effort to “normalize” breastfeeding. And it’s great that Rachel McAdams gets paid to sit with a pump attached to her beautiful boobs—fully haired, dressed and made-up—in an effort to “normalize” breastfeeding. But honestly, this doesn’t normalize shit. It just capitalizes on a very real pain point and paints yet another idealistic picture that so many mothers can and never will be able to achieve for so many different reasons. I don’t know about you but the last time I checked, my office has a closet, a rolling desk chair, and a shitty college-sized fridge that someone picked up for free off Craig’s list for breastfeeding mothers. This does not make breastfeeding terribly easy or realistic. Also, where are the Insta shots of beautiful bottle feeding mamas?
Yes, I support the right and the fight to free the ta-tas. I believe breastfeeding in public is a natural thing that needs to happen without getting the side eye from some creep or having to awkwardly drape a curtain-like object around yourself. But if we’re going to work toward normalizing breastfeeding, can we also work towards normalizing bottle feeding? Or better yet, can we just stop with the whole normalizing thing and shamelessly agree to feed?
Agree to feed. Did I just come with a new hashtag? I think maybe I did. 💪
Thanks for listening.
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