Bring out the violins because I'm about to tell you about how I couldn't breastfeed my daughter. You've heard it all before but she couldn't attach and I didn't produce much milk. And the less she attached the less milk I produced. And the more this happened the further I descended into a deep sort of depression. And as it got harder and she got skinnier, I said bugger this and started bottle feeding. End of story.
Except it wasn't the end of the story. I don't really talk about this with people and I certainly never even got too deeply into it with my husband or my Mum, my two pillars of support, who I think just "knew" and tried not to bring it up. But I REALLY struggled with the fact that my daughter was bottle fed. I felt guilty, I felt hopeless, I worried about her health and I couldn't wait to start her on solids so that I could nourish her with fresh foods prepared by me instead of packaged stuff prepared by formula companies.
But mostly, I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed. I felt so judged that I always made sure my daughter had a big feed before we left the house so that I wouldn't be seen feeding her a bottle in public. I pretended at my first mother's group that I was breastfeeding - I didn't outright lie, but I didn't tell the awful truth. This turned out to be unnecessary because those women were all amazing and supportive, and most of them couldn't wait to be done with breastfeeding anyway. But still.
What amazed me (and still does) was the complete lack of support available to bottle feeding mothers. And not just emotional support. Practical, common sense advice on subjects such as overfeeding, safe preparation, sterilisation, hypoallergenic formulas, the merits of different brands and so forth. You could find all that information if you really looked, but it wasn't readily available.
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| "I'd be smarter if this were breast milk" |
No one told me what brand of formula to use for my child and why. My husband rushed to the chemist and stood outside waiting for it to open one morning in utter desperation, with a starved screaming child and maddened, frazzled wife awaiting him at home. He picked the brand because it said "organic", and hey, that's as close to natural as possible right?! So from then on, that was our brand. As I met other bottle feeding mothers in the months that followed I noticed many used the brand that was used in the hospital, but the dreaded F word was never mentioned in the hospital I was in.
There is an entire industry devoted to the training, support and skill of breastfeeding but bottle feeding mothers are expected to just know what to do. There's no education about why bottle fed babies should only be fed so often, and the fact that unlike breastfeeding mothers you can't simply feed your baby every time they cry. This can lead to weight gain and directly contribute to further weight problems later in life. I found all this out because that's what I do - if all else fails, I Google. But most mothers have none of this information, and if no one told me I'm guessing no one told them.
One of the hardships of breastfeeding is that you can never tell how much your baby's had, which means there's the possibility that every cry is a cry of hunger. With bottle feeding, this is much easier - when your baby breaks down after a 180mL bottle, there's no chance he's hungry. But hey, guess what, there is no way of knowing what (if anything) is wrong! So you need to learn other settling techniques, and fast. This is something else that I feel should be addressed IN HOSPITAL. Fortunately I couldn't wait to get involved in a mothers group and learnt many of these techniques at my local early childhood centre, but many women are unfamiliar with or uncomfortable using this resources.
Anyway, I was delighted a couple of weeks ago to stumble upon the Bottle Babies website, a resource developed entirely for bottle feeding Mums. Established by a group of Queensland Mums who, like myself, recognised the need for practical and emotional support for bottle feeding Mums, the site provides a wealth of information about formula, breastmilk donation, sterilisation, weaning and more. The site also relays stories from real Mums about why they chose (or were left with no choice but) to bottle feed, and how this affected their families.
I completely respect what the Breastfeeding Industry has done. They have contributed to the steady increase of breastfeeding (the most natural and normal way to feed) as well as fiercely campaigned for formula companies to continue to improve the quality of their products and be held accountable for their often misleading advertising campaigns. But I feel they need to accept the fact that Bottle Feeding mothers also need support, and that there is quite possibly a link between the pressure to breastfeed and the rise in conditions such as post-natal depression.
Did you know that formula is a SIDS risk? That is lowers your baby's IQ? That it contributes to obesity? That it increases your child's likelihood of contracting infections? That your child will only live to 35 if it is fed formula? Okay, I made that last one up, but you get the picture. It's not easy to be a bottle feeder.
And for the record, my daughter is now a healthy, happy and very clever little girl. Imagine if she was breasted! ;-)
Z x
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