I remember lying on the trolley in pre-op before being wheeled in for my elective caesarean, and the annoyingly cheerful midwife tried to calm my nerves by saying, “In a couple of hours you’ll be back on the ward with your baby, and we’ll be talking about breastfeeding!”
“Actually”, I replied, “there’s a tin of formula and some bottles in my bag; we’ll be using those instead.”
She was clearly taken aback, but fortunately accepting of my choice, which is why we had chosen that particular hospital.
You see, the hospital I had given birth to my first baby at had one of those terribly anti-bodily-autonomy “baby friendly” policies, which meant they shoved breastfeeding down new mothers’ throats at all costs.
It was an enormously traumatic experience for me, especially the part where they watched and judged my breastfeeding technique before they would discharge me, although I was in agony and the closest to being taught how to breastfeed I’d come was the midwife in the delivery room grasping my breast so hard that she actually bruised it badly and shoving it into my minutes-old daughter’s mouth.
Approximately eight days later, I got a prescription for some meds to dry up the milk, put my daughter on formula, and thriving, we never looked back.
I wasn’t as confident back then about my own choices, and I felt judged, especially when my husband’s mother whom I had never even met bought me a subscription to the Australian Breastfeeding Association. Awkward.
However, seeing how my firstborn baby thrived on formula, and feeling how much happier it made me cemented the certainty that for me, breast isn’t always best.
Top Comments
Who are we to judge this woman for choosing to do what was best for her mental health and thus the emotional wellbeing of her children? I chose to battle through four months of hell breastfeeding my son who suffered from severe reflux and to be honest, I'm not sure what for! I am still psychologically scarred from his screams and severely sleep deprived from his 1.5hr feeds that were only fixed when I transitioned to formula. Yes, I'm sure he is now missing out on some health benefits of breastfeeding, but really, how a child who is screaming, unable to sleep and is completely unsettled and a mother who feels like she is constantly failing her child is a 'bonding' or 'comforting' experience or is the 'most healthy' is questionable.
Let's just ignore the recent revelations that many formula batches are tainted with salmonella, the risks involved in not sterilising bottles and preparing formula correctly. Let's just ignore the life long benefits of breastfeeding to both mother and child. Let's just ignore the environmental impact of the formula industry. Let's ignore he many things that breastfeeding is beyond milk- comfort, medicine, immune benefits. But yes, fed is the biological minimum.