Down with the pressures of breastfeeding

I have something that I need to get off my er, chest. There is an injustice that I have been seeing first hand as of late, and I need to address it. First, before anyone jumps down my throat let me clarify one thing, I believe that breast milk should be the first choice for your infant. That said, I think it’s horrible the pressures that are put on Mothers these days that it should be the only choice, and I think it needs to stop.

When I looked over at my amazing, intelligent, beautiful wife who was on the verge of tears because she felt like she was a failure because breastfeeding wasn’t going as well as it was supposed to; I was pissed. All you ever hear these days is that formula is bad, I even heard one breastfeeding advocate call it poison, and that is just ridiculous. Beautiful wife went to visit a lactation consultant today because she really wants this to work, and while there, she told me of a poor first time mother who was absolutely a wreck because her 4 day old wouldn’t latch on.  Come on people this is excessive.

Look, I’ll tell you that mini-dude is doing waaaaay better than little dude was doing at this point. Little dude had to be supplemented pretty much from the hospital on.  You know what? Little dude is as healthy as can be, healthier then a lot of breast fed babies I know, he is also developmentally on track (advanced I’d say, but I’m partial.) In other words, he’s just fine. For the record we also made several trips to the lactation consultant for little dude, and the final verdict was that he was a stubborn baby and not to beat ourselves up over it. That the thing see, mothers should try the hardest to get their babies to breastfeed, but don’t kill yourselves, and don’t stress yourselves to the point of tears either. You baby will be fine, you can pump, or you can feed formula, trust me it’s not poison.

On a happy note, here’s a happy pic of the day: