Helping parents nurture healthy babies

She's Over It

by Barbara Dehn - 29 March 2008


“Don’t ask me if I’m breastfeeding, because I’m not, and I just can’t,” said a very together 38-year-old mom on the go, who came in for her check up.  She was on her way to a meeting and brought in her adorable little guy so we could hold him.  No judgments here.  "How can I best support you?" I asked.  “Just don’t make me feel guilty,” was the response, which I had to respect.  This mom is juggling so much with other children at home, a high pressure job and a new baby.

She gets up at 6 am to get herself ready, then wakes the older children to feed them, lunches are made the night before. One of the older children or her husband feeds the baby as she get everyone ready to get out the door and on their way.  Today, she has the baby as she heads out to meetings, Bluetooth headset attached and ready for the calls that constantly interrupt her.  I get tired just hearing about her day, the shopping, meal preparation, laundry and helping with homework.  She breastfed her other children for three months, and with this baby, felt that five weeks was pushing her patience and was all she could reasonably do. Juggling and multitasking is hard enough without guilt, so there was no way I was going to heap that on her plate too.

Comments

Breastfeeding mom

18:19 31/03/2008
If cant handle ...why have babies??? this is ridiculous!!!

karrie

7:27 17/04/2008
Maybe has a country we should slow down and give women longer materinty lives. Here in canada we get a year. Taking that stress may give women more time and energy to breastfeed their babies

lisa

6:47 07/05/2008
It seems as though the breastfeeding vs. bottle feeding issue gives otherwise polite people opportunity to weigh in even though the decision should be left to the individual. A negative comment on a mother\'s choice to bottle feed with formula is like telling a smoker on the street that smoking is bad for you and that they should stop. My daughter was born with an omphalocele. This means that her liver, intestines and bowel were in a membrane outside of her body. She spent the first month of her life in the NICU and underwent 2 surgeries during this time. The first two weeks of her life I spent pumping and freezing breast milk as she was given nutrients through a central line. My daughter lay lifeless in a medically induced coma and the only power I had was to pump and freeze so that she would become nourished upon her awakening. The day came where I was finally able to hold my baby and feed her my milk. She was unable to tolerate it and began losing weight. They would not discharge her until she began gaining. This meant that we had to figure out what formula she could tolerate. Trial and error. Thanks to the samples in the hospital we were able to find the right formula for her, she gained weight, and was discharged 31 days after her birth. My daughter is now 8 years old, thriving, doing fantastic in school, and will always be my miracle baby. I believe it is the mother\'s right to decide what is best for her baby. Eliminating samples and creating an atmosphere filled with negativsm because of your decision is not healthy. Life is hard enough without guilting people into submission. State of mind for the parents of a new baby is ultimately the best environment and if formula plays a role in that, so be it. Agreed. Don\'t ask me, don\'t make me feel guilty because you don\'t know the whole story...

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