Could You Bottlefeed Discreetly, Please?

   

from Anna

It sounds like a joke right? I assure you it's not the beginning of a satire... it's increasingly becoming a real concern of mine.

Let me start by saying a few things about how I feel as a breastfeeding mother and aspiring lactation professional... undoubtedly and unreservedly, I support nursing mothers and support the right to feed children from the breast anywhere and anytime they hunger, thirst, or need comfort. Call it the "natural order", call it "the way G-d intended"... whichever way you look at it, it's good and right. I certainly don't attack any bottlefeeding mothers for their choices, I've never verbally accosted a lady with a rubber nipple in her kid's mouth, and I hesitate still even to talk with pregnant mamas about their plans for nourishing their babes for fear of offending. I have definite strong opinions about how infants and small children should be fed, but I'm generally not confrontational by any means. And while I sure do feel, as stated above, that women have every right to breastfeed publicly and proudly, I admit that I feel generally okay, personally, about being fairly modest in the practice of it. I've read online posts from mothers who proudly describe pushing a shopping cart around Wal-Mart with their wee one in the childseat nursing from their breast as it hangs from out the top of their tanktop, and other such anecdotes. That sort of thing is not for me. I'm sure on several occasions I've made a person or two uncomfortable with my willingness to nurse my daughter right there, right then, right in the thick of things... but I always try my best to cover up and keep things in place when in company of others. Now that my daughter is well into toddler age, I do more often excuse myself to a more secluded spot-- firstly, because she doesn't always make it easy for me to be modest about feeding, with her acrobatics and grabbiness, and secondly because I do want to be respectful of other parents who will have to deal with questions from their own kids who may have never seen an older baby nurse.

Some of my "more militant" sisters-in-boob may feel like that latter bit is a terrible concession, that children (and their mothers!) should be exposed to nursing toddlers, so they can see it as acceptable and be educated. They may feel like I'm wimping out on the crusade of normalization. Mind you, I don't always remove myself, and I never feed my daughter in a bathroom (I think that's absolutely disgusting)... but I am coming to have a little more sympathy for those mothers who wish I could be more discreet. Strangely, maybe perversely, it's because I really do wish they could be more discreet about their bottlefeeding.

I admit we have a pretty sheltered little world when it comes to clashes over parenting styles... in the circle I hang with, it'd be considered weird not to nurse, wear your baby in a sling, have a family bed. I've been extremely lucky/blessed to find great friends who are wonderfully committed to attachment practices, and natural family living. We don't really associate much with folks who find our mothering/fathering philosophy to be bizarre or objectionable. Even family who may have been shocked at first by our choices have gotten used to the way we do things.

Lately, however, I've found that due to some changes, our little crunchy fam has found itself in the midst of a larger group of families, many of which have very "conventional" ideas about bringing up kids. Recently, there have been several times that Stella has noticed strange new things... most notably a baby being fed out of a plastic bottle, or little girls "feeding" their babydolls with little play bottles.

Whoa! It hadn't even occurred to me until now what to say about this, or how to explain. I mutter things incoherently; I tell her "that's the baby's cup". I'm always a little flummoxed. I'm one of those mothers that screens books, toys, clothes, and has never let in an image of a bottle or pacifier... seriously. Like I said, I'm not going to berate anybody for their choices, but I admit that these things make me very uncomfortable, and I don't want my daughter accepting them as normal. The first time I saw my daughter pick up a toy bottle and plug it into the little gaping mouth of a doll, I nearly soiled myself.

Weird situation, huh? Suddenly, I better understand the moms who don't particularly want to stutter through an explanation about why some babies suckle at the breast when that is a strange new thing for the inquiring kid.

And one can't really go about asking bottlefeeding mothers to excuse themselves to the other room, either, when one heartily defends the rights of mothers to breastfeed anywhere...

It's ironic, and yet my discomfort persists...

All I can do, I suppose, is roll with it-- and explain as I can, as she understands, what it is we value in our family, why we think it's vital, and why some folks may do things differently...

It's just such a profound sorrow to me that given how I feel about breastfeeding, and how dedicated I've been to it, I've seen my daughter pretend bottlefeed when I've yet to see her pretend-nurse...

Comments

[Tara]

I appreciate your passion, but feel sad reading this.
My daughter had severe gastro reflux with a food aversion. The only way I could feed her was to pump my milk and put it in a bottle. For the first three months of her life she had to be fed in her sleep. It was a bottle or a feeding tube.
Perhaps you could explain to your daughter that sometimes, for all sorts of reasons, mamas aren't always able to nurse and so then they'll use a bottle.

[Anna Lea Jancewicz]

I know that there ARE all sorts of reasons for bottlefeeding, and I did mention at the end of my post that as my daughter gets to an age where I CAN explain things to her, I will... and I do now in a very simplified way... it just makes me sad, too, because I would love to see a world where bottlefeeding is a rare necessity, and little dollbabies DON'T come with bottles as a norm... and seeing my daughter fall right in with the classic bottle-play really breaks my heart.

[nAncY]

there are many different ways to feed a baby for many many different reasons.

as long as the baby is fed and loved seems to be the most important thing.

[sue]

Get a grip! Your life is so sheltered that you almost soiled yourself when your daughter play-acted bottle-feeding. ???!!!!!!!!!! You have NO idea of the real world. It includes diversity, variety, openess, tolerance, and compassion.

[audrey]

Hi, I'm a new reader to your blog, I love your posts, insights and values. I can relate to your sadness on this. I'm not a mother so I try not to chime in on motherhood topics, but I wanted to provide a voice of empathy. I think its perfectly reasonable to share with your daughter the things that are in alignment with your family values and filter out those that are not. A lot of families do it. Some do it with regards to guns and violence or images of smoking or drugs or junk food, etc.
Maybe its the allure of the new toy (a plastic bottle). Your daughter may really love a Waldorf style breastfeeding doll.

[Julie Kane]

Great post and I can really relate !

[suzanne]

While reading this I was thinking of my Son. He is almost five and has some babies that he plays with (we have been talking lots about babies and Mommas and what they do lately because we are due with our second child this June) and he needs to feed them, so of course because of all our conversations and reading and talking he has been breast-feeding his baby. Well, the other day we happened across a birth story (on TV) and the Mom was bottle feeding and he asked me why the baby was not having Momma milk? I said they did not say, but that some Mommas choose to feed their Babies from a bottle, but that I chose to feed him from my breast. (despite him being 5 weeks early, and my not even being able to hold him for 5 days and him being hospitalized for two weeks) Then he noticed the Daddy feeding the Baby from a bottle and he said why can't the Daddy feed the baby if the Momma can't and then I told him that actually only the Mommas have Momma milk. So then he asked me to get him a bottle because he is not the Momma he is the Daddy to his baby and he wants to feed it. I then told him that his Daddy never fed him, that was Momma's special job and that Daddies have other special jobs to do but Momma Milk comes from Mommas.
I also feel strongly about this topic and want my Son to be supportive and encouraging of his future wife to be the one to to nourish their children and I had just never had to have that dialog with him. So I get what you are saying Anna. I guess my experience is just the other (other) perspective :)
Ooops sorry I rambled...pregnancy brain :)
Happy Mothers Day!!

[Anna Lea Jancewicz]

I'm so glad that this has generated so many comments from folks-- I expected it would. Sue tells me to get a grip... and that's exactly what I was working on by writing this: getting a grip on my ambivalent feelings. Like Audrey said, it's always a challenge to present your values to your kids and try filtering out the stuff that you find objectionable-- especially when you want to be respectful of the diversity of other folks' ways, like Sue mentioned. With my daughter being exposed to baby bottles, it's not quite as clear cut or easy as it is when she encounters other new things-- say, candy or toy guns-- and people also don't necessarily understand as readily the discomfort I feel... because of the highly charged nature of the whole "mommy wars" gestalt, it's definitely a touchy subject. Thanks so much to everyone who has offered encouraging & supportive words!

[Amber Magnolia]

I understand what you are saying here Anna. I was shocked when Mycie put a pretend bottle into the open mouth of the plastic baby doll the li'l old lady at the thrift store gave her. I don't know when she ever saw that image or how she knew about babies being fed with bottles.

It's like so much else with mothering- easing up on things you swore you'd never do/let your child do. At first I was like "Does your baby wanna nurse too?" but she insisted she didn't. So I stepped back and let her bottle feed her baby, knowing that long before she chooses how to feed her own, I will have explained the difference between breast milk and formula and why some babies *need* the bottle, while others, sadly, could have breastfed but had mothers who chose not to.

As long as they don't also let their babies cry it out and feed them Cheetos, we're doing pretty good, right? :-)

And, exactly, it's the fact that bottle feeding is the norm that saddens us in these scenarios (as that extensively researched article in Mothering proved a few years back), not that every baby on earth isn't breastfed.

[Dee]

Your daughter is likely pretending to bottle-feed her doll because bottles are new and different. I would try not to worry about it. If it continues to bother you, you could make the doll's bottle disappear at some point. I've had similar issues with my son and a toy gun- so much for having a toy weapon-free home. But my toy gun wielding son does breast-feed his baby doll! :)

[Vanessa]

I read this post quite a while ago, and waited until I understood my own feelings before responding. I appreciate that you approach this topic and the ensuing criticism with grace. I need to say that most women I know who ended up bottle-feeding did so due to postpartum depression. You may not realize it from your perspective, but there is so much shame accorded to women who bottle feed. They feel your judgement, they struggle with feeling they've failed their babies, and it often worsens their depression. Please consider that when you see a woman feeding a baby with a bottle, it could be for many valid medical reasons, and these women need your support. Please understand that you are blessed to be "normal", to be able to breast feed, and those who can't do so really need and deserve your compassion.

[M]

After reading this, I felt a little shocked that you wouldn't allow anything to do with bottle-feeding or soothers into the house. My daughter was breastfed, she never has soothers, but at the same time, I'm not going to ban images of the world from her. Everything is out there in the world. Just because you don't agree with it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. All I say is some babies are bottlefed some babies are breastfed, and that's that. You can't make her ignorant to the subject because one day she'll grow up and resent all the things you 'hid' from her.

[Anna Lea Jancewicz]

I think its perfectly acceptable for parents to make decisions regarding shielding their children from practices or information that they may not find acceptable until a child is old enough to discuss the matters lucidly. I think we all make choicesin this regard, for example with sexual content or violence in media, toy guns, other peoples religious beliefs, et cetera. I dont think we as parents have any sort of moral obligation to expose toddlers or preschoolers to the breadth of world experience simply because it exists.