Breastfeeding Zealots

The little one had her first encounter with the swimming pool today.  That didn't go so well.  She did not like the feel of the water.  I'm hoping to try again on a ninety-degree day.

My friend and I brought our babies into the water and struck up a conversation with two other mothers with young babies.  We exchanged the usual platitudes and ages of our respective babies.

Then, one of the other moms suddenly asked my friend if she's breastfeeding her baby, to which she replied she did, but due to her baby's allergies to many foods that she was eating via her breast milk, the pediatrician recommended that she started on a non-cow's milk formula.

"Oh.  Mine are both all breast.  The older one was breastfed until she was one."

She didn't ask me any questions at all about breastfeeding.  When my friend and I analyzed the conversation later, it dawned on me that she probably saw that I was feeding my baby a ready-to-feed Similac bottle and wanted to show her superiority over me.

I guess I'm offended by the maliciousness of it, but I'm just more annoyed and partially amused that someone would latch on (pun intended) to breastfeeding as a means of feeling superior to another.  Some of us tried very hard, took a breastfeeding class before giving birth, hired an expensive lactation consultant postpartum, own the most expensive breast pump available to consumers but still, for whatever health reasons, cannot breastfeed.  I have discussed this issue with other moms who had trouble as well, and ALL of us, at some point, felt immense guilt and agony over our inability to breastfeed.  Some of us were trying so hard that our babies were literally starving because we dared not give them formula.  And we finally did when we summoned up the courage to tell people to fuck off because our babies are hungry.

Hey, why the hell wouldn't we want to breastfeed our babies?  Because we want to spend a few extra thousand dollars to feed our babies an artificial substance that is supposedly inferior?

We KNOW that breast is best.  We KNOW that breast milk offers more natural immunities.  We KNOW that one study shows that breastfed babies on average score a few points higher on the IQ test.

But with an ignorant parent like that woman, I don't think those few extra points would help the baby's IQ.

Okay, I feel better now.