Getting it Wrong about Bottle Feeding

Last night my assumptions about bottle feeding were tested and I am grateful they were.

We were invited to dinner with friend we had not seen in a long time.  Knowing our friend had a caesarean back in January I was curious to see if she was breastfeeding, knowing that major abdominal surgery adds an additional challenge to women when establishing breastfeeding.

Not long after we arrived out came the bottle and her husband sat down on the couch to feed him.  I glanced over a couple of times, my mind ablaze with all manner of thoughts and observations – none of them kind.

I wondered if I could temper my reactions enough to ask why they had chosen not to breastfeed. Over the past few months, I’ve become increasingly interested in wanting to why women don’t breastfeed, as I’ve continued to write in this space each week. It comes from perhaps an arrogant belief: if I am able to understand personal reasons for choosing not to breastfeed (rather than the reasons I read in research articles or on websites) I am better poised to collect the information and write the articles which might allow other s to make a different decision.

Thankfully the way dinner unfolded, there wasn’t time until afterwards for any discussions about babies to come up. In that time I’d already stewed and made my own decisions about walking in and seeing the baby sucking on an artificial nipple on the end of a mother’s finger, seeing the baby given to the father to be feed, watching the baby feed in an awkward looking upright position and the misinformation that the baby had been left with the Grandmother all day.

This was when I learnt a hefty lesson on making assumptions and judging people without having all the information on the table.

As the after dinner conversation unfolded, I found out the baby was getting expressed milk through a special bottle.  He was born with a cleft palette and unable, despite concerted effort to assist him, to suck from the breast.  Our friend decided she was breastfeeding prior to birth and didn’t allow the cleft palette to stop her providing breast milk for son.

For the past three months she has been expressing, night and day.  Together she and her husband have been sharing the feeds, the expressed milk delivered through a special squeezy bottle and a flat teat to assist with the sucking.  During the night her husband feeds the baby while she expresses.

I was awed with her dedication to provide her son with the nourishment nature intended, despite the obstacles put in her way. I’ve always been profoundly impressed with women who can express – given my own attempts were so dismal. Our friend told us she intends to express at least until her son is six months old, even though she’s heard most mothers in her position don’t make it past four months.

The whole topic came up when she asked me if I knew whether she would be able to breastfeed after the operation to repair the cleft palette when her son’s nine months old – she wanted to try but she wasn’t sure if it was possible.  I said I wasn’t sure, but I would definitely ask through my networks of Mamas.

As we drove out the drive way I felt disgusted with myself for readily jumping to so many wrong conclusions.  I know what drove some of them, but it still does not excuse them. I felt as though I fell into the same category as the mother I heard about at a BBQ on Saturday night who had announced to a playgroup full of mothers, that having a caesarean section meant there was something inherently wrong with their ability to be a mother.

Until I met my beautiful friend Kerri last year and her three adopted children, I’d never given any thought to the possibility you could be a mother without giving birth. This challenged my understanding of the mother-birth connection to the core and the ideas I had about natural and surgical births. It also gave me a whole new healthy respect for the challenges my friend faces in nurturing and raising her children. The same goes for my experiences last night.  I’ll never assume a bottle means formula. I will also be rethinking my narrow interpretation of what breastfeeding is and what it means.

Photo: Breastfeeding Any Where, Any Time: At a Party (c) David Harris, 2005, from private collection

Jodi Cleghorn is a Brisbane mother. writer, lactivist and natural birth advocate. She is the co-author of the book Reclaim Sex After Birth: the survival guide, creator of the Date Night Challenge and recently appointed third partner in the Australia distributorship of Orgasmic Birth. She is looking forward to a busy week of website launches, speaking engagements and stalls, because it doesn’t rain, it pours!

Related posts:

1. Communicating Your Feeding Decision
2. Introducing New Breastfeeding Editor
3. Get a Good Start to Breastfeeding
4. Breasteeding Benefits for Moms
5. Ecological Breastfeeding