Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikoyan
Be there for your wife too. There's still a bit of a stigma for moms who can't breastfeed. The home nurse who visited made my wife feel like a failure not not being able to produce. Fed is best for the kid. Formula, breast, whatever. Locally, the breast is best push has been reduced somewhat since a local mom with post partum unalived herself, with breastfeeding as one of her triggering factors
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This is just so so so true. If there was ever one thing that I found the whole child-birthing experience to be negative, it was the medical community's overwhelming insistence on breast feeding. I get the whole thing that breast milk is better than formula, but the insistence, the amount of persuasion, and sheer pressure coming from the nurses to breast feed can be really overwhelming. We had some production + latching issue at first, and even though le wifey knew in her head that it would have been OK to bottle feed formula, the pressure from the maternity and home nurses were so overwhelming that she still felt like a failure when we couldn't produce enough, or fed our kid enough, and that our kid lost too much weight. Add in the postpartum changes and blues, and it was a really difficult time for le wifey. (And bcos it was difficult on le wifey, it also became difficult for me too.)
We got referred to a breast feeding specialist after that, and it was an absolute relief to hear from the specialist that it was OK to supplement breast feeding with formula, or even just straight up feed the newborn with formula. In some way, I felt like the nurses went overboard on the insistence to breast feed, to the point that they might as well be demonizing bottle feeding with formula.