Today is Reed’s 9-month birthday!
Since the last time meredith updated this blog, Reed has crossed a whole bunch of milestones.
He’s learned to crawl properly, a skill he’s using to maximal effect.
He’s also learned to then stand up well (with help), and pull up on just about any object in the house. Which has led to cruising, something he learned in a matter of a week or two. And he’s become ridiculously strong — he can easily move the chairs in the dining room on his own, and pick up his baby bath, which he loves to fling on the hardwood floors. The loud CRASH is intoxicating to him… Mommy and Daddy can live without it.
Remorseless Eating Machine
His energy level is off the charts, and we have no idea where this comes from. According to my mother, i was more of a sit-around-and-stuff-my-face kind of baby, and Meredith was also a rather low-action infant as well. So he is truly his own man.
Just this past week, he’s gotten much better about feeding himself finger-food, and we’ve started to let him eat some adult food with us at dinner. He is gastronomically brave, and will eat just about anything placed in front of him (except prunes). A proper trencherman, he’s ballooned to 19+ pounds, and has the cutest beer belly i’ve ever seen.
Finally, he’s gotten really chatty this month. His favorite word so far (much to Meredith’s horror) is “dada”, but I’m certain he has no idea what it means — everything and everyone is “dada”. Sometimes he’ll just sit in his crib and carry on a conversation with himself for a half-hour or more, and dada will figure prominently in the monologue.
Meredith’s brother Scott is coming to visit with his fiance Miriam in the next couple of weeks, and I think he’s going to be shocked when he sees Reed. The last time he visited (over the summer), Reed was more like a doll. He would just sort of sit there in your arms and not do too much. Now he’s a full-fledged little boy who is more likely to flash you a devilish grin & jump on top of you than sit still and be cradled.
Through it all he remains incredibly lovable and adorable. His mother and I are very fortunate to have him in our lives!
Since my last post, Reed experienced his very first Thanksgiving. It was just the three of us since we didn’t want to travel with H1N1 being so widespread and Reed only having had one of his two needed H1N1 boosters. We had a rather nontraditional Thanksgiving with steak instead of turkey, but we did have some traditional sides. Reed had a more traditional meal of turkey, winter squash and green beans (pureed of course). That weekend was probably the best weekend we’ve had since Reed was born. Reed was so sweet and fun and has really turned into a little boy instead of an “eating/pooping machine” as Adam called him. He’s getting much easier to go places with and he has a really flirty, mischievous, but mellow personality. The other day, he tried putting his pacifier and one of his teethers in my mouth which I thought was such a sweet and loving gesture (though not exactly what I wanted). I think he’s also starting to kiss us on the cheek like we do to him, though it’s coming out more like a slobbery zerbert.
Our little guy has definitely become a lot more mobile since my last post. There is literally no chance that if you leave him for a minute he will be where you left him. Changing and dressing him has become especially challenging as he wants to roll over and hop away as soon as he’s put on the changing table. Toys often help to distract him long enough to get a diaper on, but I still get a lot of bare Reed booty staring me in the face. He gets a very mischievous smile when he does it, so I think he knows exactly what he’s doing.
the daily stander
Reed is not exactly crawling, but at this point, I think he’s decided that his lunging is good enough for his purposes. He sort of leaps like a frog to get from point A to point B. He can get across a room to whatever he needs, so why bother learning to crawl? I suspect he will go straight from what he’s doing now to walking. Reed’s already standing up for long periods of time when holding onto things and can pull himself up pretty nicely as well. He’s obsessed with pulling himself up on Adam and me, and we’re starting to feel like glorified pieces of furniture. He’s done a little cruising, though he’s still pretty clumsy at that. He has a toy that allows him to walk around in circles (it’s a huge hit here), so I think that’s helping him to understand the mechanics of walking.
On the illness front, I finally ended up being the well one while both of my boys got sick (that didn’t last very long since I spent all-day yesterday throwing up from some unknown illness/toxin — fun). Last week, we learned that Reed had an ear infection (which wasn’t even what we’d taken him to the doctor for; he’d just been very congested and coughing). They put Reed on amoxicillin for a 10-day course. The morning after we gave him his first dose, I noticed a little spot of eczema on his cheek. The next day, I noticed a little more under his eye. The following night, he was covered in a red rash, and we had to bring him to the ER. They diagnosed him as having had an allergic reaction to the amoxicillin, gave us another antibiotic, and told us to watch his breathing (instead of letting us give him Benadryl — I suspect the ER doc just didn’t want to be responsible for suggesting a dose for such a little guy). Reed’s doing fine now — he’s still a bit itchy, but the rash is nearly gone. Adam and I both don’t have any drug allergies, so it was a little scary seeing Reed have such a response. He seems to be doing well though on the new antibiotic.
Reed has become an absolute pig recently — he’s often eating two four-ounce jars of baby food in a single sitting. He’s particularly obsessed with yogurt and will sit with his mouth wide open before I even get the container open! He actually knows what the container looks like! We still haven’t found anything that he won’t eat, though there are certainly things he likes better than others. Green beans, pears and raspberries, apples and apricots, and winter squash are definitely favorites. He’s eaten chicken and turkey too, but we haven’t tried him on beef or fish yet. I feel very fortunate that he’s not picky about foods — already he’s eaten things that I didn’t try until I was an adult!
One of Reed’s favorite things these days — and a surefire way to “de-crank” him when he’s in a bad mood — is taking a bath. Now that Reed can sit up in the
Bath buddies
bath, he loves being in there, and could probably spend hours playing in the water if it wouldn’t get cold. He has some bath toys that he plays with, but he likes to see and touch his little boy parts (which he’s become extremely curious about since he doesn’t get to see them much during the day). I usually only bathe him every other day, but if he’s in a bad mood, I’ll put him in the tub on off-days and just won’t soap him up. It makes him so happy to be there, and it immediately calms him down. He doesn’t tend to be a moody baby, but sometimes he gets a little overstimulated and this tends to help him chill out. Calgon take me away!
We have no plans for the winter break (I get a week off) other than baby-proofing, since I don’t fool myself that Reed is going to stay in his little “playzone” area forever. It should be a relaxing end of the year with my two favorite guys in the world.
Happy holidays to all of my friends and family reading this! We’re grateful to have you in our lives!
I just wrote a post about the influence of corporations on parenting blogs at Information Wants to be Free. Adam and I are seriously thinking about starting to write reviews here of the toys and products that we buy for Reed in an effort to increase the number of trustworthy, uncompensated reviews of baby products on the Web. It makes me sick to think that new or expectant parents might trust the reviews written by the parents who write reviews because they are compensated by the company whose product they’re reviewing. It’s hard enough to make good choices for your child without this “blogola” going on.
It’s hard to believe that Reed is 7 months old already! It’s getting difficult to remember what it was like around here before his arrival.
He is growing up quickly; just in the last couple of months he’s seemingly gone from being an “infant” (ie, an eating/pooping machine), to being a real “little boy”, with a distinct personality. He’s happy, curious, and always fun to be around.
The “fun” part was something I didn’t expect. We really do have a good time playing together. There are few things that I like more than making him crack up laughing by letting him pull on my hair or by making ‘undignified’ noises with my mouth. In retrospect, he’s a perfect match for me — we both have juvenile senses of humor. (Much to his mommy’s dismay.)
So while the first seven months have been lots of hard work, I know that going forward we’re going to have great times together.
making a ruckus!
I have been extremely remiss in not writing sooner, but we’ve been having a heck of a time with illnesses in the Farkas household. Reed’s had a bunch of colds and I’ve managed to get every single one of them and hold on to them far longer than he has. Right now, a 2-week cold seems to have turned into a sinus infection for me. Fun! Even Adam, Mr. Immunity, got sick once. Colds seem to slow Reed down very little — he tends to be just as cheerful and energetic sick as he is well. Amazing kid!
Sitting dragon
Since he was 5 months old, Reed’s been working on his sitting skills. On his six-month birthday (October 17th), Reed finally mastered sitting up. Now, he can stay up for 20 minutes or more and seems to really enjoy playing while seated. He’s also gotten very good at creeping and turning his body around while on his stomach. I told Adam that I predict he’ll be crawling within the next 3 weeks.
He’s well past the age where we can just leave him somewhere and expect him to be in that same place when we come back. Adam was on the phone while watching Reed, and when he looked back a couple of minutes later, Reed was halfway under the sofa! So we bought him this awesome playzone to keep him safe and occupied. We actually bought two and put them together, so he has this huge portion of the living room (more than 50% of it!) to make trouble in. He’s really been enjoying himself in it (it has activities and music) and we can walk into the kitchen to get something and know he’ll be safe. Next thing I want to do is get him a play mat for that area, since our carpets are really getting abused by his drooling and spitting up.
Every time I start to worry about a developmental milestone he should be reaching, he manages to achieve it. I was a little concerned that he was still only talking in vowels (since the book I read said he should be using consonants by around six months) and a few days later he was babbling with plenty of consonants (mamama, bababa, etc.). He’s stayed around the 50th percentile for height and weight. Talk about going by the book! It’s funny, because everyone always comments that he’s such a big baby and looks so much older than he is. I know I shouldn’t worry about milestones and all that since every child goes at their own pace and that’s only an average, but it is still nice to know that he’s so textbook.
Go ask Reed. He'll eat anything!
Reed’s eating a huge variety of solid foods now. His favorite, if you’d believe it, is green beans. Clearly he does not take after his mother who was so picky she ate almost nothing as a child. He also really likes peaches, butternut squash, sweet potato and even tart things like pears and raspberries. I can’t think of a single food he’s outright rejected, though prunes haven’t been a big hit (who can blame him?). The only time he doesn’t eat something is when he’s not in the mood for eating anything. He’s now eating in his highchair and really seems to enjoy being in there at dinnertime. When I think of all the digestive problems he had just two months ago, I feel so grateful for how well he’s doing now.
We decided not to go to Chicago for Thanksgiving because of the risk of H1N1 and seasonal flu. Getting on a plane and going to a big city just seemed like a really dangerous thing to do right now with an infant. Reed hasn’t gotten vaccinated against either flu yet since he just turned 6 months and neither is available here right now. Next week there is an H1N1 clinic in town, so we hope to get him the first of the two shots he’ll need to be immune to that (they need to be given 4 weeks apart, so it’s a real pain). He’s also on a waiting list at our pediatrician. With him being in daycare, and H1N1 now being widespread in Vermont, I fear that he’ll get one or the other illness before he can get fully vaccinated, but there’s very little we can do to prevent it. Just have to hope for the best. I got the H1N1 nasal vaccine and my regular flu shot, so at least I know I won’t bring it home from work with me. I managed to go 17 years without getting a single shot and I’ve gotten several since getting pregnant with Reed. All for love.
Loving the outdoors!
My last post was a bit of a downer, so I figured I should write another to talk about all the great stuff Reed has been up to. Not everything has been tummy issues and unpleasantness — in fact, there’s been a lot of fun stuff going on in Reed’s life. And he’s been an absolute joy to have around. He almost never cries and only gets fussy if he’s starving or needing a nap. Most of the time he’s just a fun, energetic, curious and amazingly social little guy. It blows me away to think about how much he’s accomplished in these short 5 months.
On Thursday, Reed turned 5 months old. The next day, he sat up unsupported for a very brief period of time. On Saturday, he actually sat up for nearly a minute (photographic evidence can be found here). He’s really been into his feet — putting them in the air and grabbing them — which I think helped with the sitting up process. He’s been trying to get his foot into his mouth, but isn’t quite limber or long-legged enough. But I’m sure he’ll get there in time. He is absolutely huge now. He was almost 17 lbs. about 2 weeks ago and he has definitely gone through a growth spurt since then. It amazes me how big and sturdy he is — I was always in the bottom percentiles for height and weight and I don’t think Adam was exactly a giant either. Reed constantly gets taken for a much older child, but part of that may just be his hair and the fact that his head is proportionate to his body (as opposed to having one of those deliciously round pumpkin heads many babies have).
We’re still slowly working on the solid foods thing. His favorite food is definitely sweet potato — even after trying apples and pears, he still prefers it. Cereal has been tough since stopping breastmilk. He loved rice cereal with breastmilk, but hates it (read: will cry if it’s put in his mouth) with formula. We tried to give him a new multigrain cereal with water this morning and he seemed to like it ok. I tried it and it basically just tasted like flour and water. Yum? I may try mixing the cereal with sweet potatoes and water — that would definitely make it more palatable. He’s still not eating enough solids to sleep through the night. In fact, during the night he wants to eat every 3 hours on the dot, which is starting to wear on me and Adam. His teachers at daycare comment that he eats more during the day than a lot of the kids twice his age. He’s not that chunky, so he must have a killer metabolism. So I guess he’s just a really hungry guy and we probably just need to work towards giving him more solid food before bed.
Reed's first swim!
Reed went on a plane trip for the second time in his life. Two weeks ago, he flew to Florida to visit his grammy and grandpa (my parents). He had a good time playing with the million toys grammy bought for him and even went in the pool! It was pretty obvious though that he was happy to come home and get back into his routine (we like routines too!). He got sick while we were traveling and then got us sick. At first I thought he’d gotten sick from daycare, but it turned out that none of the other kids had what he had (parvovirus B19). It made me realize that perhaps air travel may not be a good idea this Fall and Winter with the regular flu and H1N1 going around. With all of his allergies and sensitivities his body is taxed enough. I’d hate to expose him to all those germs on a plane again.
Since getting back from Florida, we’ve been trying to enjoy what’s left of the good autumn weather before we have to hunker down with him at home for the winter months. We’re already getting some pretty chilly days, so much so that I had to bundle him up and put a hat on him when we went to a harvest festival this past Saturday. But today is gorgeous and sunny, so as soon as the little man wakes up from his nap, we’re going to take a nice walk around the block. Being with him and watching him play and grow is such a pleasure.
All bundled up!
It’s been a trying couple of weeks here in the Farkas household. Reed started having diarrhea around 4 weeks ago, which got worse after he got his 4-month vaccinations. About 2 weeks ago, his poop turned a dark green, which any parent knows is not a good sign. He’s been having skin issues (eczema and cradle cap) since he was about 3 months old, which seemed to be getting worse, and his nose had been stuffy for the past 7 weeks. All of this led us to believe that he might have an allergy to cow’s milk. I’d actually suspected this way back when Reed was a few weeks old because of all the tummy discomfort he was having back then and the fact that the only thing I could think of that I ate at the time that might have made him sick was milk (I hadn’t had any of the other big allergy culprits). So we decided to try him on soy formula and I would just freeze my breast milk for a while. That didn’t go well at all. After trying the soy, Reed wouldn’t eat and got very lethargic. In fact, he started crying when he even saw a bottle. Then, four hours after having the formula, he threw up all over Adam. Clearly, that was not the solution.
The diarrhea was starting to make Reed dehydrated and caused terrible diaper rash, so we went to the doctor. The pediatrician we saw (ours was off that day) gave us some hypoallergenic formula and told me to give up anything in my diet from a cow. I decided instead to hold off a few days and freeze my breastmilk until I saw how he did on the formula. Within two days, his skin and scalp were completely clear and the diarrhea was gone. The transformation was so quick and so surprising. Within a week his diaper rash was a lot better. Even though he ended up contracting parvovirus last week, he was in great spirits — our old happy-go-lucky ball of cuteness.
So I gave up everything from a cow and soy. Being a huge milk drinker and cheese, yogurt and ice cream eater, it was really difficult, but I found things I could eat (even some dairy-free soy-free cookies!). I dutifully pumped and dumped for two weeks to keep up my milk supply. Last night, for the first time in 2 weeks, we gave him breastmilk — just for one feeding. And it all went to hell. He got diarrhea again. The diaper rash came back so bad it made him scream when we changed him. He started to get red and crusty in a few of his skin creases. All from 6 ounces of breastmilk that, if it had any dairy or soy in it at that point, it must have been trace amounts. Clearly he is very sensitive and perhaps the allergy is not even to milk and soy at all (or it’s to milk, soy, and other things).
So I am at a crossroads now. Reed has an appointment with an allergist, but not until mid-October. I could continue to pump and dump for all that time and then he will get pricked with needles or get his blood drawn (in which case the results will take longer to get) and we’ll find out what I need to eliminate from my diet. I could just give up eating the big 8 allergens (milk, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, egg, fish and shellfish), but that would leave me very little to subsist on and I’d still have to wait at least 2 weeks until I could start giving him breastmilk again. Or I could just call it a day with the breastfeeding. He’s doing well on the hypoallergenic formula (which costs an absolute fortune) and at this point, it seems like my milk is doing him more harm than good. I feel like the only reason I would continue trying to give him breastmilk at this point would be for my own ego — so I feel like a good mom. But I don’t feel like I good mom when I feed him something that makes him ill. It just sucks. After all I’ve gone through to try to provide him the best start in life, I still feel like I’ve failed him. No matter what decision I make, I feel like a bad mom.
But on the bright side, at least there exists a food that makes him all better, even if it doesn’t come from me. And before I fed him my milk yesterday he was doing brilliantly.
In other news, Adam and I did not fare quite as well with the parvovirus as Reed did. We both ended up getting it (which means we must not have had it as kids since having it gives you immunity) and we’re now horribly achy and exhausted. My doctor told me to stay home from work until Thursday and I was looking forward to resting while Reed’s at daycare until I remembered that we are getting our roof replaced this week! Crap! So instead of sleeping, we have to be out of the house for the next two days and have to come up with something quiet and relaxing to do (movies? day spa?) so that we can hopefully recover from this as quickly as possible. Will the suckiness ever end?
Reed's first day of daycare
Gosh, where has the time gone? I’ve really meant to write an update for a while, but we’ve been busy with summer, visitors, baby stuff, various and sundry illnesses (just me, not Reed), and getting ready for daycare. Reed started daycare this week and he is doing beautifully! I had a feeling he would do well there since he’s so curious and seems to love everyone he meets, but even I was surprised how nicely he’s done there. The women caring for him have been amazed by how mellow and smiley he is (even when he poops through his clothes, blanket, and bouncy seat — twice!) and the one he seems to spend the most time with says that she enjoys him so much. That’s certainly a good thing! I think daycare is going to be a great thing for him socially since he doesn’t get a lot of exposure to anyone but Adam and me at home.
Reed just turned four months old on Monday, which is hard to believe both because the time has gone so fast and because I feel like I’ve known him forever. Reed is a master now at rolling over 360 degrees. He definitely prefers sleeping on his tummy — side is probably his second favorite, and he occasionally will stay on his back (but it’s getting more and more rare). He’s also starting to move when he’s on his tummy. He does this funny inchworm-style creep where he bunches his knees up and then pushes his body forward. He makes decent progress, but he usually gets frustrated after a while and I have to pick him up. But it blows my mind how strong he is and how early he’s doing all these things!
Another thing Reed started doing early was eating solid foods. At just over three months, his pediatrician told us we could
Sweet potato!
start feeding him solid food. His head control was really advanced, he was demanding A LOT of food each day, and he had started oggling the food we were eating. I’ve vacilated between making my own food and using organic jarred baby food since he hasn’t been too big on the things I’ve made him myself (*sniff, sniff*). The things he has loved most so far are rice cereal and sweet potatoes, and he seemed to enjoy the avocados I made him a bit (he ate them 2 out of 4 days). We’ve been moving slowly with the solid feedings since he started early and we didn’t want to push him. But he’s getting better and better at it and I think we’re going to move tomorrow to feeding him solid food twice a day. It’s messy work, but so much fun to see him EATING!
I don’t know how Adam and I lucked out to have such a healthy, smart, mellow child. He really is amazing! A colleague of mine said that Reed doing so well in daycare was a credit to me for raising him to be confident and independent, but I don’t think I had anything to do with it. Right now, I’m pretty sure anything with his personality is pure temperament. He’s just a good-natured, mellow guy who smiles at everyone he meets. I keep saying that he’s ours to ruin, because I don’t think anything Adam and I could do would make him a better person than he already is. We just have to encourage him to keep being confident and friendly and curious about the world. And there’s nothing more important to me to help him be the best Reed he can be.
Five years ago today you made me the luckiest woman in the world. Thanks Adam for the five very best years of my life so far — and looking forward to many, many more with you and Reed!
The first 3 1/2 weeks with Reed were the worst of my life. Reed literally was not sleeping more than 4 hours total in a 24 hour period. For the rest of the time he did nothing but scream and eat. And he’d usually do a lot of screaming while he ate as well. He had painful gas and breastfeeding was not helping matters. I had overactive let-down which was, for him, like putting his mouth on a fire hose, and was making his gas even worse. It led him to constantly come off my breast or bite my nipples which caused really bad trauma to my nipples. I discovered I had Raynaud’s of the nipple, which causes excruciating pain during and for an hour after feeding, so I was usually in excruciating pain 50-75% of the time. Since Reed constantly came off the breast, the breastfeeding sessions took forever, and he’d spend much of the time screaming and trying to get away from my breast because he was afraid of being sprayed. I think he simply wasn’t eating enough, since once we went to bottle feeding his weight increased so much more quickly and he was so much more satisfied.
It was a disaster. But never once during the first 3 1/2 weeks was I willing to supplement with formula. To “give up” would make me a bad mother. I read the La Leche League forums where women with Raynauds talked about how they endured excruciating pain for the entire year (or more!) that they breastfed and how it was worth it. And then there were the women whose babies seemed miserable for the first two or three months they fed their child when their oversupply issues finally resolved themselves. While the support was helpful, I got the sense that there was never a point at which someone could or would say “maybe you should consider alternatives.” Clearly, motherhood means constant pain and I should endure it for the sake of my child. But not only was I in pain, but it seemed to me that he was as well. And I started to wonder why I should continue doing this if we were both miserable.
At the time, I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Every time I did, I got judgment or I felt like I wasn’t being heard. When I went for a postpartum massage, I told my massage therapist (who is also studying to be a childbirth educator) about the issues I’ve been having. She told me I had to stick with it, because it wasn’t good enough to pump breastmilk and made it sound like giving him formula was akin to giving him poison. I talked to my midwife and our pediatrician and both assured me that my son couldn’t possibly be in any pain. But I knew he was; they didn’t hear his screaming throughout the night. I worked with a couple of lactation consultants, all of whom gave me advice that just didn’t work. One showed me a hold that required me to have my 2 week old son (whose body was like a limp noodle back then) sitting up to nurse. I had to somehow hold him straight, support his head, and support my breast, all the while, sitting diagonal to him. WTF?!?!? Another told me that I should use a breast pump for a few minutes before feeding him to decrease the pressure. When I told her at a subsequent visit that he was still panicking at the breast, she told me that I should pump for a few minutes, give him that milk in a bottle to calm him down, and then nurse him at the breast. With that logic, I’d literally be involved in the process of feeding him 24 hours/day. When I suggested just feeding him breastmilk from a bottle or supplementing with formula, she discouraged me from both. She told me that he would not nurse after taking a bottle so early because he’d have nipple confusion (and that was a crock, because after weeks and weeks of not nursing, he did just fine nursing at the ER when I sprained my shoulder and we didn’t have any bottles with us for him — though it wasn’t much fun for me!). Even their rhetoric was judgmental. Not nursing was called “giving up” or “quitting” — certainly not making a proactive choice that’s the best thing for both mother and baby.
By three weeks, I was truly at the end of my rope. I was miserable all the time, yelling at Adam, and wasn’t even feeling all that fond of Reed by then since I’d wait in dread for him to be hungry again. Because of how I felt about nursing him, I felt so guilty, which just made me more depressed and more irritable. I wanted to feel happy about having this beautiful and (mostly) healthy baby, but I didn’t because I felt constantly stressed about feeding him. Finally, I’d had enough and I was willing to listen to my husband who’d been suggesting supplementing with formula from pretty early on. I called Reed’s pediatrician and asked her what she thought. She said that I’d already given him a lot of health benefits from breastfeeding him for 3 1/2 weeks and that if he was still getting some breastmilk, he’d continue to benefit. The key, she said, is “feed the baby, feed the baby, feed the baby.” So we fed him his first formula bottle… and the world didn’t end. In fact, he was suddenly a much happier baby and seemed satisfied after a feeding for the first time ever.
For a little while, Reed got formula at night and I nursed him during the day. But after a little while I realized that I was doing that more to make myself feel like a good mom than for him (and I was still in a lot of pain!). So, since he was six weeks old, I’ve been exclusively pumping and giving him breast milk for about 65% – 100% of the time (depending on how much he eats in a day). The rest of the time he gets formula. And when we moved to exclusively bottle feeding him, the change in him was incredible. He calmed down, slept better, was happy, and became much more curious about the world around him. It was a huge and immediate change. Suddenly, he was the mellow baby we’d dreamed of. And, yes, I was much happier too. I could finally ENJOY my son!
It’s hard enough to make the right choice for yourself and your child without people passing judgment. Whenever I wasn’t nursing Reed during those weeks, I was online reading about other mothers dealing with the same issues. I saw so much smugness online, both from mothers who had an easy time breastfeeding and those who endured lots of pain and suffering to do so (and no, not everyone was like that). While a lot of what I read was supportive, a lot was also really judgmental. People saying that women who don’t breastfeed their infants are lazy and are taking the easy way out. Here are just a few that I found online:
“its much easier to pop and prop a bottle of warmed over formula in the kid in order to get back to your computer screen than it is to nurse a child. you know, after my kid was born, moments after, i realized its about him now, not me.”
“What I do know is that hold my 7th month old breast fed son next to a 7 month old formula baby and you will instantly see some differences. Formula babies often have a waxy skin tone. You would never know it unless you saw it contrasted. Formula babies are not as vivacious as my sons on breastmilk were/are, and formula babies have greater chances of being obese…yes, those critical 12 months in life that you are whining about can make or break it for the rest of your child’s life.”
“If the burden of breast feeding is too great for you, perhaps you have no business having children–after all, everything about the years after infancy is about more and more self-sacrifice.”
While I think breastfeeding is great, I don’t know for sure that it’s this magic bullet people seem to argue it is. A lot of the studies on breast vs. bottle ignore other variables that could explain the benefits. And they often don’t look at whether it’s the physical act of feeding at the breast or the breast milk itself that creates those benefits. People talk about toxins in formula, yet that’s made in a controlled setting, whereas my body is likely full of chemicals that have built up in it over the years. I recently have been reading studies that are looking at whether the rise in breastfeeding exclusively (specifically the lack of vitamin D in breast milk) has led to the rise in autism. I’m not saying breast milk isn’t better, but I don’t necessarily buy all the arguments about what breastfeeding can do for a child. While I found the controversial article “The Case Against Breastfeeding” (which I read in the days before Reed was born) incredibly biased and in some ways ridiculous, I do agree with some of the conclusions she came to. There is pressure on women to breastfeed and so much dubious propaganda about the benefits that women feel like failures if they can’t or don’t do it. And while it’s important to support women who are struggling with breastfeeding and want to continue, it’s equally important to not make people feel like it’s the only option for mothers who love their children.
I know the judgment goes both ways with breast vs. bottle, and there’s a lot of judgment about other things too, like co-sleeping, discipline and circumcision. I just find it ridiculous that we should feel guilty for choosing what we think is best for our family, especially when it bother no one else (vaccinations are another story, because I do feel that puts other kids in harm’s way and it’s probably the thing I’m most nervous about in sending my son to daycare since they don’t require the kids to be vaccinated). If someone chooses to breastfeed for a week, for three years or not at all, they shouldn’t have to feel like other people are judging them for it. It makes me sick that mothers could do that to each other, when what we should be doing is being supportive! Maybe if we stopped attacking each other, we’d have more time and energy to fight for things like affordable daycare, longer maternity leaves, etc.
I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to pump breast milk (maybe it’s the Raynaud’s, but pumping does cause me pain each time I do it), but I’ll do it as long as it feels right for me and him. And if someone wants to call me selfish for stopping so be it. But I’d rather be “selfish” and happy and have a better relationship with my child because of it than be selfless and resent my son for my discomfort. I don’t buy into any culture of martyrdom, because I know that making yourself miserable is bad for your child.
