Bottle Feeding Doesn't Make Me a Bad Mom!
Submitted by ekinder
I was unable to breastfeed my daughter. I went to lactation consultants and doctors only to be told—a week and a half after my daughter was born—that I literally couldn't make breast milk.
I cried and cried because I felt like I was not giving my child the advantages she deserved, and I worried that she was going to be unhealthy. I would try not to give my daughter a bottle in public because I would always get terrible looks.
Now my daughter is 16 months old, very happy and healthy, and I realize all my concerns about bottle feeding were unfounded.
Yet there's a real stigma against mothers who don't breastfeed. I heard that there were some advertisements that were supposed to be released nationwide with a baby sucking a syringe, implying that all children who aren't breastfed are going to grow up suffering from diabetes and obesity! Of course, the public outcry stopped the ads from being released.
Sometimes mothers cannot breastfeed. They feel bad enough about it already without having society tell them that they're terrible parents. Just because a mother does not breastfeed does not make her a bad mom!
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