Fed is best. Period. One way isn’t better than the other. And no way is more convenient.
I keep getting told to give my baby formula. Not because she’s malnourished. Not because she can’t latch. Not because I have a low supply. But because it’s more convenient. And that’s BS.
I know formula fed babies who sleep through the night and others that wake up every couple of hours. I know breastfed babies that eat on a schedule and others that demand feed. I know moms who couldn’t produce any milk and babies who have dairy allergies and pumping moms and sleep trained babies and moms with over supply and babies with colic. Any way you slice it, there’s a massive amount of planning and cleaning and general inconvenience involved. Nothing about having a baby is convenient.
So let’s stop commenting on how moms are choosing to feed their babies and instead support them with whatever decision they make. Whether I choose to switch to formula, exclusively pump, bf her for two full years. Or all of theses. Or none of these. Your job, world, is to support me and all the other moms so we can happily raise the next generation of thriving humans. Or at the very least, keep your comments to yourselves.
Every mom has made a decision about how to feed their baby. And oftentimes that decision comes with some hardship and sacrifice and disappoint. But at the end of the day, we are all so happy to be able to nourish our babies however we can. And we’d like for you all to be happy with us.
I’ve chosen to breastfeed my baby. That was a very personal choice. Although it was challenging at the beginning, I got very lucky that she took to it well and really loves to eat. I have a good production and she’s gaining weight. However, I’ve become a little doubtful about my breastfeeding as of late. She’s been waking a lot at night and my friends and family insist she needs formula to stay asleep and that I’m not producing enough and that’s why she’s hungry. I knew that wasn’t true, but still I doubted myself.
Well, today I can proudly announce that they were all W-R-O-N-G wrong 😊 We just left baby’s four month check up and she has jumped from the 10th to the 40th percentile in weight on breast milk alone. In two months. Her frequent night waking is very typical and developmentally on schedule. It’s a normal growth spurt. And the doctor assured me that if she’s hungry in the middle of the night that I should feed her. Let her fuss a bit to see if she can get herself back to sleep, but if she wants to nurse I should go ahead and nurse her.
The thing is, I already knew all this. I knew. But no one would listen to me when I said it. They doubted me, which led me to doubt myself. It wasn’t until the doctor said it that everyone started nodding along in agreement. Why is that? Why don’t we trust mothers intuition? I know my friends and family have good intentions when offering advice, but sometimes moms don’t need your advice. We need a reminder to trust our instincts. We know what our babies need. We know like we know to breathe air. It’s instinct. We need to trust that instinct. And encourage mothers everywhere to trust their own instincts.
Maybe next time you need to get a gift for a new mom, you can gift her that extra boost in confidence. Remind her that she was born to do this, that her instincts are real and that she never has to doubt herself. Also, some wine and chocolate couldn’t hurt.