{"id":2497,"date":"2013-05-07T15:43:44","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T22:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/?p=2497"},"modified":"2013-05-07T15:43:44","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T22:43:44","slug":"days-of-milk-and-formula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/?p=2497","title":{"rendered":"Days of Milk and Formula"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sol is visibly plumping up. I am so, so relieved. It took him a few days to get used to the bottle, but it turns out our doctor was right: supplementing with formula has made this problem vanish.<\/p>\n

I was struck by the fact that every mother who left me messages of support, to say they had been in the same position, also talked about how hard it had been to confront the stigma that surrounds formula, and the sense that anything less than exclusive breastfeeding makes you a Bad Mom. There is a whole industry out there that has a vested interest in pushing the “breast is best” philosophy to an irrational extreme: “the lactation-commercial-industrial complex,” as my BFF calls it. It’s like the crunchy-granola mirror of the formula companies—I mean, those are still more evil, but at this point they are less insidious.<\/p>\n

Every mom in my demographic can reel off the studies: breastfeeding makes healthier babies, even smarter babies. (It doesn’t, actually<\/a>, but never mind.) And of course we want the best for our babies, so women are quite literally torturing themselves in a struggle to live up to the breastfeeding ideal. I had one friend, whose baby was prone to a painful latch, describe to me how she would spend each nursing session weeping<\/em> from the pain. Another, who spent a small fortune on lactation consultants and breast pumps, told me that her failure to exclusively breastfeed made her feel like she wasn’t a real mother<\/em> to her baby. <\/p>\n

This is crazy, and cruel. There’s no One Right Way to be a mom, and while nursing is lovely, formula is fine too. I’m still nursing Sol a lot, but I don’t feel the least bit ashamed of giving him a bottle as well. I’m just glad that he’s getting what he needs to grow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sol is visibly plumping up. I am so, so relieved. It took him a few days to get used to the bottle, but it turns out our doctor was right: supplementing with formula has made this problem vanish. I was struck by the fact that every mother who left me messages of support, to say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2497"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2502,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2497\/revisions\/2502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}