It’s February, which means summer, which means hot.  Like many places over here, we don’t have any air-conditioning in our apartment.  That means Joe spends a lot of the day like this:

If only it were permissible for adults to go around dressed in the same fashion!  It might help cool some of the tempers that have been simmering in NZ these days surrounding the whole “breast vs. formula-feeding” issue.

It’s not a new issue, really.  The “breast vs. formula” debate has been going on ever since formula became a popular alternative.  This latest flare-up surrounds a brief, seconds-long clip of Piri Weepu {famous NZ rugby player} feeding his baby girl with a bottle while appearing in an anti-smoking PSA.  The local La Leche League expressed concern that this was undermining the “breast milk is best” position of the NZ government {who was running the anti-smoking PSA}, and the clip was pulled.

Naturally, this was cause for a revolt.  It’s ridiculous, really.  In one camp, you have LLL who’s aim is to promote breastfeeding while providing support and education.  In another camp, you have parents who feel targeted for using formula.  There’s likely a 3rd camp out there as well, but for the purposes of this post, I’m only going to focus on those two.

I think that most people in Western culture have heard at some point that “breast is best” and know that breast milk is the ideal, the same way that most people realize that drinking during pregnancy is a bad idea and that smoking around children should be avoided.  However, as someone who almost exclusively breast-feeds {I do occasionally give Joe expressed milk in a bottle and we’ve started to introduce solids}, I get irked when people are staunchly for or against one side or the other.

I believe that God created a perfect world, and that we as women were designed to be able to breastfeed.  Unfortunately, that perfect world and that perfect design were mucked up.  The end result is that things don’t always work as they were originally intended.  We have problems like complicated births, c-sections, failure to thrive, prematurity, food allergies, and a whole host of other issues that can affect both a woman’s ability to produce milk and a baby’s ability to ingest it.  That doesn’t even begin to factor in things like needing to return to work in order to help support your family, a situation which can be so stressful that your milk supply dries up entirely.

Do I think that women and society should strive to support breastfeeding?  Yes – absolutely.  It’s the perfect food for our babies in an ideal world.  But like I said, that ideal, perfect world no longer exists.  That’s not an excuse to throw up our hands and say, “Oh well!”  You should ask questions.  Go to a local LLL meeting.  Call up a lactation consultant.  Educate yourself. Talk to your doctor or midwife.  Most women that I know who have used or are using formula aren’t doing it solely for convenience’s sake – they’re doing it because they attempted to breastfeed and for a variety of reasons found that they were unable to do so.  And unfortunately, at some point or another, these women feel shame or guilt as a result.

You are not a bad parent because of feeding your child formula.  It would be far, far worse to choose not to feed your child.  I’d even say that it would be far, far worse to work yourself into exhaustion while trying everything in the book to breastfeed, leaving you stressed, miserable, and unable to cope with and enjoy your new baby.  Anyone who says, “Tsk, well if you’d only tried X, Y, and Z, then you’d be able to breastfeed successfully” is presenting an incredibly simplistic answer to a very complicated problem.  It’s not always that easy.

So, feed your baby.  Love them.  Listen to what experts tell you.  Try your best.  Then move on.  If someone criticizes your choice {which to me, the idea of a stranger coming up to you and shaking their finger at how you feed your child is just bizarre} then give them the attention they deserve: none.