On public discourse of breastfeeding...

It's been some years since the birth of my first child, and I'm still astounded at the never-ending war over breastfeeding. Indeed I'm almost rather taken aback by how prejudicial the public discourse has become, as if no common ground (as if new mothers need one) can be found.

We all know about benefits of breastfeeding, it's:

• Faster
  There's no need to clean the pumping gear, or wash baby bottles. For 15-20 minutes of feeding time, you could be looking at at least twice that long (probably even more when you're expressing breast milk for later) taking care of all the preparation work for other alternatives (pumping, feeding, washing up, freezing/defrozing).
• Cheaper
  Lactating mothers are eating anyways, and baby formula can be expensive. As babies go past six months and are growing fast, you can burn through a box of baby formula in no time.
• Easier
  You don't need to bring pumping gear with you, and as long as the baby is with the mother, the milk spigot is always available and on, 24x7.
• Health benefitsIt's most natural way to feed your baby that Mother Nature has provided us for, with the most assured way to build up the immune system for the baby. Whatever immunity the mother has, it'll be passed onto the baby.
• Natural
  Breast milk provides all the nutrients and fluids, in the most perfect mix, to the baby

Most women, given the choice and circumstances, will probably opt for breastfeeding. But one should not jump too quickly to conclusion for those who can't or won't. How about these:

• There are many working mothers whose workplace does not provide for the space or allow for the time for pumping breast milk. 
• There are those too who cannot afford to not working for a living, to put food on the table for the family. Even if they want to breastfeed, it will simply be impractical to do so.
• There are those whose babies simply can't latch on. Yep, that's me, right there. I tried with my firstborn, and my second child, but no luck. For those who latch on naturally or those who have never had their nipples chewed, they would NEVER know the pain or how hard it can be for some mothers. 
• And then there are those mothers who have health issues that are unable to feed their own babies, or simply don't produce enough milk. It's not a matter of choice, but more a survival (for the baby). 

The lists go on. For me, as a matter of practicality, my attitude is whatever it takes. That means, pumping breast milk from my fast dwindling supply, that means preserving the precious breast milk by mixing breast milk with formulating, that means training my babies to take cold bottles from the fridge, and to put it back if the bottle was not finished.

Yes yes, I've heard enough tsk tsk from others, including my own mother, chastising me for feeding cold bottles to my babies. But I'm blessed with an open-minded husband who helps with all fronts. (He's approached the feeding of babies from all scientific angle, including the search for the "perfect" sized nipple for the bottle in order to reduce air sucked in by the baby during feeding which help in burping the babies afterward.) I'm forever grateful too, to have a pediatrician who is as open-minded as my husband. Perhaps his acknowledgement that babies at two months old should be able to regulate their own body temperature, was among the first sigh of relief that cold bottles are just fine for babies. (For those who care to learn about this, both of my babies only showed me their cringe of face in a flash second when they first tasted cold milk, but neither of us ever looked back. To this day, both my kids drink everything cold, and they're fit as a fiddle.)

You know what, in the end, everything is well and good. Both my babies turn out fine (even with cold bottles of 50/50 breast milk and formula since they were two months old). My husband would tell you too, that he and his brother were both formula babies, and they turn out just fine too (Ivy League'd). One of my sisters breastfeed her two kids till past three years old, but they have the usual usual kids' ailments (ear infection, asthma, fever, the works) from time to time, even more so than my kids.

My mother's generations, decades ago, all breastfed their babies, of course. It's a matter of necessity. Almost all women were stay-home moms, and breastfeeding was "part of the job." I and my siblings all grew up on breast milk. I never even had a low-grade fever when growing up, while one of my sisters would have fever often.

What does this all tell us?

I'd say, breast milk is great, if you can do it. If you can't or won't, that's not the end of the world. For chrissake, there are so many more good things that you can do for your kids through their lifetime than just breast milk. I won't get too hung up on that.

To those passive-aggressive, or outright aggressive-aggressive, sets who insist on their own brand of parenting to be THE best way to go, I'd say, just fuck off.  Most mothers (maybe with the exception of a small numbers of them who shouldn't even have kids in the first place) have the best interests of the babies in mind. It's hard enough to be a new mother, and they don't need someone else to lecture them every step of the way. This is exactly the same type of meddling into someone else's affairs that the religious set does to the women's reproductive rights and abortion rights.

More often than not, public discourse on breastfeeding is simply the passive-aggressive way for some women (I won't even bother to acknowledge men in such conversation) to brag about how they know more than other women, how they are better mothers than other women, how they should be the standard-bearers and not other women. To those, I'd gladly say too, to just fuck off.