Breastmilk has always been, and will always be, the most pure natural form of the greatest nutrition available for any baby or toddler. The immunity system that it offers to strengthen, the nutrition to help them grow, the connection that breastfeeding creates between son or daughter and mother. There is no replacing the value of the milk, and I'm sure that others will agree no replacing the feeling of that special bond with your infant.
I never got to experience that. As I explained in my other parenting blogs, my daughter was born 4 months early around 24 weeks gestation, and had a feeding tube through her mouth, and then her nose, for almost the entire 4 months. I pumped, every day, as often as I could. There were distractions, I'm sure there was internal stress, and there were times when I forgot to eat or drink water. I feel guilty every day about not trying harder to produce more, but my breastmilk stopped coming in after about 2 months. After this, I luckily had a stockpile from the beginning when I was overproducing, that lasted my daughter another 2 weeks. I tried power pumping, I tried oatmeal and mother's milk, and then as a last resort, I tried pumping every 2 hours for 20 minutes for 24 hours. Each time, getting nothing.
I do not feel judged about bottle feeding in my personal life; most of the people that I know with babies are bottle feeding. But with the world as viral as it is, there is so much support right now in the communities that I'm involved in (Raising Natural Kids, with organic foods, medicines, etc... that is the type of person that I am), so in a way I feel attacked when people express their actual hatred for mothers who bottle feed, or don't try to breastfeed, etc. Yes, I said hatred for it. I have seen posts that stated how they don't think that mothers who bottle feed are good mothers, love their babies enough, and so on. It is one thing to support breastfeeding, it's another to attack people that don't.
To see my daughter's journey through the NICU, please see the Parenting section of my blog for pictures and other stories
Anonymous posted (but didn't show up):
ReplyDeleteА mοtіvаting disсussion is definіtеly worth cοmment.
I bеlieνе that you neеd to write more on this subject matter, it may not be a taboο matter but typіcally people don't talk about such subjects. To the next! Many thanks!!
Thank you, I definitely appreciate the feedback!
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