Breast is best…right?
One of my favourite topics, the ‘breast is best’ debate. The one where on all the forums the keyboard warriors come out bashing the mum that’s asked advice on breastfeeding/bottle feeding. And it infuriates me how some mums can make other mums feel like absolute shit. For their personal choices.
This mama was a milk maid for four days. (Four days too long if you ask me) And guess what? My child is healthy, happy, intelligent, and rarely gets ill. Go Aptimal!
When I was pregnant I had already made the choice that I didn’t want to breastfeed (let’s call it bf from hereonin), selfish as it may sound I just didn’t want too. I didn’t feel comfortable with the idea and it just wasn’t me. The thought of being a constant supply of food through day and night just didn’t appeal to me, and the idea of a breast pump? No thanks, I’ll leave that to Daisy.
Of course I felt a little bit guilty about the ‘selfish’ decision but ultimately it was my decision.
Until, I gave birth and my massive bright pink squashed face daughter was handed to me and made her merry little way to my tiny udders (also affectionately known as ‘shit tits’) and started grazing away like she owned me. And this continued for three days. One night, in the nights BS (before sleep) she stayed there for about three hours. Seriously.
Everyone tried to tell me it would get better by day four as ‘my milk would come in’ – like some sort of shit express delivery. Day 3 all I witnessed was bright purple fruit pastilles where my nipples once were, and Day 4 saw cracked skin and bleeding so I hung my nursing bra up, popped in the cabbage leaves (it really does work) and reached for the Aptimal. Oh, and I also took a photo of my mahoosive kahunas as I knew they were never gonna look like THAT again.
And suddenly, my journey to the first week of motherhood looked up.
Now, I’m not saying, definitely not saying, bottle is the way forward but I am saying whatever makes YOU feel comfortable then do it. Don’t try and please anyone – do what’s best for you and ultimately that is what’s best for baby.
If you do go for the milk maid option – you’ll have no fumbling with sterilisers and all the faff, no panic over teet sizes, brands of formula and the ‘shall I make it up beforehand/do I make it fresh and cool it down even though the baby is screaming it’s head off and it’s 1am’ dilemmas; resulting in money saved and more pennies for Costa. Wooo hooo.
On the other hand if you go the bottle route, someone else can feed the baby whilst you enjoy your hot Costa cuppa and a chocolate tiffin.
So in my view, fed is best.
