Looking over the news this morning, I wandered over to Mothering.com one of my favorite sites for all things parenting, and came across a blog post that someone wrote about this article on Babble.com.

The post was fairly typical, but the comments that followed it were what appalled me…not because I found them unusual, but because, frankly, they bored me. There were probably 14 comments all detailing why you should breastfeed, how you should only nurse, how bottlefeeding is bad, etc., etc. Now, I am completely in favor in breastfeeding. I encourage it to new moms whenever I can. I have written many articles detailing the benefits of nursing…and I fully support the Nestle boycott - as well as vilify the formula companies that try to make moms believe that formula is just as good as breastmilk.

But, for whatever reason, many women choose the bottle. That fact is a failure of our culture and we need sweeping changes to fix it. Women, in this society, believe that breastfeeding is gross, hard, time consuming or any of a number of things. And they use these reasons to not even try. It’s not OK, but it’s the truth.

We need to work hard to show women, especially young moms, that breastfeeding is natural and best. We need to show women that having a baby and then taking care of it by holding it and nurturing it through babywearing and breastfeeding are perfectly normal - and preferred.

We need this to happen in the hospitals and birthing centers and doctors offices. We need lactation consultants who will volunteer their time - and help women three days after leaving the hospital when the milk comes in.

I have nursed 6 children now. As I write this, number six is nursing in my lap. But I didn’t always have such an easy time of it. With my first, who is now 15, I had a horrific delivery and then was instructed in breastfeeding. My baby was a screamer in those first few days - probably because the delivery was so horrible and his poor mother was so unsure of herself! He was left to scream in the nursery and then given a bottle and pacifier without me even knowing. And no one - no one - told me how hard nursing would be once my milk came in. You try getting milk out of a rock hard canteloupe! It can’t be done - especially when you have no one around to tell you how. So, now I had a screaming baby who liked pacifiers and bottles, a chest full of huge - I mean huge, painful melons, and a mother who had bottlefed, so she couldn’t help. We called the hospital. They recommended a lactation consultant who charged $80 to come and help me out. Meanwhile, she said, feed your baby with a spoon or cup. “Are you f******* high?” I thought. I didn’t have $80. So no lactation consultant for me. Bitch.

Finally, I figured out, on my own, that if I pumped a bit of milk out, the baby could latch on. But it took almost a week and a lot of crying on both mine and Matthew’s part, before we finally settled in. And even though I now know how to breastfeed, I have still suffered my share of clogged ducts, cracked nipples and a host of other fun issues!

If I could have just heard from one other mother who survived these types of things and still nursed, I would have had a lot fewer tears.

I can understand why many mothers give it up. With the folks at LaLeche acting like you’re a freak if you can’t figure it out, who wants to keep trying?

We have to stop attacking each other as women. We have to stop judging each other for our parenting choices. I know many perfectly good mothers who used formula - my own mother included. I also know a few really questionable mothers who nursed their children. Judging individual mothers for their choices is not the way to promote breastfeeding. Breastfeeding advocates need to work to change societal expectations and at the heart of it is our dependence on corporate messages. The formula companies have worked hard to make moms believe that formula is just as good as breastmilk. Media companies have sexualized our boobs so much, we, as a society, have forgotten what they are for. And, for a culture that only recently accepted the idea of a woman going to work full time, it’s shocking to me how quickly it has become the norm. In my “circle,” I am only one of two stay-at-home (work at home) moms. Everyone else goes to work and puts their kids in daycare because they believe that they have to. But that issue is for another day.

Whether a mother chooses to breast feed, bottle feed with breast milk or bottle feed with formula, we must first learn to support each other - and then take on the rest of the world! While we are debating each other for the ways we feed our children - there are many children in this country, and around the world, who aren’t being fed - or loved - at all.