Thank you for this post. I hope you don't mind me commenting here. I found your journal through several mutual friends and have very much enjoyed your posts about parenting and your experiences as a mother.
I'm pregnant with my first, very wanted, child. I'm finding pregnancy to be wonderful and terrifying all at the same time. I go back and forth between being absolutely amazed that this process is taking place inside me, that my baby is currently a part of me, and being slightly disturbed by that very fact.
I was a formula baby. Both of my sisters and all of my cousins were as well. I don't think I was ever exposed to a nursing mother until I was in high school. I certainly never encountered a positive nursing role-model until my friends started having their children. Therefore, nursing is still a bit of a strange idea to me.
I know the benefits.
My plan is to go into it with an open mind. I know I have friends I can call with questions. I know there are resources available. I am looking forward to the closeness my friends have had with their little ones.
But having grown up surrounded by mothers who did not nurse, and having looked up to them as wonderful women and fine mother role-models for all of my life, I doubt that I will feel crushing guilt if I find nursing to be a struggle or something I dread. And I refuse to apologize for that. Formula is better today than what my generation was raised on, and I believe with all my heart that a happy and healthy mom is more important to the health and well-being of the child than whether they are nursed or formula-fed.
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Date: 2006-04-12 07:32 pm (UTC)I'm pregnant with my first, very wanted, child. I'm finding pregnancy to be wonderful and terrifying all at the same time. I go back and forth between being absolutely amazed that this process is taking place inside me, that my baby is currently a part of me, and being slightly disturbed by that very fact.
I was a formula baby. Both of my sisters and all of my cousins were as well. I don't think I was ever exposed to a nursing mother until I was in high school. I certainly never encountered a positive nursing role-model until my friends started having their children. Therefore, nursing is still a bit of a strange idea to me.
I know the benefits.
My plan is to go into it with an open mind. I know I have friends I can call with questions. I know there are resources available. I am looking forward to the closeness my friends have had with their little ones.
But having grown up surrounded by mothers who did not nurse, and having looked up to them as wonderful women and fine mother role-models for all of my life, I doubt that I will feel crushing guilt if I find nursing to be a struggle or something I dread. And I refuse to apologize for that. Formula is better today than what my generation was raised on, and I believe with all my heart that a happy and healthy mom is more important to the health and well-being of the child than whether they are nursed or formula-fed.