Thank you for this. You've captured all of the things that have been bothering me about overzealous lactivists. I keep trying to write about it, and start out rationally only to devolve into “Grar! HULK SMASH!”
My daughter is about 2 1/2 months younger than Alex and has GERD as well. We started out breastfeeding well only to have it completely fall apart when the reflux started in earnest. As it turns out, it's hard to get a baby to latch when she's too busy arching back and screaming. With a bottle, I could tease the nipple past her mouth and get a few swallows down before the screaming started. It took six weeks to find the right combination of medication and diet changes, but I couldn't get her to start breastfeeding effectively full-time again. I was luckier than you in that I had a month to establish my supply and I respond well to a pump. So I've been feeding her a combination of pumped milk and formula for the past seven months.
You would think that La Leche League would have been the ideal place to go for help to get K back on the breast. But I couldn't bring myself to go to a meeting and hear in person what I read in multiple places on the Web: -that formula is evil (hypoallergenic formula has been the difference between a sickly underfed baby and one in the 90th percentile for weight) -that pumped milk in a bottle isn't as good as milk straight from the breast (it's second on the hierarchy, after all) -sneering about all of the pathetic excuses women give for not being able to breastfeed -odes to the special comfort and emotional bonding that comes from a child at your breast (speaking as the mother whose child's reaction to the breast was screaming in pain, I can only say “Ouch.”) -that breastfeeding a reflux baby is easier than bottlefeeding (I found that gem in an article on the LLL website; I don't know what the author was smoking) -the smug refusal to realize that breastfeeding is a relationship and that perhaps breastfeeding failure is because there's something wrong with the baby, not the mother
It's a sad state of affairs when the people a movement is trying to help shy away from it out of fear of its activists.
I'm a friend of fairoriana btw. I hope you don't mind if I friend you – I'm always on the lookout for fellow mothers of babies K's age and I enjoy the way you write about parenthood.
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Date: 2006-04-14 01:48 am (UTC)My daughter is about 2 1/2 months younger than Alex and has GERD as well. We started out breastfeeding well only to have it completely fall apart when the reflux started in earnest. As it turns out, it's hard to get a baby to latch when she's too busy arching back and screaming. With a bottle, I could tease the nipple past her mouth and get a few swallows down before the screaming started. It took six weeks to find the right combination of medication and diet changes, but I couldn't get her to start breastfeeding effectively full-time again. I was luckier than you in that I had a month to establish my supply and I respond well to a pump. So I've been feeding her a combination of pumped milk and formula for the past seven months.
You would think that La Leche League would have been the ideal place to go for help to get K back on the breast. But I couldn't bring myself to go to a meeting and hear in person what I read in multiple places on the Web:
-that formula is evil (hypoallergenic formula has been the difference between a sickly underfed baby and one in the 90th percentile for weight)
-that pumped milk in a bottle isn't as good as milk straight from the breast (it's second on the hierarchy, after all)
-sneering about all of the pathetic excuses women give for not being able to breastfeed
-odes to the special comfort and emotional bonding that comes from a child at your breast (speaking as the mother whose child's reaction to the breast was screaming in pain, I can only say “Ouch.”)
-that breastfeeding a reflux baby is easier than bottlefeeding (I found that gem in an article on the LLL website; I don't know what the author was smoking)
-the smug refusal to realize that breastfeeding is a relationship and that perhaps breastfeeding failure is because there's something wrong with the baby, not the mother
It's a sad state of affairs when the people a movement is trying to help shy away from it out of fear of its activists.
I'm a friend of