Whether you’ve breast fed, bottle fed, or adopted kids after they were weaned, you should go read “Failing at Feeding” over at Brain, Child. In it, writer Paige Schilt offers some excellent thoughts on maternal stereotypes and expectations, being the lone lesbian in a mothers’ support group, and the physical and emotional toll of having difficulties with breastfeeding.
She begins:
Over the past forty years, I have achieved a number of failures. I’m not married to my first husband. I never became a tenured professor. I can’t play the guitar. However, none of these disappointments has the same sting as the failure to breastfeed my son for the recommended minimum of six months.
Hope you’ll go read the rest. I’ve read discussions of breastfeeding that quickly devolve into heated debates. Paige doesn’t preach, but rather shares on her own experience and urges compassion.
She also writes at her own blog, queerrocklove.com, about “the adventures of a gay, transgender, rock-n-roll family raising a son in the South.”