Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.

International Breastfeeding symbol

  Breastfeeding. Bottle feeding. Seems simple enough. The reality is that more goes into infant feeding choices than most realize. What a lot of mothers experience that influences their choice is pressure.
In an informal (very informal) chat with some friends, pressure seems to be something many of us have experienced. It comes from all sources, too. NICU nurses, pediatricians, midwives/OBs, spouses, friends, family, and of course, the internet. And it can lead to health consequences, amongst other issues, if the mother feels pressure to breastfeed when formula is needed instead or if the doctors do not inform her that formula is an acceptable option. Opinions abound when it comes to feeding our babies.

For myself, feeding my kids as babies has been emotionally charged. In '10, I told my story on the Fearless Formula Feeder blog. I haven't really sat down to talk about how things went after The Princess was born, but it seems like a good time now. It all comes back to pressure.
I got very lucky when The Princess was born. Let me say that again. I got very lucky. I think attaching morality to infant feeding (good mom = breastfeeding, bad mom = formula feeding) is the cause of much heartache in the world we mothers inhabit. I had put so much time during my pregnancy into learning all I could about breastfeeding, and was so determined to try. Aside from issues we began to have with getting her to gain weight, physically, breastfeeding came easy. When I was still in recovery, and The Princess was 45 minutes old, she had her first nursing. Unlike my experience with Tank, I did not feel like throwing her across the room. No flashbacks. No squicky creepy crawly feelings. Even Husbeast was shocked!
All during our hospital stay, we nursed. Even though she had lost 11% of her body weight, we nursed. Once my milk came in with a vengeance, things got simultaneously easier and harder. She was getting milk thanks to my apparent oversupply, but my nipples got torn to shreds thanks to the constant engorgement. At home, we brought her to our pediatrician every few days for weight checks, which would continue on a monthly basis until her 1st birthday. We were told to start her on formula the week before she turned 5 months old because she was officially failure to thrive (FTT). I cried in the doctor's office. I distinctly remember saying, "This is the beginning of the end! *sob sob* No one keeps nursing once formula is started!". Husbeast made us take a trip to the store to buy bottles. I broke down again in the aisle. I think people were staring as though I'd lost my mind. That'd be a pretty accurate description.
Our pediatrician had given us a huge can of formula that was fortified with rice cereal. Husbeast held our Princess while I made up a bottle of formula. Part of me was grateful I had exclusively formula fed my boys because it made the actual preparing of the formula much easier to do while crying. Part of me hated myself for giving up too soon. Turns out that it was a lot of drama for nothing. The Princess refused bottles. She refused the SNS. She refused cups, droppers, finger feeding, and syringes. She just wouldn't drink the damn formula, no matter what we did! We tried a few different brands. We tried having other people attempt to feed her. Nothing. With the doctor's ok, we began solids instead. I also upped the amount of nursings at that point. 12 to 14 times a day, she was on my breast. 2 or 3 times a day, we'd feed her purees or baby cereal mixed with my pumped milk. Slowly, she began to gain weight at a better pace. I probably would've combo fed from the start had I not felt so much pressure to nurse at all costs.
Given my history, I had anticipated nursing for maybe 3 months. In the beginning, I struggled with a lot of physical pain, and some psychological pain as well. I also had to deal with Raynaud's phenomenon of my nipples. Sorry for the TMI there. Because of the pressure I felt to keep going, I did. Lucky for me, once warmer weather arrived, the pain disappeared.
Now that The Princess is 14 months old, I figured the pressure I felt to keep going would fade. After all, I had given her a year of my milk, what I had thought was the gold standard. Even though I am happy where we're at with nursing (we began the weaning process after her 1st birthday, and now nurse 2 or 3 times a day), there's still that darn pressure. Quite a few women online like to throw around what the WHO says about breastfeeding when others talk about weaning before age 2. There's a lot of talk of child-led weaning, and when stating how long they've been nursing, many women add "...and still going strong!". It's hard to not feel like you are failing your child if you set a cut off date for nursing.
The thing with pressure to breastfeed (or go beyond what you are comfortable with) is that it becomes less about making sure your child is fed and becomes more about having a higher moral standing than someone else. A good mom breastfeeds. A great mom lets her child decide when they're done breastfeeding. Again, that's why I am so against attaching moral value to something that is value neutral. For some reason, in our world today, feeding your baby has become a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" proposition. No matter how or what you feed them, it'll always be too much or never enough for some people. And if other moms are anything like me, that first year or so of a child's life is hard enough as it is. Ask me if I still feel this way after nursing my daughter on her wedding day. ;)