I formula fed MY child, that doesn't make me a monster

First and foremost, I want to say that I have nothing against women who breastfeed their children. That is great if that was the choice you made for your family. The great part of being a mother is making choices for your children. I decided not to breastfeed my son, and that was my personal choice. I know there are a lot of women that feel strongly about breastfeeding and that is fine. What is not fine is how some advocates make women who formula feed out to be bad mothers or monsters.

This is the mentality I have seen over and over again in the blogging world and frankly, I am getting quite sick of it. I keep hearing that formula companies kill babies in foreign countries; babies that co-sleep and tragically pass away are only formula fed babies. Really? Let’s just not sit there and be like oh and by the way if you would have fed your child the “right” way you wouldn’t have had this tragedy happen. That is just heartless and cruel. I personally think co-sleeping is not for my family, I personally think that co-sleeping is dangerous no matter what your child drinks. I am not saying that people who chose to co-sleep are bad parents or monsters; it is just not for my family. How is it that some breastfeeding advocates can sit there and make outrageous claims and make other mothers feel like crap because they don’t share the same opinions as you? Since when did it become YOUR business how I fed MY child?

My son is three and a half and is perfectly healthy and he has only been sick a couple times since birth. He is smart and very talkative. Guess what he guzzled down his formula. I decided I didn’t want to breastfeed him which was my choice. Thankfully, I didn’t feel any pressure from the hospital I gave birth in to breastfeed. I had already been there for two weeks, they knew I would bite back. I had to wait a while before I got to hold Noah too because they took forever with my recovery and to bathe him. Oh, I had a C-Section, which means I had drugs. I didn’t have a choice with the way I gave birth, so he would have had to wait to be fed.

You are not a better mother than I am, because you breastfed. You don’t have the right to make me feel like I am a monster or I don’t care as much about my child. You chose your breast, I chose a bottle. I think what we should do is embrace each other as fellow mothers and not let it come between us. No one is right or wrong. The judgments need to stop. We are just doing what is best for our own families and children and that is all we can do.