Our beautiful daughter was finally born in January 2007, the perfect baby. The lack of sleep and the huge adjustments of the first couple of weeks made it the most exhausting and stressful time of our lives. Our baby latched on well from the start and although my wife's breasts were redder than beetroots, we initially thought that the whole feeding side of things was under control. Pretty soon we felt that our tiny girl was not getting bigger and the visits from the midwife later confirmed that she was losing weight at an alarming rate. We were told to get some formula into her ASAP. Words cannot express the feeling of relief we felt from knowing that she had finally had a proper meal and the feed had an instantaneous effect on her color, activity and sleep.
Despite her best efforts at breastfeeding, my wife’s milk, for no explainable reason dried up. She consulted a lactation consultant but by then she could barely squeeze a drop. My wife felt she had let our daughter, me and everybody down and that her physical inability was going to compromise our daughter's health for the rest of her life. Almost all the literature that she read and opinions that she heard told her that 'breast is best' and failure to breastfeed would make your child a hospitalised invalid for the rest of their days. There was subtle pressure from health experts, media, family, friends and even me.
Of course she hadn’t let anybody down. Personally I didn’t care that she wasn’t drinking her mother's brand. I just wanted my girl to eat and grow. There was also the added bonus that I could feed her too and that, as far as the love stakes go, we were on a level playing field with no unfair advantages from exclusive feeding rights.
Our beautiful girl has since chomped away at the ‘radioactive, poisonous’ formula and has never looked back. She is now 7 months old and leaving all the other babies her age for dead. For us, her general health and well being has alleviated any guilt we might feel from feeding her formula. At the end of the day babies need food and if formula was so bad why would they let you buy it? My wife and I very occasionally put up with smug people who feel that they are better parents and better people because they fed their children breast milk when they know nothing about what we went through. I just laugh because I know that our baby is better than theirs and she has a 'Super Mum'.