I believe there is a difference between supporting breastfeeding mothers and promoting breastfeeding.

And as an aside, it is so cool and weird to put a face and voice to someone I’ve been following for a while! Thanks for doing the video.

Having said that, I do want to point out that I think the posts I’ve read on this blog so far are balanced and well-thought out. We do need a safe place for women to be able to come and talk about this very important issue without anyone feeling intentionally hurt. My friends who never wanted to breastfeed from the beginning are so secure in their decision that I don’t think they would ever spend time on the internet writing about it. It’s the women who wanted to (and either medically couldn’t or didn’t find the support they needed) who really need a place to talk about it and deal with it. I hope this blog could be a place for them.

That said, I just wanted to clarify my earlier post. While I understand there are a small number of women that are medically unable to breastfeed and don’t have a “choice”, that is not the population I was speaking to in my post. I am talking about the majority group of ff that choose to ff, and then, in my opinion, want to then discount the facts that make the choice is an unequal one. I am not choosing to trash anyone, I am saying everyone should acknowledge the facts and I’m glad this blog wasn’t afraid to.

@phdinparenting i love your posts and I think you do amazing work! There is so much misinformation out there and if I had just listened to my doctors after my first birth, I doubt I would have been able to continue to breastfeed, but thanks to people like you (via the internet) I overcame many difficulties. You rock!

@sam — Let’s see, I know the order here. Options 1 and 2 were out for me. Even @phdinparenting expressed her reluctance to offer her breastmilk to someone else’s child (in her interview at change.org) and that reluctance seems to be shared throughout the breastfeeding community, so that’s not a real option. Leaving my daughter, at any rate, with either starving or formula. The problem is when the alternatives aren’t really “choices” and then people get up on their high horses and give me grief.

@cave mother — I find your statement to be the most hurtful. Why? Because it makes what was already an impossible situation even worse. How dare you suggest that I don’t respect my child because I couldn’t breastfeed? What gives you that right? And yes, I’m taking it personally. I’m taking it personally for every other woman who will encounter that attitude and end up feeling like shit because you have to be judgmental.

@phdinparenting I’m well aware of the dangers of PPD. The thing is you don’t know whether something else could or would have tipped the balance for her. We do know, that in this case, they believe her feelings of failure over breastfeeding did it. And where do women get these feelings of failure — from lactivists who say people who don’t/can’t breastfeed failed. And put immense pressure on people to try it by saying things like “If you truly respect your baby’s rights to have the best start he/she can, then you owe it to them to try to breastfeed.”

As I said, I would not have come here in the first place if I had known. I mean, from my own life, I know it. When I go in and buy a tub of formula, I get asked by any and everyone if I know that I should be breastfeeding my daughter. I have been harassed buying nipples/bottles for my daughter. I have been hassled when people see me giving her a bottle. This moves *way beyond* support for breastfeeding women and the promotion of breastfeeding, and I truly think it has to stop. I just wish that everyone who is so passionate about supporting breastfeeding women would consider the fact that WOMEN, period, need support and it isn’t necessary to hurt one group of people to support another group.

I do know that I will not likely be coming back.