I seem to get a lot of hits off of feeling guilty about stopping breastfeeding.
Why would you feel guilty? Either you tried and it didn’t work or you did it as long as you could and now it’s ended. I don’t understand this stigma people have attached to it. Either they’re discussing the picture of a child breastfeeding on the cover of a magazine or they’re talking about how formula-feeding moms are abusing their babies by not breastfeeding (on mom boards).
It’s a breast… it’s life-giving, foreplay-inducing, symbol of a woman and most women are repelled by it. I see now why America is heading towards hell in a hand-basket. We’re amongst a lot of conservatives that are too scared to see tits. And they call European barbarians? They’re far more advanced than we are because they don’t give a shit. They let the boobies fly everywhere! I know.. I’ve been a few times.
They don’t care if you breastfeed or formula feed. Naturally doctors assume you’ll be breastfeeding, but I’ve known some European women who straight-out formula-fed and they were met with no criticism from peers or physicians. Isn’t that nice? They don’t have this pressure of breastfeeding in public and they don’t carry the guilt about not being able to breastfeed. You do or you don’t. I can’t tell you how many baring breasts I saw. Some nice and perky and others large and pendulous.. all of them attached to women who felt free to do what they need to do.
I said it once and I’ll say it again. As long as you feed your baby, I don’t care which you prefer. I don’t mind public breastfeeding (as long as it’s not an 8yr old! Shoot! I forgot to post that story again!) and I don’t give dirty looks to a mom fixing a formula bottle for a newborn.
So don’t feel guilty about not breastfeeding and don’t feel guilty about having to stop breastfeeding for whatever reason. I stopped because it was my birthday and I was getting pretty tired of it. Little Bit didn’t seem so tired of it, but I was. How good could it be for a nursing mom to have ill feelings towards nourishing her baby? Not good, I don’t think. So I stopped for the both of us, and we were much happier.
I did feel guilty after 12 hours or so. Then I felt really really guilty after the first day, but I realized that it was all hormones, and soon it’ll go away and I’ll be out of my breastfeeding fog and back to my normal self (and normal libido!) soon.