|
| |
A Father's Thoughts
On Bottle Feeding
By
Robin OBrien
Before the arrival of our son, my wife had planned on
breastfeeding him and I was fully supportive of this
decision. I’d read up on everything there was to know
about birthing, feeding, cleaning and nurturing a child.
I was determined to be totally supportive and involved
in rearing our child. But, when my wife announced she
was switching from breastfeeding to bottle feeding, I
found myself at odds with her decision.
My wife had never been comfortable with breastfeeding
our child right from the start. Despite the best efforts
of our midwife and family the experience was proving to
be less than easy. She was shown how to get the baby to
latch on properly and, in hindsight I can honestly say,
she practised the techniques she was shown to the
letter. But as time went on my wife became more and more
unhappy. She was suffering terribly from sore-nipples;
sore was not the word. By the end of the second month,
her nipples were very badly cracked and blood was
seeping out at feeding times.
Needless to say, our child was also suffering. His
routine weighings were showing him to be below weight.
Eventually, our midwife became so concerned that she
booked an appointment to see our family doctor. I’ll
never forget that appointment. Our son was weighed again
and our doctor told us that he was in danger of becoming
malnourished. My wife fell apart. The lack of sleep and
worry over the last two months suddenly found a release.
It was then our doctor advised that we switch to
formula. When he told us this, I could see the relief
written all over my wife’s face. We bought the baby
formula on the way home.
Bottle feeding did not seem right to me. Despite what
I’d seen my wife go through and knowing the lack of
nourishment our son had been receiving, I felt – to my
eternal shame – that my wife had failed in some way.
This was compounded, I suppose, by the fact that several
of our friends were also having children and they all
seemed to be getting along fine with breastfeeding. Over
the next few weeks I tried to persuade my wife to both
breastfeed and bottle feed our son. Of course she
refused this suggestion and soon I felt a wedge coming
between us. This sounds silly now, but towards the end
of the first month of bottle feeding, I was leaving the
room every time my wife fed our child. Communication
between us had nearly ceased. Then something quite
unexpected and momentous happened; my wife became ill,
too ill to get out of bed!
Suddenly I – the totally supportive and involved dad,
remember him – had to feed our soon. This was something
I had never done. The first two months my wife breastfed
and over the last month I had been leaving the room
during bottle feeds. Not approving of bottle feeding
didn’t matter; I had to feed our son, plain and simple.
And that’s when the momentous and wonderful thing
happened. I sat down and began feeding him. As I held
him gently, my precious son reached out a hand and
grabbed my little finger and looked straight at me with
his big brown eyes: his mother’s eyes. Holding my son,
and with us both looking into each other’s eyes, I began
to cry. My son was the most beautiful thing on the
planet.
It had taken this intimate act of holding and feeding my
son to make me realise that I had been so, so wrong. I
had been preaching a doctrine rather than getting on
with the job of parenting as best I could. I took our
child and carried him through to our bedroom and sat on
the side of our bed. My wife turned and looked at me.
She saw my tears and for just a fleeting moment thought
I was about to start lecturing. But she saw me smiling
and smiled back. I leaned over and kissed her forehead.
I’m sorry, I said.
We continued to bottle feed our son for nearly 5 more
months, before he finally started to eat solids. We
continued to mix solids with formula for some after
that. Now he is a fine, healthy child: a bottle raised
child.
Robin O’Brien is a successfully webmaster and founder of
bottle-feeding-baby.com. He provides help, support and
[http://www.bottle-feeding-baby.com/bottle-feeding-family.php]
bottle feeding tips that you can research at your
leisure on his website.
Article Source:
Robin_OBrien |
|
|
|
