NMA: Newsletter 5 Article 9

I was a bottle fed baby boy. I was born in 1965, a year when the cold war was in high gear, the war in Vietnam was going from simmer to boil and NASA was working feverishly towards the goal of putting men on the moon.

It was thought that science and industry were working together to make our lives better and more convenient and that thought was reinforced by advertising to that effect. The formula companies boasted that formula was just as good as or better than breastfeeding for babies. If protests for made over these ads I doubt they ever reached my hard working suburbanite parents.

It had become pretty obvious by the mid-eighties that the milk nature provides a mother was far superior to formula and pediatricians were at last saying so. At the same time though, the two-income family had become the standard. It increasingly became a necessity for both parents to work if they wanted to live at least as well as their parents. The scientific logic behind formula had been blown out of the water but its "convenience" had risen even stronger in its absence.

It is into that world that our little girl Mikaela was born on November 25th 2002. It is a world where everyone knows that breast milk is vital to the development of baby’s immune system, yet where the hospital hands out free introductory formula when every new mother is discharged.

Why is it that the media image of a “good Daddy” is a stubble-chinned, male model in pajamas, hopping sleepily around the nursery at 4:00 AM, humming a lullaby with baby sucking gently on a bottle of formula?

Why do people shake their heads at me as my fussy child waits for mommy to arrive to nurse as nature intended? “Why doesn’t he just whip out a bottle of formula and take care of his child?” they seem to be thinking as they stare.

Why do I have to feel on guard in the mall while my wife nurses Mikaela with all due discretion. People shuffle by while making a show of looking away or they give subtle disapproving frowns before moving on. Sometimes I feel the urge to be the protective, aggressive daddy seen in nature videos and give them the human equivalent of a lions roar: “We’re mammals you idiots. The word mammal means breast–fed, ok? Get over it!” Instead I stifle the urge and just smile back at them with just enough of squint in my eye to make it clear that it is their provincialism that I find amusing.

The greatest thing about being the father of a breast fed baby is that life is just plain easier… no bottles to clean or midnight runs to the convenience store to buy formula. Since our girl sleeps with us as well, I sleep through all but her fussiest of nights.

On a particularly bad teething nights or during the single instance since birth where Mikaela was sick (thank you breast milk immunities!), my wife would wake me up for moral support. Still that is hardly the same as waking up, dragging myself out of bed, walking to a nursery to pick up a screaming baby and pouring second rate milk into her. As it is now, Mikaela merely whimpers, stirs a little, and then reaches for Mom and drinks until she falls asleep again. And I sleep through it all. Yes… life as a dad of a breastfeeding baby is a good deal for me.