I genuinely think that my guilt and disappointment was very much an internal matter. It was a standard I had set myself, and I didn’t meet it. My Plunket nurse (in-home nurse visiting service in New Zealand) was supportive, as was my doctor, and my obstetrician. They all said, more-or-less, that yes, it was a shame that I hadn’t been able to breast feed, but the girls were doing very well, and they had all the other things you could possibly wish for.

So there you have it. It was an internal standard, not an external judgement. No one else seemed in the least bit upset that I was bottle feeding my twins. At the same time, I wanted to hold up a sign saying, “I tried. I really did!” On the other hand, I would endorse the benefits of breast feeding, every single time. There’s no doubt that it is better than bottle feeding. Maybe bottle feeders, including me, just need to get over it. Bottle feeding done well is fine, and babies will do well enough on it. It just not as good. And there’s a distinction between “not as good” and “bad.” Bottle feeding done well is the former, not the latter.

Here in the United States,11% of women exclusively breastfeed for 6 months. (I would imagine this number is lower in women with multiples). Did you know how common it was to use formula when you felt that way? Would it have mattered?

I just wonder why there is such a sense of isolation, such a sense of needing to hide in shame from many women. When 89% of women are in this situation, why is there a sense from some (not all by any shot and not by your comment) that people who use formula are some ostracized minority?

I don’t think that we should ignore women’s pain from having trouble breastfeeding. However, in some situations, in fact in most discussions I have participated in on breastfeeding in a setting that is not specifically pro-lactation (almost all parenting sites, for example) has involved someone pretending that formula feeders have some sort of veto power over public promotion of breastfeeding’s benefits, citing that formula feeders are a sensitive, triggered minority that cannot hear such hurtful things, no matter how sensitively they are couched or how non judgmentally they are presented.

Yes… but one of the times I have most felt that I had failed as a mother was when because of reasons, I couldn’t keep on feeding my infant twins, and had to bottle-feed instead. It took me months to stop feeling guilty and wrong and bad. I didn’t take the girls out much because I didn’t want to have to feed them in public, because I felt that people were judging me to be a bad mother. On the other side of that, there are many, many mothers of twins who are breastfeeding and don’t go out, because there seems to be no way that they can feed in public.

However, no one told me that I was dirty or freak or that I shouldn’t do that here or I shouldn’t have a cup of coffee. No one actually policed my behaviour; it was more my own internal voice that harangued me – what the nuns would have called my conscience.

“Immigration Officer Points Weapon at 11 Week Old Breastfeeding Baby“

Show me the formula feeder who is told the only reason she is formula feeding and defending it is to feel superior and more-natural-than-thou than other moms.

Show me the formula feeder who is told not to discuss her formula feeding choices because she is putting down other moms.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when formula feeders paint themsleves to be the underdogs. The omnipresent, majority underdogs.