Bestfeeding

A lot of my friends and acquaintances are at that broody, let's-make-a-baby age, and as I get the inevitable updates via Facebook and other social media as pictures are posted, I notice one universal point.

Most, if not all of my younger friends have opted to use formula milk.

Formula milk is fine for babies, and there's nothing wrong with using formula milk - in fact one of my nieces had formula and she turned out into one of the funniest, most inquisitive little girls ever, but you cannot argue with nature: breast really is best.

I have to be really careful not to sound preachy or get up on a soapbox to have a rant that "breast is best", and to be fair, I haven't asked if there was even an option when it came to my friends' choices about feeding their baby. However, I do want to highlight the number of women I have come into contact with that had a choice of breast or bottle and chose the latter. For example, when on the ward after giving birth to my daughter, I was sharing it with three other women, all of which had elected to bottle feed without even attempting breast. I felt a little out of place. Another time when I went to the doctor about my daughter's jabs she was surprised when I said I was breastfeeding. These incidents started making me ask the question if there is a choice, surely it's a no-brainer? Breast milk is free, is always the right temperature, helps you lose weight and is literally developed for your baby's brain development. In fact, formula milk that has been developed from cow's milk is designed for the calf to gain weight: hence why formula babies tend to be fatter than breastfed babies. That's what thousands of years of domesticity has done to our fat farm animals.

Have we become a society where it's so disgusting to expose a breast to feed a hungry baby? Fortunately, you hear very few instances where women are asked to stop breastfeeding in public and it invariably makes national news because it is so rare, and that's a great thing. Breasts have become so over sexualised that something as harmless as a nipple makes some people snort their coffee through their nose and rant on about how we shouldn't be exposing our children to this abhorrent image - I won't make an issue of the massive irony in this train of thought. Social media definitely has a part to play in this: Facebook believes it's ok to make videos available that depict a beheading but will ban an image of a woman without a shirt? What's even more baffling is the bare breasted woman isn't even being depicted in a sexual way, yet some websites decide that a nipple is a disgusting image and is banned almost immediately. Perhaps it's because people think breasts = sex and therefore porn? People are terrified by anything to do with sex, yet breasts have little part in sex, unless you believe what you see in porn is true.

To those very few individuals that are disgusted by my breasts, I'm really glad you're in the minority, but you're damaging young mothers who you're making believe breasts are equivalent to genitalia and should cover themselves with your Victorian values. These women are afraid to breastfeed because you make them believe they're stripping off. I don't mind feeding my baby in public but I cannot help but feel exposed when I do, and I really shouldn't at all. Our society has drilled it into us that breasts are only there to be a sexual part of our bodies and we should be ashamed of exposing them like a cheap hooker.

Of course, there are some women that decide bottle is the best route to take with their baby and make an informed decision to decide to use formula, and I have absolutely nothing wrong with this, what I want to make a point of is women that decide - perhaps even before they fall pregnant - that breast was never an option to consider. This decision I'm sure has to do with the fact they're uncomfortable feeding in public and the odd belief that bottle is easier.When did this become a common thought? Bottle seems to have become the default option, which to me is weird. One of the greatest kicks I got from breastfeeding was the sheer ease of slipping my baby on my breast when she woke up in the twilight hours. Some women don't, but I really enjoyed those eerie hours with just me and my baby. It was worth trading in the few times my partner may have gotten up to do a bottle or two, that option decreasing rapidly if he had work in the morning.

This is not me hating on those mothers that bottle feed their baby: it's about the sexualisation of breasts that make women uncomfortable about breastfeeding and this wrong concept that breasts are genitalia.