Today I’m wondering how many of us were breastfed and if you think it made any difference to the type of relationship you have with your mom? Non-breastfeeders feel free to jump in here too.
My mom was not breastfed. She, like the rest of her siblings, was bottle fed a concoction made of evaporated milk, caro syrup and sterilized water (my Grandma points out that she made sure to boil all the water that went into her baby’s bottles). My Grandma tells me that she made six 8-oz bottles to last the day. First she boiled and cooled the water and then added that to one 10 oz tin of Carnation evaporated milk and 1 Tsbp of caro syrup. Then she poured that into the sterilized bottles. Her babies were fed on a schedule and given bottles until they were 12 months old, at which time they were switched to whole cow’s milk.
My Grandma, who birthed four children from 1945 to 1959 was told by her doctor that she couldn’t breastfeed. She doesn’t know the details but said that suited her just fine, she trusted her doctor, and as much work as preparing bottles was, she was happy not to breastfeed. She never felt comfortable with the idea, so that got passed down to my mom.
I was not breastfed. My mom had me when she was 20. She was young, shy and modest, and was encouraged to bottle feed by my Grandma, even though my dad wanted her to breastfeed, like his mom had breastfed all five of her children. So I was bottle fed on a schedule just like her. So was my brother. But at least by the time I came along there was real infant formula on the market. The idea of bottle feeding evaporated milk to a baby makes me shudder! Honestly, I often wonder how my mom and uncles turned out the way they did. I know it sounds like a judgement, but really, can you imagine feeding diluted tinned milk to your baby? And having no soy option for milk allergies? My Grandma says both my uncles had terrible reactions (extreme re-flux) to the milk she gave them. So what did she do? She changed brands. There was nothing else to do!
My mom and I have a pretty good relationship I guess, although I have never really felt close to her. When I was eight, my parents divorced. I got most of my hugs from my dad’s side of the family. They were just more naturally inclined towards showing affection. I don’t remember receiving too much affection from my mom and grandma and these were the two people I spent most of my time with. I have always envied other mom-daughter relationships, the ones that have that visible loving bond and mutual respect. This is what I strive towards in my own relationship with my daughters. In our home there is constant affection. And I think starting out breastfeeding can naturally pave the way to giving lots of hugs and cuddles. I think when babies are breastfed on demand and know they can always access their moms when they need them, a certain trust forms and from that can come a beautiful bond. For me, I think breastfeeding has played a part in my loving relationship with my daughters.
As for me and my mom, I don’t think our less affectionate relationship is necessarily a product of not breastfeeding, because I know my mom loves me, but I do believe she had me too early (for her) and truly missed enjoying what could have been her fun and carefree twenties. I think my mom feels similar towards her mother. She loves her and knows she was and is loved, but she has never felt really close to her. So is this a product of two generations of women not being breastfed? Or is it just my unique family history? Can one’s personality entirely be excluded from one’s choice to breastfeed? Or do they go hand in hand?
I’m sure everyone will have their two cents and I am curious to read what you have to say. I am also curious to read your stories. Were you breastfed? Do you know how long? What influence do you think not being/being breastfed has had on your relationship with your mother? Let me know by leaving a comment. And thank you in advance for sharing your stories here.
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Tags: bottle feeding, formula, modesty, Monday Musings
I was breastfed, and so was my husband. And we have different relationships with our mothers. Both are very good, but we are different children and they are different women. I think it really has more to do with now naturally affectionate and expressive a mother is, and her approach to parenting, than breastfeeding or not.
Speaking for myself as the mom of two breastfed children, I feel that the early days can affect a relationship. When you are not allowed to be with your baby, when nursing goes badly at first, and when you’re struggling with your own mental and physical health, that can affect your parenting. Whether you end up breastfeeding or formula feeding in the end, those early days are important. Yes, we can overcome a rough start, but it’s so much better to not have to.
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I wasn’t breastfed, and neither was my mother. My mother didn’t even raise me, so breastfeeding, I’m sure, was not high on her priority list. She was 16 when she had me and couldn’t really be bothered with me. I wasn’t given up for adoption, I was just left with relatives while she went on with her life. She popped in and out from time to time, but I do not like, love, or respect my biological mother.
When I first got knocked up with the older one, the nurse asked me (before I even knew if I was keeping the pregnancy) if I was going to breastfeed and I said “Iche! No way! If I found out I sucked on my mom’s tit I’d shoot myself in the head!”
Well, I’ve certainly come a long way since then. I still can’t really imagine suckling at my mother’s breast but that’s because she would have had to have been present for that, which she never was. Eh..clearly this topic brings up a few unpleasant emotions in me.
Does that sorta answer the question?
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I think people put too much stock into their relationship with their parents as it relates to birthing and breastfeeding.
I was breastfed for a year. My mom and I get along – usually. We have opposite personalities and we do the best we can. We’re bonded very well but I would put more of the credit for that into her vigilant parenting and fierce devotion to her children.
My mother was breastfed and so were her five siblings. My mother and her mother didn’t speak for a period of ten years after a stupid fight. Her siblings have similar relationships with my grandmother. My grandmother was not an abusive woman but she was a distant woman and, in a time when formula was considered better than breastmilk, she breastfed anyway and has difficult relationships with her children anyway. My grandmother, who was also breastfed, hated her mother, who was also breastfed. My sister in law has an intensely bonded relationship with her mother and she was formula fed from day 2. I breastfed my children for years. I don’t know how that’s going to turn out.
You may simply be posing the question of whether or not breastfeeding can make a significant impact on mother-daughter relationships but I believe the answer has long been apparent in the relationships between women and adopted daughters. Breastfeed because it’s better for your child’s health. Breastfeed because it prevents cancer, allergies, asthma, obesity, and a hundred other things. But the more we take anecdotal evidence and confuse correlation with causation when it comes to the emotional aftermaths of births and breastfeeding, the more difficult it becomes for people to take us seriously and the more people will see breastfeeding advocates as professional guilt trippers.
I apologize if this comes across as inflammatory. It’s a subject that often comes up in my natural birthing/breastfeeding circles. I am a vociferous advocate of both but I have strong opinions against this particular argument for either. I think this argument has too many times produced overly defensive opponents of natural birth and breastfeeding. How else are they supposed to react when other mothers imply that they may be emotionally harming their children?
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My mom was bottle fed that horrible Karo concoction, and never had a good relationship with her mom (but admittedly, for totally separate reasons). When she had her first two sons, my brothers, her mother urged her NOT to breastfeed, telling her it was “gross.” My mom tried, but found it difficult and had no other support to keep going. After the first couple of weeks, my brothers were raised on formula. By the time she had me, 8 years after the birth of her first, my mom was determined to breastfeed. She got the help of La Leche League and nursed me for 20 months, and never used formula.
My mom and I were EXTREMELY close–best friends, really. She passed away before my own daughter was born, but I still feel her with me at all times. I am also very committed to breastfeeding my own children because I do believe, strongly, that nursing helped to create the bond I had with my mom. She and my brothers were never close, but between the two of us there were near constant “I love you”s and tons and tons of physical affection. I remember my childhood as being all hugs, kisses, cuddling, and hand-holding.
I do think it is about more than just breastfeeding, though. I think it’s also about nursing for the JOY of it, not just because the doctor tells you it is the right thing to do, and I also think that extended breastfeeding, into the toddler years, is key. Had I been weaned as an infant, I’m not sure I would have maintained that physical closeness with my mom. She let me breastfeed as long and as often as I needed or wanted, and I do feel that that contributed to my feeling that she was always available to me, throughout my life.
Anecdotally, I know no one else who was nursed into toddlerhood–I also know no one else who is as close to their mom as I was. Of course there may be no connection–but what if there is?
It sounds like a good argument, though it would be hard to do a study that completely shows the different relationships since there are SO many variables.
However, I must say this. Me and my three siblings were all breastfed. Even though our mom was neglectful to all of us when we were teenagers and stole our hard-earned money, then ultimately left us; we all have a bond that we feel we should still show her love even though she has no remorse to this day.
There is also the difference I see in my husband’s family. His older two siblings were formula-fed. They struggle with weight no matter how healthy they eat and don’t care that they both live far away. My husband and his younger sister were breastfed and they have always been thinner (except in their adult years when they started over-eating and became overweight, but lose weight easily when eating healthy), and they are VERY close to their parents and would never think of moving far away.
So, maybe there is a connection…
I was breastfed – my mom had 3 children and breastfed all of us for 6 months each and then we went straight to a sippy cup – so never had a bottle. I have a very close relationship with my mother. She breastfed us during a time when most moms were discouraged from breastfeeding.
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I wasn’t breastfed, as I wrote in my most recent blog post today (http://blog.babyREADY.ca) but I don’t think that that impaired my relationship with my own mother. She and I are extremely close. I don’t know that any kind of a parallel can be drawn between breastfeeding or not and mother/daughter relationships. Not unless you also take into account the era many of our mothers were birthing in. It was a time of Doctors=Gods and therefore their advice should never be questioned.
Just my .02
My story is pretty much identical to TheFeministBreeder’s. I was left with relatives by my 16 year old mother, so I was not breastfed. She had 3 more children and breastfed two of them for a few months each. There is a considerable difference in her relationships with the two of us that weren’t breastfed compared to the two that were, but I don’t know if that is directly related to the breastfeeding. There are a lot of other factors involved.
I was not breastfed.
The way it manifests in our relationship is that my mother is not very open with her body and it made for some awkward teenage years in terms of puberty, first menstruation etc. I think that breastfeeding may have created a comfort for us to be a bit more normal in relating to our bodies.
A question I have now that I’ve extended bf’d my two sons is if guys who are “breast men” were nursed or not. Are they obsessed with breasts because of fond memories or because they didn’t get what they were wired to want. (tee-hee!)
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I was breastfed by my mom for ~18 months, until she got pregnant with my little sister. It was the 70s when a lot of women were discovering breastfeeding and La Leche League and whatnot. I have an imperfect but mostly positive relationship with my mom now; we can trace a lot of our problems to her struggle with depression later in my childhood. I attribute the ability we’ve had to deal with problems to the positive, natural approach she took to parenting, and breastfeeding was part of that. I don’t think that breastfeeding is a necessary and sufficient condition for good parenting, but I do think that they are highly correlated.
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I was breastfed for 13 months. My three siblings were all breastfed for longer than that. I have a very close relationship with my mom, but it has gotten closer during my adult years. Now that I have a baby of my own (12 months, still going strong with breastfeeding), I’m even closer to my mom. Don’t know what all the implications are, but that’s how it’s worked out in our family.
I have responded individually to everyone via personal email but to my readers, this is basically what I said: It is very interesting to read everyone’s stories and while I do think breastfeeding can have an influence on the mother-child relationship it is by no means the only variable, of which there are many, all being unique to each person. And this would make it virtually impossible to ever measure scientifically, which is not what I am trying to do here in the least.
I spent all day yesterday wondering what I was going to muse about for Monday’s post. And then last night I sat down at the computer and it just came to me. I had visited with my mom earlier in the day and had been thinking about our relationship. These days I try to relate everything to breasfeeeding just to find something to write about so the question I posed to you all, naturally arose from my own day.
And it is not with judgement or implications that ff’s are mothers who will create a less healthy future relationship with their children than their breastfeeding counterparts. It was just a question to get you thinking. I’m a curious gal and appreciate everyone sharing their stories and opinions on this subject.
Interesting stuff!
I’m told that my mom tried to breastfeed both me and my sister, but we both suffered from such extreme diarrhea that we both switched to bottle feeding within a few weeks. We only had regular BMs on formula. My dad says I must have been allergic or something, though I’ve grown up allergic to nothing beyond a slight lactose intolerance. My step-dad, my little-sister’s dad, says it was my mom’s diet. Apparently she lived on junk food.
What happened next was she collapsed under what I realize now was a severe case of post partum depression/psychosis. She ultimately abandoned us with my step-dad – a wonderful parent who I always thank the PTB for sending to me. I don’t think she had any support in breastfeeding and her PPD definitely wasn’t diagnosed. I’m chewing on this stuff a lot myself, trying to decide if I want to write about it. Stay tuned…
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I think this is a great blog post and question topic! Ok- You know I’m older so I have a couple generations… My mother is 81 years old, she had 5 children from 1953 to 1959 and breastfed us all in the face of great adversity! Most of us were breastfed for 2+ months. Some just 6 weeks. Everyone was always telling her to wean. She was her own true person and still is (still active in private practice as a counselor. My grandfather (the father who adopted mom) was so opposed to breastfeeding that he once stood up at a large dinner party in the late 50′s and publicly humiliated the French wife of his business partner while she attempted to discreetly nurse her infant. He yelled “Leave here at once–you SLUT!!”. Poor European woman, she had thought nothing of it.
I don’t know if the fact that we were all breastfed has anything to do with out relationship with out mom… she is such an open person that she and my dad took in many kids to shelter them during out turbulent teen years when other parents kicked out their kids. We had 11 kids at our house one summer!
All 5 of us are very close to mom. All 4 girls breastfed their own and my brother’s wife breastfed their 2 kids. The closeness we all have may have something to do with being breastfed or maybe it’s just my mom. Maybe those who chose to breastfed and continue the breastfeeding relationship are those who would possibly develop a close relationship with their children regardless of feeding method. It is a good question and I know there must be research out there on this topic.
My son’s wife told me she would never breastfeed.. she herself was not breastfed and had watched her mom endure cracked bleeding nipples at the age of 15 when her brother was born. She did not feel close to her mother ..that has changed since she has her own baby now. She did breastfeed a little and pumped for a while for my grandson… all without any pushing from me. I was very respectful of her choices.
I asked my husband… he said..I don’t ever remember being on the breast. LOL
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I was not breastfed. I’m the firstborn and my mom tried for a couple of days. But trying to cope with ge-lai and being a new mom was too much for her and she said she just did not have milk. When I was having problems breastfeeding, she suggested that I mix feed. But when I insisted I want be exclusively breastfeeding, she shut up and supported me (that despite her best friend doctor telling me that as long as my baby gets colostrum, she’s ok already). My mom and I live in different cities (it’s 1.5hours by plane) but I’d say that we are pretty close. I think it was because she was always there when my siblings and I were growing up, which is why we still talk and consult with her regularly.
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I was not breastfed. My mom had flat nipples and never got much suppport so she used formula for all 4 of us. I know she would have breastfed if she had more support and information about the benefits (and maybe a nipple shield). We’re very close though and I think that it is a poor indicator of future relationships althought breastfeeding is important for many other reasons.
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I breastfed to spite my Mum! I didn’t actually know then there was such a difference (I was 20, first person I saw breastfeed was me) but when she said I’d be a bad mum and breastfeeding was awful and hard, I thought I’d show her.
We don’t actually talk anymore, fed up of being moaned at about a tantrum I had 27 years ago, what a bad baby I was etc
Oh and I have a chronic illness formula increases the risk of!
I was breastfed for a year, a fact that my mother proudly proclaimed throughout the years as proof that she was a wonderful mother. Truth is she was a child abuser. I think she breastfed as an excuse not to go back to work. By the time I was school-aged she became pregnant again. She said she so wanted another child that she became pregnant even though my father didn’t want another child…I think she didn’t want to go back to work and she thought the story made her sound like a good mother who so loved her children. So, obviously, I have *no* relationship with my mother, but breastfeeding has nothing to do with it. The woman is just selfish.
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I believe that my mother said I was breastfed for the first three months before switching to formula. Same for my brother. My first goal is to breastfeed for 1 year, longer hopefully!
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Wow! I am honoured that everyone has felt open to sharing their stories here. Especially to the women with the not-so-close relationships with their moms, I’m glad that this post was able to turn into a forum where you can vent it out.
My mother breastfed all four of us. She is a loving, caring, and attentive mom. She was always there for us. Although I know she would’ve been the same wonderful mom, had she chosen to bottlefeed, that’s just not her style. Maybe what I’m trying to say is that because breastfeeding was important to her, just like I feel important to her, the two just go hand in hand.
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I was born in the late 70s and was breastfed. At the time I was born only about 30% of kids were breastfed. My mom and I have always bragged about how I was breastfed for 18 months. It is sort of legion in my family. Everyone attributes my intellect, drive, success and good eyesight to being nursed for so long. My mom was never breastfed. My grandma had just moved to America when she had her and so she did the “American” thing and gave my mom Similac, even though they were poor and she had breastfed her first child, my mom’s sister. My mom is almost 60 and she is STILL mad that she wasn’t breastfed. She says it wasn’t fair and believes a lot of the health problems she has are due to being fed formula.
My mother and I are closer than any other mother-daughter pair I know. We’ve always gotten along extremely well and still speak every day. She is my best friend. She was also a single mother and I never knew my father, so I am sure that is a factor as well, but I don’t think anyone has a better mom than me!
I was breastfed for a very short while, but with no encouragement or help, I was weaned off when I was fussy at the breast (my mom was told that I couldn’t breathe or something like that). I truly believe that my poor health as a child, allergies, and back skin is caused from not having breastmilk for at least the first year. My brother was breastfed for 15 months I believe and he doesn’t have the seasonal allergy problem or skin issues.
Despite the absense of breastfeeding, my mother and I are very close (best friends) and we have an amazing relationship!
While growing up, My mom and I were never very close. When I was young, She went through a divorce and re-married my Step-dad who is very strict. Through her second marriage, she gained back some confidence that she had lost, and as a result, it damaged our relationship. When I was pregnant with my first child, I asked my mom if she breastfed me. She did. After successfully breastfeeding my first daughter for a year, I respected my mom a lot more. I felt like the love lost between us for so many years was refurbished with an unspoken understanding. We are very different in so many ways, but when it comes to breastfeeding we share the same belief. And that alone, bonds us.
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