Please Stop Assuming Everyone Can and Wants to Breastfeed
A plea from a formula mom—by circumstance and now, by choice.
“Do I look okay?” I asked my husband, seeking confirmation that buying this red dress was the right choice. “I feel like my boobs are hanging out.”
He reassured me I looked beautiful as he helped me pin together the gaping front of my new silk wrap dress—a mini splurge I bought for our first photoshoot as a family of three. (I don’t count the newborn one, since I was half-asleep and delirious, four days after our daughter was born.) I loved this dress: a vibrant, red hue that paired well with my blue eyes, and a flattering shape for my postpartum body. At six months post-birth, I had started to lose some weight, but still two sizes up from my pre-baby wardrobe, and my breasts, a full cup size larger.
As I was fidgeting with my earrings and making funny faces at my daughter, the photographer arrived. She had asked to come by our Airbnb first and then we would walk around Copenhagen, my husband’s home city we were visiting. I briefly worried about the mess as she made her way up the walk-up, but quickly forgot about it when I opened the door and was greeted by a big smile.
As a mom-of-two, I think she could sense my anxiety and perhaps my discomfort, worried about how the photoshoot would go with an unpredictable infant and still feeling less-than-confident in my new body.
“You look wonderful! What a great color! And what a cutie!” she quipped. Starting to feel relaxed, I sought her reassurance about my chest area—still nervous I was going to spill over and turn our family-friendly photoshoot into an R-rated teaser.
“Oh, I see. I remember those days. Breastfeeding can make you feel absolutely huge. But don’t worry, you look great and covered. And if you need to take a break while we’re shooting to feed her or pump, let me know,” she said as she gently patted my shoulder and moved on to inspect my husband’s attire.
She didn’t know it, but instantly, my heart sank. See here’s the thing: I didn’t—or rather, couldn’t—breastfeed and comments like these feel like a knife.
I could feel the tears welling up in my throat and eyes, and I willed them away so I wouldn’t ruin my makeup. She meant well, of course. She was trying to be kind and supportive.
Logically, I knew all of this—but it was, yet another—well-intentioned assumption about breastfeeding—that absolutely crushed me. She wasn’t the first or the last, and even as my daughter approaches her second birthday, the comments continue to plague me.
Like, the new friend who loved the plunging neckline of a dress I wore to a friend’s wedding: “OMG, look at those milk-filled boobs! Isn’t it amazing how big they get? It’s so sexy.”
Or the grandmother in the check-out line at TJ Maxx who loudly shouts over my daughter’s hysterical crying fit that I should just ‘put her on the boob’ since that always ‘worked for her kids.’