Lactation Narration

“When I’m a Mommy, I’m going to feed my babies with a bottle.”

So said my four year old.  My four year old who still nurses and who doesn’t want to wean yet.  My four year old who never took a bottle as a baby.  My four year old who has never seen me give a bottle to her little sister.  My four year old who does not own play bottles for her dolls.  My four year old who begs to come with me to La Leche League meetings.

We were reading a book together.  Just a little board book that was laying around somewhere:  “Hippo Learns To Help”  In this book, Hippo is learning how to help take care of his new baby sibling.  This is something that Munchkin knows something about.  We have several books on this topic, and she likes helping out with Sweets.  So, Hippo is helping his Mommy make a bottle for the baby in this book.

Munchkin asked me “Why is that Mommy going to feed her baby a bottle?”  Now, Munchkin knows what a bottle is and what they are for.  She and Sweets go to daycare, and Munchkin knows that when Sweets took a bottle there it was filled with milk that I pumped while at work.  She saw other babies fed with bottles at daycare too.  But in our life, she also knows that bottles are for when Mommy isn’t around.  And when Mommy IS around, baby nurses.

This is consistent with another book we have about big siblings helping out with a baby sibling:  “What Baby Needs” from the Sears library.  In this book, Mommy nurses the baby, “Or, when Baby is older, Baby may be fed Mommy’s milk from a bottle if Mommy has to be away.”  The pictures show Mommy nursing the baby, and Daddy feeding the bottle.  This is consistent imagery for Munchkin, for what she sees in our family.

So for Munchkin, the question wasn’t “Why is that baby feeding from a bottle” as much as “Why is that Mommy feeding her baby from a bottle.”

I told her that not all Mommies nurse their babies.  Some Mommies feed their babies from bottles sometimes and nurse sometimes.  And some Mommies only feed their babies from bottles.  I pointed out that her baby cousin doesn’t nurse, she only eats from a bottle.  Of course, she wanted to know “Why?” so I just said that some Mommies have trouble nursing and some Mommies don’t want to nurse, so they feed with bottles instead.  She said “But you don’t” and I agreed.  I told her that I like to nurse and that I don’t want to use bottles.

And that’s when she said, “When I’m a Mommy, I’m going to feed my babies with a bottle.”

“And are you going to nurse too?”

“No, just use a bottle.”

Now, I don’t really think that what she said in that moment indicates what she’s going to do when she grows up, but I still don’t really know what to make of that.  I don’t know what else I could have done to make nursing more normalized for her than what I have.  I have tried to be very intentional about it.  Did I go so far as to make bottle-feeding seem exotic and exciting instead?

Just a funny story…

I was getting out of the shower and my husband came up behind me, and as a joke, tried to squeeze my boob so that milk would spray out. He succeeded in getting a few drops and thought that was pretty funny. I laughed though, and told him he didn’t know how to do it. He said, “What do you mean?! It dripped!” I offered to show him what I meant, and he seemed skeptical. I gave a little pinch and three streams sprayed half-way across the room! And I said, “See, you don’t know how to do it!” He was impressed! Ha – we had a good laugh about that one…

For Munchkin’s third birthday, my in-laws got her a doll that drinks from a bottle and then pees into her diaper. They thought it was really cool because the doll does stuff, but I didn’t want my daughter feeding the doll a bottle. They told me that they had thought of that, but that you can’t really buy a breastfeeding doll, so what option did they have? If a baby doll is going to come with accessories, chances are good that it will come with a bottle.

When Munchkin has gotten dolls such as these as gifts, I have thrown away the bottles and let her keep the dolls. I do not allow doll bottles in my house. I want Munchkin to be socialized that bottles are the exception, not the rule, which I think is the opposite of what general society teaches. I feel that toy bottles normalize bottle-feeding, and I want to normalize breastfeeding.

I do work outside the home and therefore we do use bottles. Munchkin knows that bottles exist and what they are for, and she sees Sweets drinking from bottles at daycare. She also sees me pumping for the bottles and knows that mommy’s milk is in them. We acknowledge the presence of bottles as a way to feed babies, BUT we say that bottles are for when other people feed the baby. I take the approach that is in the Dr. Sears book What Baby Needs: “Or, when Baby is older, Baby might be fed Mommy’s milk from a bottle if Mommy has to be away.” In our family, baby nurses when mommy is around, and when mommy isn’t around, mommy pumps milk for someone else to feed to baby in a bottle. As a result, mommy never feeds the baby with a bottle herself.

When Munchkin is playing dolls, she is pretending to be the mommy, therefore she doesn’t feed the dolls with bottles, she nurses them. I suppose that if she decided that she wanted to play daycare center, then I would be fine with her playing with bottles in that case, but that’s not what she’s playing. Or, if I had boys, I would be fine with daddy feeding baby with bottles too, but I don’t have boys.

Munchkin doesn’t have the magnetic breastfeeding dolls, but she does have two dolls that look alike but are different sizes. She will lay the smaller doll on the bigger doll and tell me that the baby wants milk. Then she’ll put them down and leave them for a while, because I guess it is going to take a while to finish nursing!