Motherhood project – bottle fed from birth/C-Section Birth

The next mother I went to meet was a Maree, a mother who has bottle fed her son from birth due to several complications throughout the labour and birthing process. She went through 72hours of labour and eventually had to have a Cesarean so also had to go through major surgery during the process. Maree have had one or two experiences of criticisms in public. One experience she felt was whilst shopping in the supermarket she stopped to feed her son Henry a bottle and had an elderly lady come up to her, tut and expressed that ‘the least she could do for her son was breastfeed him’. Not that she had to explain her parenting methods to a complete stranger  but she did began to tell the lady that her son had an operation shortly after birth which the doctors advised that her son go on formula so the doctors could monitor how much they are intaking and due to her caesarean the right hormones didn’t kick in making breastfeeding harder. She has also heard people comment on the fact that due to her having a ceasarean that ‘she didn’t really give birth’. This added a new development to my work as it made me question whether with al the ‘breast is best’ campaign has made parenting decisions like bottle feeding more difficult for mothers like Maree, yet I’ve not met a mother yet that has chosen the exact same route in how they bring up their children yet it does feel like there is a ‘guide/rules of motherhood’ with a big list of do’s and don’ts yet a parents decision oh how they bring up their children is a personal choice. It would be lovely to get as many aspects of motherhood as possible as a celebration of all the diversity of motherhood and parenting.