Maybe you misunderstand (maybe not)… and I don’t really understand your comment about older children not meeting younger ones, so I’ll leave that bit alone.
My point (if there was one) is that there are so many things that can ‘go wrong’ with breastfeeding that women don’t really talk about. It never crossed my mind that since I was (in my perception) doing things differently with my second child that it would be easier. It never occurred to me that my child wouldn’t take a bottle… I never even considered the possibility. The reason I didn’t consider it was that while there is copious research (and many, many articles and blog posts) about nipple confusion and not starting bottles or pacifiers too early, lest they interfere with breastfeeding, there is not much acknowledgement that the problem can be reversed.
When you are a woman who must work to support her family (I am currently the family breadwinner) the possibility that your baby won’t take a bottle (whatever is in it) is terrifying. If I can’t establish and keep a milk supply, I can still feed my baby IF she will take a bottle. If not, we are in for a much more arduous journey.
At the end of the day I support more support of Mommas… and acknowledgement that “Mom-ing” is hard and that we should share our trials and lift one another up so that other Moms don’t feel so alone in trying our very best to raise our tiny humans… this last point is (sadly) often lost in the contemporary breastfeeding discussion.
