|
|
| Author |
Message |
morwen
|
|
Pregnancy dilemma #1
| 
Mar 25 16:59 UTC 2002 |
Got this from the Baby Center Website
http://www.babycenter.com
"Georgina says, 'I really want to breastfeed my baby, but my husband
thinks it's disgusting. I feel like I'm not allowed to do it without
his support. How can I change his mind?'
Do you have advice for Georgina? Share it here!"
Ideas, Questions, Opinions?
|
| 21 responses total. |
keesan
|
|
response 1 of 21:
|
Mar 25 17:02 UTC 2002 |
How about asking if he would prefer to bottle feed the baby (that he do all
the work, not her)? Change husbands instead of minds?
|
orinoco
|
|
response 2 of 21:
|
Mar 25 17:14 UTC 2002 |
<boggles>
Interesting. It wouldn't even have occurred to me to be disgusted by
breastfeeding. Of all the body shame issues I've run across, this has to be
one of the strangest. Maybe I've just lived in Ann Arbor too long.
As far as "not allowed to do it without his support" ... I'm really not
sure what to think of that. Part of me is saying, "Well of course they should
both have a say in how the child is raised. If he's the father, his opinion
matters too, even if it's a little odd." But a bigger part of me just thinks
he's a creep. The combination of "breastfeeding is yucky" and "raise my kid
the way I tell you to raise him" doesn't exactly make me picture a
progressive, equality-minded husband looking to take his fair share of the
responsibility.
And ... well, on the one hand, the baby's health is the most persuasive
argument. If the father were an anti-immunization zealot, I'd feel pretty
strongly in favor of giving the kid his shots anyway. But that's one extreme.
At the other extreme are arguments like "you're endangering your daughter by
not fighting to get her into an expensive preschool" that just make me laugh.
Breastfeeding falls somewhere between being a yuppie hangup and being an
essential health benefit, and I'm not sure how much intervention it justifies.
Good question.
|
mary
|
|
response 3 of 21:
|
Mar 25 17:41 UTC 2002 |
I suspect there are much bigger issues here than breast
feeding. Bringing an infant into a relationship, especially
the first infant, can take an otherwise nice relationship
into some pretty weird areas.
They need to talk.
|
keesan
|
|
response 4 of 21:
|
Mar 25 23:10 UTC 2002 |
If he finds breastfeeding disgusting, I wonder how they ever managed to
conceive a baby.
|
i
|
|
response 5 of 21:
|
Mar 26 12:36 UTC 2002 |
Depending on what Mr. Bottle's *real* reasons are, some approaches:
- talk to some of the older folks in his family & let them talk to him
- assure him that you'll have sex with him just as often as before, *so
long as* he'll help with the baby by doing tasks A, B, C, D, ...
- explain to him that breast feeding is pretty discreet, and does not
involve baring your chest to crowds of strangers.
- offer to use a pump so that he can have his fair share of feeding (using
a bottle)
- find out if he also opposes dirty diapers, holding a baby that may ulp
on him, etc.
|
orinoco
|
|
response 6 of 21:
|
Mar 26 15:40 UTC 2002 |
I was telling a friend about this item, and she said "Of course he's got
problems with it. Up until the baby came along, that was _his_ breast."
That's one way to look at it, I guess.
|
keesan
|
|
response 7 of 21:
|
Mar 26 17:30 UTC 2002 |
There are two, can't they share?
|