Heather wrote:

<< Our daughter had to  have   something else in her diet so this organic
formula was the best option.  Still, I   have to admit I feel embarrassed
everytime I buy it from the health food   store. I want to explain my situation to
people in the checkout line for  fear that  they are thinking exactly what I am
reading in these posts. Heather >>

Heather and all,
I may be too late to say anything of interest on this, but it reminds me how,
even though my children view breastfeeding as normal and know the myriad
reasons why, they have a tendency to be "breastfeeding snobs." Whenever we see a
baby who is being bottlefed, I feel it's important to always point out that we
do not know what is in that bottle, and we have no idea what led this mother
to bottlefeed. Mothers who would have loved to breastfeed are out shopping and
buying formula and putting it in bottles for many reasons, most of which we as
passersby will never know. For all we know she is breastfeeding sometimes,
but can't get it to work all the time or in public. I tell my children we have
no idea how long that mother worked on breastfeeding, what her birth or
postpartum situation was, and how much decent information and support she got, how
many well-meaning friends, family,  and professionals told her to give up
working on it. We might  feel badly that her baby and she are not able to share all
we shared, nutritionally or physiologically/emotionally, even all that the
mother wanted to be able to share,  but that does not mean this mother is not a
good mother, and trying to do the best with whatever situation she is in. Point
is, we see someone for a brief time somewhere, we have no idea what their
lives were or are like and why they make the decisions they make. Or conversely,
we may be able to imagine any number of scenarios that explain why we see what
we see.  Sometimes I tell them, and mothers at my meetings, the story about
the woman and her many children who were at church one freezing winter
Christmas Eve. One of the children was wearing a summer nightgown, and my friend ( who
was a child at the time, sitting behind them) leaned to her mother and asked
"how could that mommy let her little girl come here dressed like that??" and
her mother replied, "Let's leave her alone, I know exactly what kind of night
she must have had to get here." :)  I think back to the old " If I wanted to be
a judge, I would have gone to law school" one-liner. People may judge us for
many reasons, on many levels. I have seen women screaming at their children,
and have been that mother myself, when my son ran out into a very busy
intersection as a toddler. I must have looked like a red-faced lunatic, trying to calm
down and give my son the message that he was NEVER to do that again.
Passersby might have thought I simply had no patience and was yelling because he was't
walking fast enough for my taste, etc. It's sad that we feel was have to
explain ourselves to others when we are doing the best we can in any given
situation. Heather, you can come to the health food store with me anytime, and shop
calmly and with confidence!

Judy LeVan Fram, guessing someone out there is feeling quite sorry for my
kids about now...:)

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