Judge Not and Breastfeeding

I’ve read quite a few blog posts about breastfeeding. They are mostly written by mothers who advocate for more freedom to breastfeed in public places. While I applaud those mothers, this post isn’t about that. This is about mothers who do not breastfeed.

We have a nearly five-month old daughter now. Throughout Robyn’s pregnancy, we talked about all the good things we would do to take care of her and make sure she grew up healthy. At the top of our list was breastfeeding. We knew that breastfeeding would be best for our baby’s physical nourishment as well as social and emotional development, and we wanted the best for little Afton.

Things don’t always go as planned, however. For something so natural, breastfeeding turned out to be very difficult. Of course, I don’t speak from first hand experience, but I watched Robyn struggle as she didn’t produce enough milk, Afton wouldn’t latch correctly, and holding a baby made the incision from Robyn’s emergency C-section hurt, not to mention her struggles with postpartum depression. She tried valiantly for a month, but it just wasn’t working, and seeing how much it was frustrating her, I told her it was time to stop.

It was a tough choice for us to make. We wanted the best for our daughter, after all. But was getting minimal milk for maximum frustration really the best? After talking it over and discussing it with our pediatrician, we decided to move to a purely formula diet--one of the best decisions we ever made. Since then, Afton has eaten very well and is now a happy, smiling four-and-a-half month old, who started on her first solid foods last week. It also lightened the load on Robyn’s shoulders, although it didn’t solve her depression, but that is a topic for another post.

Through this experience, I learned something about myself: I judged bottle-feeding parents. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I used to look down on those who didn’t breastfeed. Didn’t they know what science showed was best for their baby? Were they too lazy or busy or self-centered?

I think many people do this without realizing it. Many of the reactions we get when we pull out a bottle or mention formula suggest it: “You use formula? That must be why she’s so big,” or just a strange look.  

The point is it is all too easy to judge others for what they do, when we have no idea what the whole story is. Robyn tried her hardest to breastfeed Afton and felt bad about quitting, but it was the best thing for us to do.

I hope that I have learned my lesson. Rather than looking at a bottle-feeding mom or a person at church in grubby clothes or someone smoking and thinking that they obviously don’t know what’s best for them, I need to view them as Jesus would: as a brother or sister with their own challenges and hardships and background story. I should be so busy helping others that I don’t have time to judge people based on what they feed their children. Our focus should be on love and understanding, not judgment, even in matters of breastfeeding.

The Marys Around Us

I thought I'd start this blog off with a re-post of something I wrote over a year ago and published on my little-used and little-viewed personal blog. Here it is: 

About a week before Christmas we went up to Salt Lake to see “Savior of the World,” which is basically a musical Christmas pageant sponsored by the LDS church. During the scene where Mary tells Joseph that she is pregnant, I had a thought that has stuck with me for the past few weeks, a thought that had never occurred to me before, despite 23 Christmases of reading the Christmas story several times each December. The thought was simple: Mary didn’t have it easy.

Imagine if a 14 year old girl in your neighborhood got pregnant. Think of all the shame and ostracism she would experience. Now imagine she claimed she was still a virgin and that the child she was carrying was the Son of God, the result of an miraculous conception. Even if she was a nice, upstanding girl, something like that would be impossible to believe.

In Mary’s time, not only would people not have believed her, but she would likely have been the victim of some pretty intense persecution. Joseph’s decision to marry her quickly probably helped placate some of the critics, but I’m sure she was shunned, ridiculed, and abused.  Perhaps there were even some pharisees who threw rocks at her, wishing they could stone her to death as the law indicated they should.

I wonder if God chose an young unmarried girl for a reason. Of course, Mary was one of a kind--pure and virtuous “above all other virgins” (1 Nephi 11:15). But maybe there is a deeper lesson here. A lesson about judging.

How often do we judge others because of their mistakes? Do we exclude people from our social circles because they are a pregnant teenage girl, or an openly gay man, or an alcoholic? We should learn from the example of Mary: every circumstance has more than meets the eye.

Of course, what happened to Mary was unique. She committed no sin, in fact it was quite the opposite. But does that really matter? Does it matter if someone’s situation is a result of sin or righteousness?

 Jesus, born of Mary, taught “judge not that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1). The fact is, we are all sinners (Romans 3:23) and just because someone sins differently than we do, we don’t have the right to mistreat them. 

When Mary and Joseph left for Bethlehem, perhaps Mary thought she would be able to escape the criticism. Yet in Bethlehem, they were ostracized for a different reason. She was foreign, poor, and very pregnant. I wonder if a few innkeepers would have been more inclined to find room for them if they weren’t so dirty and different.

So what’s my point? There are Marys all around us: those who we might feel inclined to mistreat, judge, or just ignore, whether because of their choices or simply because they’re different than us. We should be like Joseph, who had the courage to accept Mary despite appearances, or Jesus, who spent his time with the poor, disfigured, sinners, and outcasts.