It’s almost hard to believe that in 2021 we’re still arguing about breast vs. bottle, but for some people fed isn’t best. Unfortunately for one woman, her mother is that kind of person and is putting so much pressure on her to breastfeed that she gave away all of her daughter's baby's formula when she wasn’t looking.
“My mom sucks. This whole situation sucks,” the woman wrote on Reddit.
As the 20-year-old woman explained, her mom has become more and more crunchy as she gets older.
Meaning she wanted to go vegan, so the whole family had to go vegan.
She “flipped her lid when we didn't immediately switch our diets over,” the Original Poster wrote in her post in Reddit's r/JUSTNOMIL forum. “I mean she threw out hundreds of dollars of groceries. She drinks apple cider vinegar for the health benefits, etc. She's just a barrel of nuts.”
It would be one thing if the OP’s mom was meddling with just her life, but now that she has a 6-week-old baby, things have gotten so much worse.
She “will literally fall asleep at the boob and I can pump maybe 1 — 2oz out of each boob,” the OP wrote. “It just isn't enough for her and sometimes my breastmilk gives her gas, runny poops and she spits up a LOT.”
The OP uses pricy hypoallergenic formula to supplement.
“At the hospital I had a lactation consultation tell me that I would never successfully breastfeed but also made me do triple feeding and I had to sign a waiver to get formula at the hospital,” she explained.
Every penny of her part-time job goes to paying rent to her parents and supporting her newborn daughter, but to pay for the formula she relies on government assistance.
I “have never asked them for financial help with my baby,” she added. “Neither of my parents have ever offered to watch my baby and I've never asked. It's not their job to raise my baby.”
The problem is that her mother claims she breastfed the OP until she was 3 — and wants her daughter to do the same.
So far, her mom has been very disappointed that the OP has been formula feeding.
“She's made jokes about throwing away formula and telling me to toughen up and has been making me lactation cookies and all this woo-woo stuff that just doesn't help at all," she wrote. "I've tried setting boundaries and telling her to ease off but she will pull the ‘It's our house and we can make you leave any time’ so I have to tread lightly.”
But things kicked off (in a bad way) while the OP was away at a six-week postpartum appointment.
The OP was gone for a few hours, and when she returned her formula was missing — ALL of it.
“I asked my mom did she move them or what was going on,” she recalled. “My mom got all giddy and explained that while I was gone she donated all of my baby's formula to the local women's shelter.”
“When I asked her why the f— did she do that her answer was that there are other women who need it more and I just need to try harder at breastfeeding,” she continued. “That I'm lazy and I need to eat more greens to produce more breastmilk.”
The OP was FURIOUS.
She completely lost her temper at her mom, and although she regrets some of the names she called her, she “just couldn't believe what she had done.”
“I was able to get ahold of my baby's pediatrician and got one sample can and was able to pump a 2 oz bottle for her,” she wrote. “The shelter will not give back the ‘donated’ formula unless I can prove that it was stolen which would just mean that I have to take out a police report on my mom.”
With no money to leave, the OP has few options, and to her it seems like she’s stuck at the will of her mom and her mom’s specific ideas about breastfeeding.
It was pretty much unanimous — commenters thought her mom was way out of line.
"Oh no, no, no, no, no. She is a huge a–hole," one commenter wrote. "I just want to say that even if you CHOSE to formula feed over breast feed, that would be perfectly fine!!!"
"Oh my goodness. Your mum is an absolutely nightmare and a crap human being. What kind of person stea[l]s from a baby?!" someone else agreed. "Firstly, you’re not a bad mum. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that. Breastfeeding is HARD. I couldn’t breastfeed my little one so she went full time with formula. She’s a happy, healthy toddler now."
"Wow that's awful," someone else chimed in. "What kind of horrid woman would try to starve her infant grandchild? I'm really sorry … maybe try to hide it somewhere. I hope you get out of there soon …"
The OP is trying to leave her parents' house ASAP.
But it's hard to convince friends to let her crash with them, "I can't really blame anyone for not wanting a fussy 6-week-old in their space either," she wrote later in the thread.
For the time being, the OP wrote that she'll try to make the most of a sample can of formula that her pediatrician gave her, and then she's going to make sure her mom can't get her hands on it.
"I'm buying a lock box for her formula so my mom can never pull this again," she wrote.
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