Breastfeeding: "if you want something bad enough, it will happen"

[ailbhe]

I am livid. I've been angry about this on and off since last night sometime. Apparently if someone wants to pump enough to feed their baby badly enough, they can do it! If someone wants to breastfeed badly enough, they can do it! If it doesn't happen you mustn't really have wanted it, you selfish, inconsiderate failure, you.

I am spitting mad.

No, wanting isn't enough sometimes. You can want more breast tissue all you like; it won't make it grow. You can want functioning ovaries - it won't necessarily make them pop out viable eggs. Plenty of people really, really want to live, and die anyway. Wanting isn't all it takes.

And it's disgusting and callous to say that it is.

Comments

[astrogeek.livejournal.com]

This is my opinion. Feel free to agree or disagree, but I'm not trying to start an argument. We each have a finite amount of physical, mental and emotional energy we are able to dedicate to a task. As an analogy, some people have enough to climb Everest, while for another just managing to walk up to the top of the hill down their street is an achievement. In each case, they have "given it their all". But then there are people who start walking up the hill, with the intention climbing to the top, but half way up they spot a McDonalds and decide to spend the afternoon there instead, even though they had plenty of energy to climb the rest of the way up.

As an outsider, we have no way of knowing whether the person we see in the McDonalds is the one who made it there with nothing left, or the one who just fancied a bite to eat because they'd decided the whole hill-climbing thing wasn't for them after all. But we'd probably still make some comment about all the fat people in McDonalds as we walked past on our way up the hill.

I probably haven't clarified my thinking at all, but I think we're on the same side. My point is that we shouldn't criticise anyone for "not trying hard enough", because as an outsider we really don't know how hard they've tried, and the measure of "hardness" is unique to everyone.

[ailbhe]

My point is precisely about the "look at all the fat people in McDonalds" remarks. We shouldn't be making them. So we're on the same side, but you're more forgiving of remarkers than I am.