Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 18, 1994                   TAG: 9408170025
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THEY TOLD HER HOW TO BE A MOM; THEY TOLD HER WRONG

The well-meaning mother - under pressure from her doctor, nurses and friends to "do the right thing" and continue breast-feeding her baby - feared her baby's eyes weren't just big, they were sunken in.

When the baby's howls turned into whimpers, and then silence, she feared the baby wasn't just sleepy and satisfied, he was too starved to cry.

And still the onslaught of maternal extremism continued. The best thing you can do for your baby is to keep breast-feeding him, she was told by everyone she called.

Even the formula commercials on TV - that begin with the line "Breast milk is best" - caused her to doubt her own instincts.

The mother, who had a strong suspicion that her milk supply was low, did what society told her was best. She refused to give her son formula and gradually, unknowingly starved him, causing irreversible damage to his brain.

I cringed when I read about the baby, not just because I could so easily remember being in that exact same position - under pressure not to get caught in Harris Teeter with a $10 can of Similac in my cart.

I cringed because the Parenting Zealots have scored yet another victory.

The PZs, I'll call them. They're the ones who smiled through their cigarette smoke while recommending a mid-wife for your home birth - before you've even conceived, let alone determined whether you'll have pregnancy complications.

They're the ones who are shocked that you don't grind your own baby food, use cloth diapers, reject an epidural, read to your child in the womb. They think every woman who works outside the home is setting her child up for ruin.

What troubles me most about PZs isn't that they're so bossy and intrusive. I know they mean well, most of them. And I believe in much of what they say: Breast milk is best. Study after study confirms this as fact.

What troubles me is the subtle subtext that says you're a bad mother if you don't, or can't, breast-feed. What troubles me is that somewhere in the quest to make breast-feeding popular again, maternal instincts got left behind.

Breast is best, intuition is sedition.

I myself have been breast-feeding for almost six months now. The closeness is comforting, my husband and I don't have to fool with fixing bottles in the wee-morning hours, and my son hasn't had a single cold or illness, thanks to the immunity-boosting powers of mother's milk.

But I remember too well those awful, sleep-deprived first weeks of motherhood and the frenzy of doubt that accompanies them:

Counting every dirty diaper to figure out if he's getting enough to eat - and still not knowing for sure. Reading the back of the free formula sample box the hospital sends home - and then putting it back in the cabinet, trusting my own instincts that my son was OK.

When I came back to work full-time, I tried pumping milk but couldn't pump enough to match his appetite. Guiltily, I started mixing formula.

When I go to work, he gets a bottle. And when I come home at lunch, we reconnect instantly - my sandwich in one hand, my part-time breast-feeder in the other.

But I think of that Norfolk woman every time I'm lying on the couch nursing and that nagging Gerber formula commercial comes on the TV.

She was trying to give her child the best, but ended up doing more harm than good. She let the zealots rule instead of her instincts.

At my son's last check-up, I regaled the pediatrician with my usual page full of questions. Then as usual, he began his mini-lecture on the month's age-appropriate topic, this time the introduction of solid foods.

My husband and I eyed each other nervously, then decided to come clean with a confession: "Actually, we've already been giving him cereal now for a few weeks." I stammered, trying to justify a decision that wasn't based on the books, but on gut-level instinct: He seemed hungry for solid food, we fed him some.

The doctor nodded reassuringly and then said something that has comforted me more than anything we've read or heard during this past year of worry and wonder.

He said, "Parenting is more an art than a science."

I hope people will keep that in mind the next time they try to second-guess a mother's intuition. I hope they think about that poor Norfolk woman and realize that sometimes a baby's own mother knows best.