Court orders mother to hand over nursing infant to father on weekends

[kdmorris]

348. There is a lot missing in this story

so I find it hard to make a judgement on what's going on. Why are they not allowed contact with each other? Can they seriously not put whatever it is aside to come to a mutual agreement on how to best deal with feeding their son for the next two months? Is the mother going to go along with the recommendation that the child be allowed to bond with his father when he's 6 months old? Why is the mother also withholding the 2 year old on the grounds that her son needs to breastfeed? How long have they been separated and someone have foreseen that the father might get visitation with his children (as in - introduce a bottle earlier when the baby might take it)?

My twin sons were born a month ago and we knew from the beginning that I might not produce enough milk for both babies. In addition, we both have to sleep at some point. Our sons both had low blood sugar in the hospital, so they needed to have formula. We've spent the last month both breastfeeding and feeding breast milk from the bottle (and sometimes, we have to give them formula because they are eating like teenage boys, not newborns), so they aren't too picky about breast or bottle. My husband (tkmorris) takes the night shift and feeds them pumped milk or formula while I get some sleep. Then I take the day shift and breastfeed. I still have to get up at night about every 4 hours to pump, but that's how we get milk for the next night.

On the face of it, it would seem that the father has the right to bond with his children, too, whether that child is nursing or not. Stipulating, of course, that there is a LOT of information missing from this story. There are definitely ways of increasing your milk production (feed baby on one breast, pump on the other... or, if you have twins, pump immediately after breastfeeding to signal your brain to produce more milk). Then, she will need to pump every few hours during the weekend, freeze the milk and send it with the baby the next weekend. I assume that the baby will be perfectly willing to take a bottle from his father while he rejects it from his mother.

I think breast milk is the best food for newborns, but I don't think that it should interfere with an infant's bonding with BOTH parents or be so exclusive that your baby goes hungry. If my husband put all the burden on me to feed these boys, I would probably go crazy (OK, a case could be made that I'm already there, but I'd be crazier). When they are hungry and he picks them up, they look for a bottle and when I pick them up, they look for the breast. They already know where the food is likely going to come from. I will return to work in 4 weeks and my husband will be the primary caregiver. At that point, quite a lot of their food will come from pumped breast milk. If I cannot keep up production, it's more important that they get food than that they get breast milk, so they will get the best formula we can find (hard to do, since they are made by the same food production companies that are trying to kill us all).

In a situation like this one would hope that all the adults could somehow work things out, again, for the best interest of the baby.

Right? Seems like the mother and father (again, with the limited info available) are acting like children themselves.

And why can't DU ever discuss these topics without all the snark and put downs that are in this thread - from and about both men and women?