When I was waiting to adopt a child, I read a ton of parenting books. I did not know a thing about parenting a child, so I wanted to read everything I could get my hands on so I would have some inkling of what I was doing.
Because I was in the process of adopting an infant, I mostly read books about taking care of a baby during the first year of life. I also read magazines geared toward new mothers. Whenever I read these resources, I was bombarded by messages about breastfeeding my baby.
Most parenting resources that I found pushed breastfeeding in multiple places. These articles would tell me that breastfeeding would result in a healthier baby with a stronger immune system who was smarter. “Breast is best” messages were woven into just about everything I read. There was only one little problem – As an adoptive mother-to-be, I was not lactating and probably never would.