IT began just after I started to show. Friends, acquaintances and even strangers began to lecture me about breast-feeding. I was moved when mothers described the joy of bonding this way, but people talked a lot about antibodies, too. One night at a party, a woman I barely knew told me all about colostrum, racial disparities in breast-feeding rates and how I absolutely had to have a hands-free pump. By the time the teacher at our hospital birth class announced that she wouldn’t explain how to use formula because it was against hospital regulations, I was pretty fed up. I wasn’t sure if it was formula itself or talking about it that was against the rules, but either way I had had enough of the righteous zeal that surrounds breast-feeding. Surely a mother could bond with her baby if she was feeding her with a bottle?

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