Giselle Bundchen must be an awesome mother, because she breastfeeds.

I’m not sure what I would do without a supermodel’s parenting advice. Surely I would not be able to be a truly effective parent without it. Especially advice from the lovely mouth of one Giselle Bundchen. First, Giselle has advised me that my pregnancy weight gain was a direct result of my gestational evolution into a human garbage disposal, which is very helpful advice for anyone attempting to lose the baby weight. Now, it appears that Giselle is advising that there should be an international law stating that every woman should breastfeed for at least six months. Breastfeeding is best, and evidently, what is ultimately a personal choice should be made mandatory.

Well, lawdy, Miss Clawdy.

Is there anyone out there, in our generation, who does not believe that breast milk is the optimal choice for a baby? Of course it is. Does that mean that we should make mothers who do not breastfeed feel like inferior mothers? Here is my story.

My firstborn, Mark, was jaundiced at birth and was an indifferent feeder. He was not a strong nurser and matters were not helped by the fact that it took five days for my milk to come in. I supplemented with formula. When my milk did come in, I nursed him constantly. “Cluster feeding” was the term used by the public health nurses. When I stumbled on my nursing log years later, I started to cry, remembering the feeling of waking up every half hour to feed my baby who would fall asleep twenty minutes into feeding. He lost weight. My doctor sent me to the breastfeeding clinic, where I learned to nurse him for an hour, then give him a few ounces of supplemental formula, a ninety minute process that would start over again in an hour, twenty four hours a day. I rented a scary, hospital grade breast pump to increase production. I went on drugs to increase production. I started to lose perspective and began believing that life would always be like this, I would always be exhausted and sore and my life would revolve around feeding and recording diaper changes and worrying about infant weight gain.

I went to the public health clinic. I can see myself perfectly: hair in ponytail, bags under eyes, carrying forty extra pounds and wearing maternity jeans and a DDD nursing bra stuffed with bloody nursing pads from my cracked nipples. I stood next to another new mother at the change station, while we changed our babies’ diapers. She glanced at my diaper bag and the little bottle poking out of it, and started up a conversation. Boy, was she tired! She nursed her baby every hour. The public health nurses, they were amazed at her stamina. They couldn’t believe she could keep up! But she did. She did keep up because her baby needed her and that’s all that mattered, didn’t it. She turned to her baby and cooed, “You just LOVE mommy’s milk, don’t you? Don’t you? You love it!” Then she turned to me with a smile and said, “Remember, any woman can breastfeed. Maybe you just need to try harder.”

I smiled shakily and nodded, my eyes filled with tears. She was right. She must be. I wasn’t trying hard enough. I got a 4.0 in grad school, surely I could breastfeed. I just wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t a good enough mother.

What I didn’t know then was that breastfeeding does not make a good mother. I didn’t know that breastfeeding is just a blip on the map. I stood there and I let that woman, that woman who didn’t know me or anything about me, make a judgement on my ability to mother. I let her make me feel like I was a second class mother. So fuck you, Giselle. Fuck you and your judgements. Fuck you and your attempt at making millions of mothers, whatever their story, feel inferior. Go back to the catwalk and keep your comments to yourself.