God Told You What?

It's really too bad you can't see me going through my google reader. I'm sure it's quite entertaining, as I mutter and curse, throw my hands up in the air, smack a fist into a palm, slap the desk, and, occasionally, tilt my head to that quizzical angle dogs use when they're politely trying to indicate they don't actually speak any language, just give them the bacon.

This "explanation" of being a Mormon left me wordlessly tilting my head to the right, as if 25˚ to the right would make the following words understandable to me.

I have a new baby now. A girl. She came out of me layered in softness. I breastfed her religiously until one day I had a revelation that I was supposed to move her to the bottle. Not a bottle with breast milk, my breast milk, but a bottle of formula. I fought with this revelation for weeks. I prayed, I debated, I went to the temple. I ignored the whole idea until one day I was at Costco deciding which container of powdered formula to buy. That was the day I decided that God loves formula. I watched as the expectations I had known about me as a mother shatter and fall to the floor on the baby aisle at Costco.

What? In what way does that make sense? Why would god, presumably the same guy that gave you breasts that make milk just for your baby, tell you to buy formula at Costco?* Does god have stock in Costco?

I thought at first that she was having trouble breastfeeding (it can become very painful), or was just tired of breastfeeding (a little person on your body all the time, it happens) and looked to god to support her decision, but, if she is a reliable narrator, she did not want to formula feed, she wanted to breastfeed. God told her no. In Costco.

Even if I were willing to believe that god direct dialed your brain in the formula aisle at Costco**, why doesn't god give parenting advice to people who actually need it? Why doesn't god tell people who beat their children to stop? Why doesn't god tell people who starve their children to buy some damn food? God wants your baby to have formula instead of breastmilk, and it was so important you couldn't disobey, but god doesn't care at all about children being beaten, starved, raped and killed?

What makes you so fucking important?

*This is not an indictment of people who feed their babies formula. I support, fully, whatever decision you make regarding the feeding of your child.

**I'm not.