Denise Richards (Charlie Sheen's wife) in People Mag

[1Plus2]

Did anyone see the most recent People magazine? There's a picture in it of Denise Richards holding her new baby daughter, Sam while her FIL is standing beside her smiling. Denise is bottle feeding Sam. In a previous issue of People, there was a small mention of Denise trying to squeeze in naps between bf'ing. I am going to choose to believe that the bottle had breast milk in it and she didn't want to NIP. Although I doubt that since the bottle looked like it had a label on it.

[KiwiZ]

I'm not going to judge her, I believe in NIP but I don't think I'd feel comfortable having my NIP pic on a national publication! Thats just me! And for all I know the bottle is bmilk and as long as baby is getting bmilk thats all I care about. If she says she's bfeeding I believe her.

[kimberlylibby]

Yeah, I wouldn't judge off of that....

I was pumping exclusively while I battled latch issues (dd didn't latch until 10 weeks old) and I was DARN proud of the effort I was making to give dd my ebm. A PILOT on American Airlines stopped me and told me how (I was feeding Libby a bottle) "that baby needs breastmilk". I was beyond irritated, because I interrupted him and said it was pumped breastmilk and then he asked what kind of formula it was?? I said IT IS BREASTMILK. He finally got it. But grr, why judge me??

[kama'aina mama]

I'm still scratching my head over her C-section.

[MA mommy]

Why did she have a c-section?

[kama'aina mama]

Why indeed. The article I read after the baby came talked about how they had scheduled a section "because I'm the kind of person who likes to plan things" was one of the things she said. They planned it for a Friday before he was going to have a one week break from his show or something. But then she went into a labor a week or so before that. So they went to the hospital and she had her section. ??? So I'm like... your plan for choosing the date went out the window... why have surgery? I suppose having never even considering giving birth made her totally unable to consider it reasonably at that point. Or perhaps, well.. this might sound unkind. A friend of mine told me a while back that she read somewhere (and I need to pin her down on that) that some really high percentage of sections, particularly scheduled ones are actually because the mother has herpes... but since she doesn't want to tell everyone that (big stigma.. guess I can't blame them for that) she gets some other plausable excuse to tell the family from the doc, like "Tell them all we did a U/S and the baby is too big" or whatever... which would help explain how many of us know someone who has had a section for what sounded like complete BS.

oooops. Sorry for the mini-rant.

[Peppamint]

Originally Posted by KiwiZ

I'm not going to judge her, I believe in NIP but I don't think I'd feel comfortable having my NIP pic on a national publication! Thats just me! And for all I know the bottle is bmilk and as long as baby is getting bmilk thats all I care about. If she says she's bfeeding I believe her.

Since I didn't see the picture, was it a picture they were posing for? Or a "caught you out in public picture"? If it was a posing picture, why not wait until after baby is fed?

[kama'aina mama]

Given the, uh... nature of her career she may also be very concerned about de-sexualizing her breasts in the mind of the public.

[rareimer]

if it was a posed picture, i don't really see the need for a bottle of ANYTHING to be in the picture?...just seems an unnecessary prop to me. and even if it was breastmilk in the bottle...how many people who see that cover are going to think about that? any picture of a bottle just furthers the notion in our society that bottles and formula are a normal way to feed babies. just lose the bottle, the picture would have been just as effective without it, kwim? wait til after the kid has eaten to take the picture.

[Cranberry]

I'm sure the c-section was scheduled to fit into her busy Hollywood life. Waiting for a baby to come naturally... that's inconvenient! :

[1Plus2]

It was not a posed picture...definitely a paparazzi shot. It was taken from the angle of over her shoulder with her back facing the camera. You could see that baby's head and her hand holding the bottle up to her mouth. I too think that it could have been pumped breastmilk. I wish that stars would NIP more. I remember seeing a pic of Demi Moore carrying and nursing one of her girls.

[NoraB]

I'm always a little saddened when famous women do not bf, endorse ff, or put down bf'ing. A lot of young women look up to these women and they can help influence society's attitude about what is "normal" wrt infant feeding.

[roxy]

Originally Posted by kama'aina mama

Given the, uh... nature of her career she may also be very concerned about de-sexualizing her breasts in the mind of the public.

what could possibly be sexier than a nursing mother? i mean, it's femininity at its height!

[kama'aina mama]

I couldn't agree more Roxy... but I suspect the average movie going 20 year old male may have a different view. Hollywood is not a normal place and there is not a lot of room for normalacy there.

[pamamidwife]

"why did she have a cesarean?"

well, don'tcha know that if you have a vaginal birth, your vagina will get all stretched out and icky and your hubby (especially one that has a life as a former player!) wont' feel anything during sex and then your uterus will fall out and you'll pee yourself all the time and you'll need to get surgery anyway to remove that darn uterus which is putting pressure on your bladder. so, better to have surgery earlier than later, right?

[copslass]

"Why did she have a cesarean?"

Gosh, I wish I could quote Pamamidwife's reply about your vagina getting all big and hubby not being able to feel anything.

Can I just add, especially if you're a circ'd American with a keratinized glans?!

And what a shame that young women have yet another image of bottlefeeding as norm.

[NoraB]

Given the, uh... nature of her career she may also be very concerned about de-sexualizing her breasts in the mind of the public.

I just had to come back and respond to this b/c I've been thinking about it. This totally whizzes me off. The more we treat breasts as sexual, especially by avoiding bf, the longer society will think it's okay to sexualize the breast.