Pete Davidson’s Girlfriend Elsie Hewitt Defends Formula Feeding, ‘Needed’ Her Body to Be Hers ‘Again’

Mother knows best.

In a new essay for Elle, Pete Davidson’s girlfriend Elsie Hewitt opened up about her decision to not breastfeed their newborn daughter, Scottie.

“Being a good mom isn’t measured in how much we sacrifice,” the 29-year-old model wrote. “It’s about how we show up and why. I personally knew if I breastfed I would not be capable of being as present a mother as I have become.”

And yet, she still struggled with the “inherent guilt” of her choice.

“Feeding a baby carries an unusual amount of moral weight,” Hewitt explained, adding that breastfeeding is viewed as the “gold standard” while formula is often considered “what to turn to if something goes wrong.”

“It took some grappling with that shame … to affirm that what was best for me and what was best for my baby did not exist on different levels or anything,” she wrote. “They were one and the same. And I needed my body to feel like it belonged to me again.”

Even if Hewitt had wanted to breastfeed Scottie, she noted, her body had already made up its mind.

“After birth, I developed mastitis almost immediately,” the former Playboy Playmate revealed. “By this point I had just come to the end of an unplanned, really rough pregnancy after barely making it through the brutal recovery of a major uterine surgery that I opted for through my battle with endometriosis.”

Hewitt had also undergone wisdom tooth removal just one day after giving birth and had two benign cysts in her breast, causing her discomfort.

“Suffice to say, I needed a BREAK!” she declared, which is what formula feeding afforded her.

“A nourished baby and a mentally healthy mother can and should exist,” Hewitt wrote. “If choosing not to breastfeed can allow a mother to receive support through a season where the physical and emotional burden already falls disproportionately onto her, she has every right to make that choice without second-guessing it.”