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I carried her for nine months, our first biological baby. I wanted so, so badly to be able to provide for her, in the way that I had not been able to do for her older brother at that age because I didn’t know him then. I wanted my body, on its own, to miraculously produce everything she needed, because that is the way that nature is designed. I had felt her every movement be a part of me for three quarters of a year and I wasn’t quite ready to have her detached from me completely. I wanted her connected, to be able to give her something that no one else could. More than anything, I wanted to enforce that maternal bond in every way I possibly could, because if our adoption taught us anything it is that the first few weeks of a child’s life are more important than anyone will ever know and they have consequences that are far-reaching.
Sometimes what we want and what we get are different things. I knew right away that something was wrong. It hurt much more than anyone ever told me it would. Nurses talked about the shape of her palate and sent in the first lactation consultant. We talked about nipple shields
She was losing entirely too much weight, so they started giving her formula so that she wouldn’t starve. In the meantime, I saw more lactation consultants, five in total, and anything they told me I gladly did. I spent extra time in the hospital desperately trying to get my baby to eat. Eventually they added an electric pump and a very strict feeding schedule. The schedule went like this:
- Feed the baby for 30 minutes on the right side
- Feed the baby for 30 minutes on the left side
- Pump for 20 minutes on the right side
- Pump for 20 minutes in the left side
- Rest for 20 minutes
- Start over
- Repeat until the milk comes in
Weeks later, the milk still had not come in. After all of that nursing and pumping, I was only producing a quarter of an ounce for the machine hooked up to me, and often it was so contaminated with blood that we couldn’t give it to the baby. That meant that I was awake indefinitely. I could eat or use the restroom during the 20 minute breaks, and maybe sneak in a little cat nap. I was determined that no matter what, I was going to be a breastfeeding mother. “Breast is best,” after all, and there was no way on Earth that I wasn’t going to do everything in my power to do what was best for this brand new helpless baby. I Googled all of of the dumb teas and “mother’s milk” cookie recipes. Nothing was helping.
I was miserable and in the most intense physical pain I have ever felt in my life. There was not enough lanolin in the world to make it go away. I would have given birth all over again and had my wisdom teeth pulled at the same time to make it stop. I dreaded every time she latched on. 24 times a day. I felt like I never stopped crying, and neither did she, because she was always hungry. We weren’t allowed to give her enough food to make her satisfied because otherwise she wouldn’t want to latch on for the next feeding session. She never slept well, and neither did we.
All of my time and energy was going into trying to make this failing venture work, even though I had another child who needed me. We used our tax refund to pay a babysitter to help with our son, even though I was home, because how could I also watch a toddler when I was stuck in a chair feeding and pumping for 100 out of every 120 minutes?
A few weeks later my mom came back to visit again.
“Tell me why you are breastfeeding?”
“What do you mean why? You should know, you did it, too. Because it’s supposed to be the best thing for the baby. Plus, I need to bond with her. It’s healthy.”
“Really? You think this is healthy? You know, sometimes it is ok to quit.“
For some reason that was all I needed to hear.
No one in my real life ever “formula shamed” me for not being able to breastfeed my baby. My guilt was my own, it was internal. But it was intense and it was real.
If you are harboring guilt because the reality of your motherhood is different than what you thought it would be, it is ok to let that go.
It is ok if you needed medical intervention during your natural childbirth.
It is ok if you let your kids watch two movies today so that you avoided a mental breakdown.
It is ok if you said you would never do something, but then you changed your mind and decided that you needed to go ahead and do it anyway because now you know better.
It is ok to feel a little bit or even a lot of grief because your child was diagnosed with special needs or an illness and your original expectations are shattered. I know what that’s like, too.
And it is ok to give yourself permission to quit holding on to those original expectations. Sometimes they just aren’t doing us any good. Sometimes you have to really listen to the poets of our generation so that you don’t “lose yourself” and “snap back to reality.” (Yes, I did just quote Eminem in this piece all about female empowerment. I guess I am a fan of irony.)
The point is, it is ok to give yourself grace. That means meeting yourself where you are right now and not where you think you are supposed to be.
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Of course it is ok. I am so sorry you went through that and so happy your mom was there to help you with a reality check. I had a lot more luck (because that is what it really is sometimes) nursing my twins, but did experience a lot of pain and remember being in the breast is best daze.
I am so glad you wrote this. While I was able to feed my daughter until a few months before her 3rd birthday, when she self weaned, my mother was unable to breastfeed me. I had inherited glactosemia, a double recessive trait, from my parents. My first 6 months were a slew of picu stays where I was given iv nutrition in an attempt to get me gaining weight and not vomiting and passing blood. Finally a specialist recognized the rare condition (there wasn’t genetic testing in the 80’s) and put me on a special formula that had to be cooked so that the intestinal enzymes (from pigs) could predigest it for me. People were hard on my mom as this was also when breastfeeding was making a comeback. But she knew that to nurse me would mean my death, so she moved on, cooking my wretched smelling predigested formula.
In the end, all that matters is if you fed your child somehow. Your own milk, donor milk, formula, elemental nutrients with a g-tube. The how isn’t what matters. The feeding, the time and care it is given with, is what matters in the end.
Thank you. Thank you thank you!
I, too, could not produce milk and was on a schedule like this. I didn’t know that it wasn’t normal to feed for 2 overnight only to have him scream in desperate hunger. IT took him 3 weeks to get back to his birth weight. I spent hundreds on lactation consultants who weren’t covered by my insurance. I supplemented for three months until he started to refuse the breast and only want to be bottle fed.
Life got much easier when I allowed myself to “fail” and realized that loving my child, giving him sustenance, taking care of myself, was more important than anything else.
I had horrible edema at the end of my pregnancy. My mother, a master herbalist had me wrap my legs in parsley fomentations and drinking parsley tea. When my baby was born my milk never really came in. Within the first week she had de-gloved both nipples because she was sucking so hard trying to get that milk. My midwife bought me a pump and brought it to me.. I pumped while I healed. We did nipple shields, we did the companion feeder where you tape a feeding tube on your breast and it goes into baby’s mouth along with mom’s nipple. I prayed, I begged my family to pray for me. I wanted so so so much to have that beautiful mother baby bonding that is suppose to occur when nursing. I had donated milk, I pumped, I nursed, I pumped some more. I cried, she cried, I drank mother’s milk tea, I made and ate those mother’s milk cookies. I cried and cried some more. We gave her a bottle. I pumped more. I mixed breast milk and formula. I cried all the time. I hated myself for hating nursing. I went to a lactation consultant. She told me I had given it the old college try and should give up. I hated her. I went to a breastfeeding support group. They were encouraging, non judgmental and oh so kind. It took a long long time for me to come to terms with my limitations. No one shamed me it was all internal. I pumped for a year. I nursed for a long time after that. It never was the beautiful experience I wanted. We bought and used formula until well after she was weaned. If there was one thing I could tell any new mom it would be the same thing. Be gentle with yourself. You wouldn’t berate a new mother for doing her absolute best, don’t do that to yourself.