Breast is Best (?)

What to feed our infant son was not a question I grappled with during my pregnancy.  Breast milk is best; he would have breast milk.  Period.  End of story.  Knowing that parenthood would be full of questions for which there were no right answers, I relished the certainty of this answer.  I remember thinking: there’s no gray area here.  This is black and white, we’ll deal with gray later.

Grayness rolled in as my nipples bled and I cried buckets of tears over the pain and the dread I felt about feeding Rhys.  I’d known that breastfeeding might not go perfectly and my grand plan had simply been to get online, find a good lactation consultant and give her a call.  This was a useless plan when overwhelmed, exhausted and suffering at 3am.

Several weeks, two lactation consultants, a pediatrician with a breastfeeding specialty, and an osteopath (google it) later, we still hadn’t established a successful nursing relationship.  The next step was occupational therapy at Children’s Hospital.  I couldn’t do it.  I was still overwhelmed, exhausted and suffering and I just couldn’t do anything else to try and make breastfeeding work. 

 

But in my mind, the issue was still black and white.  Breast milk is best.  So I pumped.  And pumped.  And pumped.  For a few days, it was great.  It was pain-free and Rhys was getting my milk – problem solved.  Except that I wasn’t feeding and bonding with my son, I was hooked up to a machine.  Except that I couldn’t leave the house for more than three hours because I had to maintain a rigid pumping schedule in order to keep up my milk supply.  Except that I was up for hours at night caught in an endless cycle of bottle feeding, soothing Rhys to sleep and pumping.  Except that I couldn't nap when Rhys napped because I had to pump.  Except that I wanted to cry every time I saw a mom nursing her baby. 

Problem not solved.

More tears.  More pain, this time emotional.  Severe anxiety.  Dark thoughts.  Not enjoying my son. And yet I kept pumping.  Despite how horrible I felt, I simply could not stop.  Breast is best.  Breast is best.  Breast is best.  I could not get those words out of my head. 

Perhaps, though, when mom hates life and wishes she weren’t here, breast is not best.  Perhaps when a baby cries because he can’t latch and is hungry, breast is not best.  I’m finally allowing myself to even consider these possibilities.  I know it seems absurd, but for the women of my generation (particularly a Seattle woman) the indoctrination of this philosophy is merciless.  Even formula companies tell us that breast milk is best!

I often ponder the question of when breast is not best while I pump.  Oh the irony.  Though doing so took me to the edge of despair, I am very proud to have given Rhys breast milk for five months.  (And, though the boobs are mine, a lot of credit goes to Brian as he agreed to feed at night while I pumped.  The schedule was impossible to maintain without his help.)  Rhys will have breast milk for at least another month and then we’ll see.  I plan to cut back on pumping because I am SO tired of it, but I may keep it up to some extent because, in case you didn't know, breast is best.

Rhys' 1,156th (give or take) bottle of breast milk