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 |
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