Mommy wars, mommy shaming... the new buzz words in the Mommy Community. But wow, is it ever real. One of the biggest things that moms are judged on is how they feed their babies. Those who feed their children formula are vilified by health organizations and other mothers. Some women are made to feel embarrassed and ashamed of breastfeeding their children in public. This has to end. Jesus Christ, having a baby is the absolute hardest thing in the world. Why do some people want to make it so much harder on others than it already is?
I'm going to share my own breastfeeding experience with you all. To bring home the point that almost Everybody Struggles as a parent to try to do the right thing .
By far one of the most eye-opening and agonizing experiences I had in the first few days and weeks of being a mother was my attempt at breastfeeding my son.
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| Bitches! |
I'm going to share my own breastfeeding experience with you all. To bring home the point that almost Everybody Struggles as a parent to try to do the right thing .
By far one of the most eye-opening and agonizing experiences I had in the first few days and weeks of being a mother was my attempt at breastfeeding my son.
Let me start off by saying that I knew that if breastfeeding
didn't work out for me, I wasn't going to try to be a hero. I would have no problem feeding my son
formula if necessary. BUT, this was a
decision that I was able to make before my son was actually born... before I
was so sleep-deprived that I could fall asleep anywhere and anytime for the
first time in my life... before the excruciating physical pain of trying to
feed a newborn baby who clearly had no idea what he was doing and neither did I...
Back when the idea of my baby was more a concept that anything else...
So back to the beginning.
My husband and I had attended prenatal classes to get ready for baby, a
series of four or five classes organized by the local CLSC and lead by
nurses. The breastfeeding class was as
informative as you imagine it would be, when the nurse animating the class
definitely did not have children of her own that she had breastfed. She had done her special project on
breastfeeding as a nursing student, but she was about twenty with no kids. Anyway, all of the expectant couples were
given doll and a plush breast to practice a good latching technique. After about five minutes, every single couple
in the room was an expert and we were ready to go home and breastfeed our
babies!!!
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| Holy Propaganda much?!? |
A few weeks later in the hospital, the first few hours after
my son M was born were a total
haze. There was so much anxiety,
excitement, love, joy and awe going on in the both the delivery and recovery
rooms that I have a really hard time remembering much about it. I know that I practiced breastfeeding with
the nurses and didn't have any success... but I was aware enough to know that
it was all so hectic with people coming and going and visiting and god knows
what else, chances are that it might be easier at home.
It wasn't. I mean, it
really wasn't... I became engorged two days after M was born, and it was so uncomfortable and so, so, so
painful. I tried to use the manual
breast pump that I'd bought (NEVER EVER BUY A MANUAL ONE!!), but nothing came
out and I only succeeded in chafing my already bleeding nipples. My son was cluster feeding all night, and on my breasts in one way or another non-stop for
about five hours. The pain involved in
trying to get him to latch literally made my toes curl... but I thought it was normal, since we were
told it would be very uncomfortable in the beginning and there was bound to be
a learning curve for both mom and baby.
After two days at home, my
right breast was still hard as a rock and no amount of feeding seemed to
help. And I was in so much pain. My breasts were killing me, both nipples were scabbed and bleeding, and
since I couldn't do anything other than sit in the rocking chair and try to
feed my son, by nether regions were taking a beating from all the sitting. We rented an hospital-grade breast pump from
the pharmacy to try and stimulate my milk production. And we decided to call a lactation consultant
to try to figure this breastfeeding business out once and for all.
The lactation consultant we
called was able to come over pretty much right away, which was a huge relief. The first thing she said was that my son had
a very obvious tongue-tie situation going on, and she was surprised that it
wasn't picked up on in the hospital.
Basically, his tongue was too short to be able to latch on properly. And then she said "Has anyone ever told
you that you have pretty flat nipples?
It's one of the reasons that your baby is having a tough time latching
on". Um, nope... I can't say that
anyone has ever commented on my flat nipples before...
She felt around both
breasts, and told me that I had severe duct blockage in my right breast. She made it her mission to unblock my ducts
through massage. Believe it or not, it
actually worked... it took a long time, probably almost an hour or so of her
rubbing and pulling my breast this way and that. You'd think that I would be embarrassed to
have a woman I didn't know from Adam massaging my bare breast, but I wasn't at
all. I didn't care about anything other
than fixing the problem, and my dignity had disappeared when I was lying on a
hospital bed spread-eagled delivering my son.
We ended up making an
appointment to get my son's tongue tie fixed.
The procedure went well, and he was fine pretty much right away. Still, as much as I kept trying, the breast
feeding was not going as I thought it would be, after having spent literally hundreds
of dollars on a breast pump, a lactation consultant and fixing my son's tongue
tie.
In fact, over the next few
days I developed mastitis in my right breast and was put on a course of
antibiotics to clear it up. Because I'd
been on antibiotics during the delivery, I think it was all too much for my
exhausted and run down body. So my
system couldn't seem to process the antibiotics, and I developed an all over
rash pretty much immediately. The rash
was red and ugly, but that didn't even bother me all that much. Like I said, my dignity was gone and I'd
looked like shit for almost three weeks at this point anyway. But the rash was itchy. Really itchy.
And it was all over my body, including inside my poor bruised and
battered and stitched lady parts... which I couldn't scratch because of the
stitches.
Looking back, I think that
the rash was my body's way of saying: " Wake up, sister!!!! Stop this insanity now!!"! I couldn't handle my son being on my breasts
once the rash cropped up, so I stopped breastfeeding him altogether them. I did keep pumping for about a month
afterwards and feeding him my pumped milk, hooked up to the machine while
wearing a homemade contraption using a sports bra with nipple holes cut out so
that I could pump both breasts at once, probably about five times a day. After six weeks, I was done and we switched
to formula. It was the best decision
that I'd made since my son was born.
All of this to say that as
much as I'd decided I would be OK with bottle feeding prior to having my baby,
that was a decision that was in no way based in reality. There was no way that I could have predicted
how hard it would be to feed my son, and how much guilt I would have because of
it. I felt wholly 100% responsible for
not being able to feed my son in the way that was supposed to be "easy and
natural... the most natural thing in the word".
The only thing I was able to
do for the first six weeks of his life was try to stay on top of feeding him in
one way or another. I didn't have the
energy for anything else, since it was the only thing that I was doing: either
trying and failing to get him to latch onto me, or hooking myself up to the
breast pump and praying that I would produce enough milk to feed him. The only way that I can even bring myself to
write about it is almost to detach myself from the experience. Those first few weeks were absolutely heart
breaking. I didn't enjoy being a new
mom. I wasn't able to fully appreciate
each and every moment of M's first few weeks.
Throughout the whole ordeal,
my husband was my rock. He did whatever
I needed him to do: from anything at all that would get the milk production
going, to doing everything to keep the house running smoothly. He massaged my breasts while I was pumping to
get the milk flowing, he held me while I sobbed, he ran to the pharmacy to get
Benadryl in the middle of the night when I developed a reaction to the
antibiotics. I was completely unprepared
for how all-consuming and completely overwhelming breast feeding would be for
me, and he helped me to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Thank god for him, seriously.
Why would this story be
something that I would want to write about and share with a bunch of friends and
blog readers? I guess it's because I was
completely unprepared for just how bad it could get... nobody told me that it
was possible for a woman to try literally 24 hours a day to feed her child and
still not succeed. Nobody told me how I
would be completely immersed in Mom Guilt 24/7, so that the idea of switching
to formula was equal to failing my child.
Nobody told me that it was possible for my body to literally shut down
from exhaustion and not be able to process medication designed to help it. That's the thing: Nobody Tells You!!!
After sharing my story with
a few other moms, I've come to realize that difficulties breastfeeding are a
hell of a lot more common than we realize.
It makes me sad to now know that there was probably a whole bunch of
women in similar situations to mine feeling as incompetent, frustrated and
alone as I was. I wish that more women
were comfortable talking about their baby and child-related issues, so that we
could support one another and confide in each other without judgment. For every person who told me I was nuts to
keep trying to breastfeed in the face of so much failure, there were another
ten who told me that "Breast Is Best", and that my son would not
reach his full potential if he was formula-fed.
I'm not here to advocate for
one way to feed our children over another.
If you chose to breastfeed your children, more power to you! If you choose to breastfeed your children and
it comes easily and naturally, you are truly blessed. But if you decide that you'd rather feed your
baby formula, then that decision is yours alone to make. Maybe you 've tried and it doesn't work, or maybe
you'd just rather not. I don't think
it's in anyone's interest to pass judgment on someone's very personal decision. Or at least, it shouldn't be.
When I see new moms in
Walmart, shopping with a completely glazed look in their eyes, staring at the
Folgers display for three full minutes, I want to tell them that I get it. So many of us have been there, and so many of
us know exactly how they're thinking and feeling. It's just a matter of talking about it, and
normalizing it so that we as moms don't feel
alone. And instead of putting each other down, let's stand together and support each other on the epic journey of motherhood. Hang on to you granny panties ladies, 'cause it's gonna be one hell of a bumpy ride!
