Feeding Frenzy? No thanks.

A majority of the time my blog is about our family, the things we do, the places we go, and the ins and outs of our day to day life as a military family with a new baby. I’ve never really blogged about anything intensely personal to me or James, mainly for privacy reasons, and because, well it can be hard to be vulnerable with your audience, even if that audience is people who love you and support you. BUT, my sister recommended a really fantastic blog to me and I just ordered a book to my Kindle. The blog is called the Fearless Formula Feeder and the woman that keeps up this blog wrote the book I ordered called Bottled Up It made me realize something. I have a lot of friends and family who are pregnant, trying to become pregnant, adopting, and lots who are nursing and/or formula feeding, and there are a couple of things I wish I had known at that point.

The subject of breast feeding vs. bottle feeding is so deeply felt by both parties that I can’t even get on blogs and chat boards about it because I never find it supportive, helpful, or uplifting as a new mother and someone who bottle feeds my child. I generally end up feeling awful and just putting it out of my mind by doing something else. The reason I wanted to do this blog post is because writing is therapeutic for me, and I feel like it is a really relavent subject to my blog. Motherhood. Family. Figuring life out. The whole point of my blog is to share my experiences on my journey and this experience was a big one!

Many of you know I do not breastfeed Mason, but I always answer the question with a quick “I couldn’t.” and move on not offering any details. It was painful for me so most people don’t know the whole story. Growing up I had a birth defect that caused one of my breasts to be 3 times larger than the other. It was something that was difficult to deal with as a teen who cheered, lived at the beach and was constantly in swim suits and who watched most of her friends developing normally. When I was nineteen my parents were kind enough to help me correct the situation and I got breast implants. (One breast was too small to reduce, and hey, what 19 year old argues with bigger boobs?) I was told at nineteen I might never be able to breastfeed due to the surgery and I said ok, whatever. No big deal. But when I became pregnant it obviously became a big topic of conversation in our house. In my second trimester I actually went to the hospital in my hometown and requested my surgical records. I had my Dad ship them to me and I took them to my midwife. No mention of anything that should hinder breast feeding. She said I should have no problems and to plan on being able to breastfeed. Perfect! Registered for all things breastfeeding and bought a breast pump.

Flash forward to the morning my son was born. Mason was born happy and healthy at 8lbs 3oz, beautiful skin, big eyes and so alert. As everyone cleared out of the room I requested alone time to begin nursing within the first hour of him being born. He latched perfectly and I thought “Hey, this is easy!” Looking back, our stay in the hospital was a little overwhelming. Mason was frustrated at feeding time. I remember one lactation consultant bringing in a nipple shield and not showing me how to use it, another one coming in and telling me I was doing it wrong, and all the while Mason nursed and nursed and nursed and nursed.

Our first night home from the hospital was a little…hellish. And I am sure anyone who has brought a newborn home can sympathize. When Mason wasn’t nursing he was crying. A lot. I wasn’t sleeping, James wasn’t sleeping, Mason wasn’t sleeping, it was bad. And by not sleeping I mean zero sleep. And after a basically 36 hour labor and being in the hospital and the whole birth thing...you're frayed. I basically sat in bed all night with Mason nursing just to appease him. When he was 4 days old I took him to the doctor for his first checkup. The nurse asked me to take his clothes off and the doctor would be right in to see me. Mason was laying on my legs and I was talking to him and playing with him and the doctor comes around the corner and without even saying hello I hear “Whoa that baby is jaundice let me go get my reader” and she walks out. Well, yes I thought Mason looked like he had a nice tan…buuuuut jaundice? No. Then she weighed him. He was 7lbs. 5oz. He had lost an extreme amount of weight for a newborn at 4 days. When she tested him he was right on the cusp of having to be hospitalized for the jaundice. My heart was beating so fast and so loud in my chest I thought everyone could hear it. She asked about his feeding schedule and how much he was eating...I started explaining how he was latching fine but frustrated and always on the breast, etc. etc. She sent me home to pump to see how much I was making, and in the meantime told me to give him some formula because he needed to gain weight or he was going to be hospitalized. I drove home in a complete daze. The poor baby was so frustrated because he was hungry. My mother in law gave him his first bottle and he drank he like he hadn’t eaten for days…literally. It broke my heart.

Then I went upstairs. I will never forget sitting Indian style on our bed and I watched the breast pump for thirty minutes…and I watched the tubes…and I watched the bottle….nothing. I had barely covered the bottom of the bottle. The lactation consultant I called basically told me to keep pumping that my milk just hadn’t come in. Weird, but ok. For two days I went back and forth, I would pump, feed him, pump, give him a bottle, pump, feed him.

When Mason was a week old I went back to the doctor to have him checked. The formula had helped, he was gaining weight. I had been mixing what little breast milk I was pumping into the formula. She sat down across from me and said “How are you doing?” I started crying. I told her I wasn’t making milk, that all my spare time was spent pumping and all I wanted was for Mason to be healthy. I told her about the breast implants, told her about nipples shields and lactation consultant phone calls, I pretty much poured it all out to this poor woman was wasn’t even MY doctor, she was just the pediatrician at the hospital doing newborn checkups. She sat back and thought about it then told me the implants probably weren’t to blame, that women with implants rarely have problems with milk coming in…that there was a possibility that I never produced the hormone prolactin which tells the body to produce milk. What? I never what? She then told me it was up to me and what I felt comfortable with. I could keep pumping to try and see if I could tell my body to make the milk, or I could switch fully to formula. But in the meantime whatever I wasn’t producing he needed to have in formula because we needed to get him back up to his birth weight. I got in the car and cried again. How was I not producing a hormone? How was this happening? I had told myself my whole pregnancy that this might be a possibility but the reality of it came crashing down. I was unable to do something every mother is supposed to do for her child. I was failing.

I remember going home and calling my Mom crying because James was at work, to which she responded perfectly telling me she didn’t care what anyone told me – formula feeding was not bad and I needed to make sure Mason was healthy. I got off the phone. I went and took the breast pump out of our bedroom and put it in the closet downstairs. I looked at the sweet baby in his swing who had just downed 3 ounces of formula. He smiled and I had a choice. I could go back upstairs and keep pumping or I could pick him up and spend time with him. I was done. I didn’t want to spend my time trying to make my body do something it obviously couldn’t, I wanted to spend my time with my new baby. I expected my boobs to hurt, to leak, to do something while I dried up…but nothing. There was never anything there. It was like it never happened. I remember sobbing in our bed that night telling James what a horrible feeling it was to fail Mason…and like the perfect father/husband/man he is , he scolded me pretty quickly and said he never wanted to hear me say that again. That I was beautiful and a perfect Mom and however Mason ate didn’t matter at the end of the day. We were going to feed our son and make him healthy and that did not change how I loved him or mothered him. And he was right. In the end, it didn't matter how Mason was getting fed, what mattered is how fiercely we loved him.
Today, he is almost six months old and he’s thriving and healthy and he’s so silly and he is hitting milestones well before the “expected” age. He is big and strong and handsome and perfect. That's what matters. I love that my husband gets to bond with Mason while feeding him, I love his grandparents and aunts and uncles and loved ones can feed him, I love that I can travel without limitations, and I love that he slept through the night at 4 weeks old. BUT, I still have this lingering sadness that I couldn’t do it. I still feel this lingering guilt. And honestly, I still feel judged. I still feel like people think “Oh she just didn’t try hard enough” or “She gave up to soon.” Or the worst “Oh she just likes the convenience of formula feeding.”

There are two points to this blog post. And just know I am not trying to be an advocate for breast feeding or bottle feeding. I'm being an advocate for women. I have lots of friends and family who are attempting to become Moms, are almost new Moms, or who are new Moms. One…I feel like there are all kinds of articles and posts about how hard breastfeeding is (Oh it is, I know it is) and lots of support forums but I never really find that many supportive lines for women who choose to bottle feed. When you google Formula Feeding you see things like “Breast-feeding is best for babies. Still, the decision between breast-feeding and formula-feeding is sometimes tough.” Or “Now health authorities and breast feeding advocates are leading a nationwide effort to ban formula samples. Health experts say they can sway women away from breast-feeding.” OR the opposite, formula feeders who are like “SUCK IT BREAST FEEDERS” which is so not helpful either. I just want women weighing their options for WHATEVER reason to be kind to themselves.

Two, motherhood is the single most challenging, exhilarating, fulfilling, hard, amazing, emotional, and life changing thing I have ever and will ever do. That is not something on which I would like to be judged. I remember before I had kids it would be so easy to say “Can you believe she does that with her kids?” and now it mortifies me that people judge new moms (or that I did it). We are ALL just figuring this thing called parenthood out. We have to juggle what works for us, what works for our baby, and what our doctor says, what the American Association of Pediatrics says, what our family and friends say, and not to mention those people that tell you everything causes SIDS...its exhausting. So gals, listen to your gut. You know yourself, and you know your baby. Motherhood is something that should be embraced and lifted up, ESPECIALLY by other women.

SO, if you see someone bottle feeding (or struggling through breastfeeding), just know there is a story behind it. But more importantly than that, it really doesn’t matter what the story is. It’s her story, and instead of critiquing her book, tell her she’s a beautiful author ;)