:: Breast Isn't Always Best ::

My pediatrician from childhood, Dr. Fox, told my mom that the best thing you can do for a baby is be the best mom you can be. "What's best for baby is whatever is best for mom." It sounds selfish but I can see already how right that is, at least when it comes to mom's emotional health.

I just wanted to take today to reassure any other women out there struggling with the decision I’ve been struggling with that switching from breastfeeding to formula is not the end of the world. In fact, while many experts argue that “breast is best,” that hasn’t been the case for me and Evan. It’s only been two days but already I feel happier, Evan has stopped seeing me as one large boob there for the feeding (we’ve had so much more quality time together and he doesn’t even go straight for my boobs at all anymore), and my body is beginning to heal. It was an extremely difficult decision to make because it’s one that’s so hard to reverse (but not impossible), but it was definitely the right one for us. Evan’s making the transition to formula just fine; weaning’s harder on my body than on his. He’s spit up a few times as we’ve had to figure out how much to feed him from the bottle (that myth that babies will only eat until they’re full has been disproved here already), but other than that he has barely even registered the switch. Most of all, though, I feel so different. I’ve stopped crying, I’ve stopped dreading picking Evan up for fear that he will need to eat, and I’ve even started feeling like I’m doing my fair share of the parenting and housework. Before I was doing all the feeding, which was a lot of work, but I wasn’t doing anything else because I was in pain and exhausted from feedings. Now I am able to contribute so much more and I feel so much more like a parent than a meal. My whole mood has changed. This was definitely the right choice.

And thanks to all my friends, family, and even my lactation consultant for the support. No one has said anything like, “Oh, that’s too bad.” Rather, people have been saying, “Oh, I’m so glad.” It’s really nice to feel like I tried breastfeeding, gave it a fair shot, decided with Brian that it wasn’t working, and now get to feel so good about the decision without anyone second guessing us.

There’s a lesson to be learned here, of course. When I was about 28 weeks pregnant, my OB-GYN asked me whether I intended to breastfeed. I said, “I don’t want to, but I know that I should.” Her response was, “You really sound like a Ph.D. student.” And she was totally right. From the beginning, I approached breastfeeding like I approach everything else: I did the research, weighed the experts’ advice, and made the most rational decision. But all along, my brain was in it but my heart just wasn’t. Breastfeeding really hurt me physically, but it also never felt right emotionally. Deciding not to breastfeed was a matter of deciding to listen to my gut rather than subscribing to guilt that I was generating in response to feeling like there was a right and a wrong answer to the question of feeding a baby.

I guess that’s probably always true: guilt is something we make, not others, and sometimes you just have to let guilt go and do what feels right.

:: Hoover Baby ::

OK. So. Went to the lactation consultant today. I fed Evan about two hours before we had to leave so that he’d be hungry when we got there, as per our instructions. During that last feeding B.L.C. (Before Lactation Consultation), I asked Evan please not to be on his best behavior. “Be bad, please Evan,” I pleaded. “Hurt mommy like you do at home, okay kiddo?” The request was as bizarre sounding to me as it would be to an outsider, but I was so afraid that we’d get there and Evan would be an angel: nothing would hurt and nothing would be gained from the consultation.

But we never even really got to the point where Evan displayed his nipple noshing behavior. Immediately upon arrival, our lovely consultant Bonnie confirmed what I merely suspected: this kid can suck. Not only that, he’s damned good at it. In fact, she seemed amazed by how strong his suck is. She gushed about it like Marsha meeting Davy Jones on The Brady Bunch. She actually said to us, “Other moms will say, ‘oh, my baby is a strong sucker, too,’ but they have no idea.” She called him a Hoover.

I’ll leave out all the steps in between – the parts where Evan and I practiced getting my nipple all the way back into his throat, the parts where I had to stick my finger in his mouth to get him off of me, the parts where Lactation Consultant went on about my damaged nipples and said she’s seen women less sore than me give up entirely before this point – and skip to the end. I actually left there feeling pretty good about everything. I felt I had learned some good techniques, but I’d also gotten the OK to pump, so that Brian can relieve me by giving Evan a few bottles a day until I heal and probably even after, and the OK (even the encouragement) to give Evan a pacifier. He still won’t take a pacifier, but we’re supposed to keep trying. He’s got a very strong urge to suck but relies on me to satisfy that need. She said we need to find ways to allow him to satisfy his suck without “taking advantage of me,” as she put it. Best of all, she also said that we don’t have to wake him in the night to feed. He’ll wake up if he’s hungry, but we don’t need to keep getting him up every three hours at night. Alleluia.

Anyway, I haven’t cried yet today about breastfeeding, which is an improvement already. I’ve only fed Evan once since the consultation, and it was OK but not perfect, but I’m hoping that the coming days will bring both relief and an improved outlook.

But I’ll vow right now: if I do get converted to the Church of the Holy Boob, I will reassure friends only if they ask me to and I’ll try hard not to preach the gospel of the breast. That’s some pressure I just don’t want to exert on anyone else.

:: Osmosis and Positive Thinking ::

Tomorrow Evan, Brian, and I have an appointment with a lactation consultant. We're just over two weeks into breastfeeding and still having trouble. Evan is gaining weight, which is a sign that things are going at least OK, but I'm still having a lot of pain and something needs to change.

I've been very lucky to have several friends who've gone through this recently (particularly one friend with an 8-month-old baby one with a 3-month-old) who have emailed with me over the last several days about the trials and tribulations of breastfeeding. These friends have been so supportive, reassuring, and kind, and I appreciate their help. They have shared their own painful and messy breastfeeding stories and reassured me that it does get better -- both physically and mentally. They have given me hope. But they have also, in some strange way, added to my turmoil over the decision to breastfeed. I feel so much pressure to continue breastfeeding, particularly with all these friends telling me about how they stuck it out. And I mean, I did promise myself and Brian and Evan that I would try it for a month before deciding to give it up, so it's not just these friends adding to the pressure -- it's partly my own desire to make this work in the end.

Yet I still feel very conflicted about it and, honestly, have very negative feelings about breastfeeding. I seek these stories from friends and others who've been through it, but I also seek reassurance that if I choose not to stick with breastfeeding Evan, that's OK, too.

Interestingly, I have found so many stories from women who have stuck with breastfeeding, but I have been unable to find many stories from the other side, from mothers who chose to quit breastfeeding. I can't find these stories online nor do I have non-breastfeeding friends writing to reassure me. Only my mother, who never breastfed either of her daughters (it was common in the seventies to formula feed from the beginning), has tried to reassure me that choosing formula is a perfectly fine option.

I find all of this a little bit strange. First, I find the extreme enthusiasm from the breastfeeding side of the crowd a bit, well, zealous. It almost feels as though these women got addicted to some powerful drug that they want me addicted to, as well. Or maybe it's more like a cult, the members of which remember their early hazing days but think of them as a necessary evil that allowed them full membership in what they now promote as the most wonderful club in the world.

I find the silence on the part of non-breastfeeders equally odd. This is an difficult decision to make -- what with the American Pediatric Association, the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association and others advocating that breast is best -- and the emotional toll is extremely taxing. There's a lot of personal and cultural guilt attached to choosing formula over breast. Plus there's the financial element: choosing formula costs a lot more than choosing the breast. And what about the much-touted benefits for mother, including that breastfeeding helps moms lose their pregnancy weight? With all of these benefits and related factors, I'd think that mothers who made the difficult decision not to breastfeed might want to speak up and let other mothers know it's both OK and not harming their babies or themselves.

It's so interesting to me that breastfeeding is such a difficult thing here in the U.S., and I wonder if the same is true elsewhere or if we've just convinced ourselves as a culture that it's so hard. With all the lactation consultants and breastfeeding support groups, it's tempting to think that maybe breastfeeding isn't as natural as it seems. If it were so natural, wouldn't baby know how to do it better and wouldn't mom be better equipped? If there shouldn't be any pain related to breastfeeding (as all the books and consultants and other breastfeeding experts tell you), then why does every single woman I've ever heard of experience so much pain in the early weeks?

My current pretend solution is to just not feed the baby at all. (PLEASE note my emphasis on the word "pretend" in that previous sentence.) I am unhappy with breastfeeding but I also do not want to make the switch to formula. Faced with the choice between one or the other, and not wanting either option, I am forced, in my mind, to choose neither.

But alas. I don't live in a world where babies can take in vitamins, minerals, and calories via osmosis or positive thinking. Which leaves me, for now, sticking to the boob, if only because choosing not to breastfeed is a decision I can't reverse and I'm not comfortable making that BIG a decision yet.

Perhaps the trip to the lactation consultant tomorrow will transform my experience, initiating me fully into the breastfeeding community. And perhaps it won't. I'm trying to be OK with either outcome.

:: What Breastfeeding Feels Like ::

Well, the quick answer is that right now, at least during the first few weeks, it feels like my friend Dawn said: like someone's taking clothespins and repeatedly pinching them on and off your nipples.

The long answer is this: it feels like Motherhood Express. Just one week into life with Evan and I feel like breastfeeding has me in the fast lane of a highway with no onramp and no offramps. As you can expect, such an experience feels both exhilarating and sometimes, well, not really terrifying but maybe more like harrowing. I feel a bit like without warning my own needs got put on the backburner, but so much faster than (a) I expected and (b) I expect they would have were I bottle feeding.

Here's an example. I'm sitting around, about to eat dinner. I realize it's time to wake Evan to feed him. NO big deal. Dinner will be there when I return. So I get Evan, we sit and get situated, which takes some work on both our parts as we struggle to learn how to do this breastfeeding thing together. Suddenly, my bladder sends me a not so gentle reminder of its own presence. But now that we're sitting in the nursing chair, that bladder's going to have to wait.

Or, when I'm suddenly feeling crappy from this slow recovery process and I just feel like I need to lay down, there's no one else who can feed the little cutie. It's me or no one. Like I said, no offramp.

But then there's the cute stuff. This morning we did our feeding on the bed, both lying down belly to belly, and he held my hand with his little hand and straightened his skinny little legs out and pressed them against my upper thigh. It almost made me cry.

And I really love that I can smell his baby smell the whole time he's feeding. And that I get to play with his gorgeous hair the whole time, continually putting and re-putting those few long strands back behind his ear only for them to flop back over the ear again. And I love the little feeding grunts, and the changes in his breathing, and the sound of his little swallows.

But man I wish Brian had boobs, too. You know, so he could experience all these wonders, too. : )