Angie and Pooh

Before I gave birth, I had a whole list of things to worry about. I tend to be one who frets anyway, and the pregnancy and childbirth process gave me a whole new world of worries to have. As one who worries, I can tell you that the biggest annoyance for a worrier is having to worry about things that are beyond your control. You can’t DO anything about it; all you can do is wait and worry. This is a lot of what pregnancy is.

One of things at the top of the list was breastfeeding. A breastfeeding class was one of the recommended child birth preparation classes offered by the hospital where I would deliver. I took the other classes—because I’m one of those people who feels most prepared going to classes and reading lots of stuff—but not the breastfeeding class. How realistic could it be, I wondered, and who knows if I’ll even have a problem breastfeeding, or if it’ll be a natural breeze. Besides, the hospital provided lactation consultants, so why bother.

I guess the next thing for me to say in a confessional such as this is, boy, was I wrong! But, I wasn’t. Despite being crazy exhausted after a very long labor, I asked to breastfeed my baby in the delivery room, and that worked just fine with the nurse just popping her on. The next day’s problem was that my baby was also exhausted from the hard labor (um, didn’t I do all the work?) and didn’t want to wake up to eat. So the lactation consultant came in and showed me some methods to keep her awake, and then she taught me how to use the pump and she fed the baby with a syringe when she insisted on continuing to sleep.

Once she decided to wake up I discovered that my little Pooh was a real hard sucker. This was very effective for getting milk out, but she sucked scabs off of my sore breasts, which showed the power of her vacuum hold. This leads me to “what I wish someone had told me #1”:

Breastfeeding hurts.

Being a voracious consumer of “everything in print about the subject” I had read that “breastfeeding is not supposed to hurt.” I wish someone had told me that’s a load of bull so I didn’t feel like I was doing something wrong. In the hospital, breastfeeding caused my cervix to contract (which is exactly what it’s supposed to do) and that HURT LIKE HELL. Maybe it’s because my labor was really long and painful and I was a big baby because I didn’t want to hurt anymore ever again, but I was really unhappy with the cramps (um, that really felt like contractions) that breastfeeding gave me. Then the next thing was “breaking in” the nipples. But if you have a proper latch, it’s not supposed to hurt, right? Bullpoop. I was doing everything right, my baby was doing everything right, and I was still dreading every breastfeeding session. I was only alleviated from my “what is wrong with me” self-immolation when I told the LC at the pediatrician’s office about it and she said: “oh you mean the first few moments of toe-curling pain? Yeah, that’s normal.” Bless her. That is exactly what it felt like. And it eventually went away.

It’s said that breastfeeding is like dancing in that it takes two compatible partners. Luckily, for me, my baby and I could really tango. On that visit to the pediatrician that happens a couple of days after you get out of the hospital, the LC told me that my baby and I were doing better at it than 90% of the pairs they see. I don’t know if that’s some lie that they tell every new mom (and it’s a great lie if it is one), but it made me feel really good. (For about one day, anyway, until my baby starting spitting up blood, but that was resolved in quick fashion by the LC’s advice to use a nipple guard for a day.)

So having been breastfed myself as a baby and knowing all the benefits of breastfeeding, I never considered not breastfeeding outright. I figured if I could do it, I’d go ahead and do the recommended 6 months and see what happened from there. Which leads to “what I wish someone had told me #2”:

There is no shame in giving your baby frmula.

I am that person who is 110% susceptible to public health messages and follows instructions to the letter. By the time 6 months rolled around, I had been back at work for a couple of months, and my pumped milk supply started to drop off. I tried to pump more often as was recommended to get more milk, and Pooh continued to be thirstier than I could provide. So of course I realized that I was a bad mother who could not provide for her daughter. And how ridiculous was it that I felt so much better when the pediatrician recommended just giving the baby some frmula along with the breast milk. Wow, really, it’s that easy? I was torturing myself all that time just to realize I could just start giving her some frmula?

As the story ends, I breastfed exactly as recommended – until my baby was one. I’m the model mother who followed instructions to the letter. I liked breastfeeding. The last breastfeeding session I had with my daughter I wept and wept and wept because I knew it was over. (She was weaned prior to an international trip I was getting ready to take for work, so that was part of the sorrow.) But oddly I have found myself becoming bitter toward the “breastfeeding establishment” since then.

I guess I feel a bit duped for feeling so bad about the perceived disservice I was doing my daughter any time I couldn’t provide her with enough milk. I understand that the messages sent out that are strongly pro-breastfeeding are good to convince people to give it a try and stick to it. I guess it’s my own problem to feel so sensitive to “what others might think.” But I wish in retrospect I had that time back that I was fretting about getting that pump to suck out just one more drop of milk. No one ever actually said anything—it was just the voices that I had internalized in my own head. With some distance from it, I know that the kids I see running around playing can’t be divided into the healthy smart breastfed kids and the sickly dullards whose negligent parents gave them frmula.

I do plan on breastfeeding my hypothetical next child—and probably for another full year, maybe longer. I just hope when I am in the thick of things that I don’t beat myself up so much about it. And I hope that a subsequent baby will also be a good tango partner.