Breastfeeding

The claim for infant feeding is "breast is best" which alludes to the fact that breastfeeding is ideal for nurturing a newborn, over formula. Formula comes close, but breastmilk is seemingly almost magical in it's antibodies and nutritious properties, formulated specially for each mother's child. Knowing this, I was obviously going to attempt to breastfeed, but not without some apprehension. The books I'd read noted that it might not be an easy task to master initially, and my friends' first-hand accounts painted an even bleaker picture.

For me, there are a few problems with breastfeeding: physical, psychological, and "everything else," such as low or non-existent milk production and mom's diet in producing milk that doesn't get along with baby's digestive tract.

Physically: As a first-time mom, breastfeeding was a completely new experience and, logically, I shouldn't have expected to have mastered the skill only days after attempting it for the first time as I'd never done it before. It's like wakeboarding the first time - it took practice before I could even get up out of the water, let alone do tricks! Getting the baby to latch on was obstacle number one, which seems like it should come naturally as some inherent newborn instinct. But it didn't and I ended up pumping my milk for the first few days and feeding it to Jett manually. We also decided to have Jett's frenulum (the skin that attaches your tongue to the bottom of your mouth) clipped because he wasn't able to extend his tongue at all, which was an issue for latching. Also, in being born a few weeks early and being so tiny, his mouth was just physically very little and that too may have hindered his attempts to eat. Lastly, I was so engorged initially that he couldn't have fed even if everything else had been perfect and the lactation consultant had me use this silicone nipple shield that goes over the real thing and makes it more convenient to latch and that worked until he was bigger and could do it on his own. Once I was able to breastfeed him, it hurt. It still hurts sometimes, 10 weeks in. First-time mothers' breasts have never been subjected to anything this constant and rough. I feel like it might be similar to playing guitar for the first time. But instead of playing a couple of days a week for a couple of hours here and there and building up to a more frequent schedule, breastfeeding is a hectic schedule from the get-go. There's no ramp-up time. One day they're ornamental; the next they're being subjected to hour-long traumas 10 times a day.

Psychologically: I honestly didn't consider that there'd potentially be any negative psychological effects of breastfeeding. I was prepared to create an intimate bond with my baby in breastfeeding, nurturing him from my body and fulfilling this natural, maternal instinct. And that may have happened. I do feel proud that I'm providing for my child in this way, but I was bewildered by the 14 other emotions I experienced: frustration that the process wasn't working; anger that Jett was somehow hindering the process; worry and guilt that I wasn't producing enough milk (I was); resentment that my son was making too frequent demands of me; despair that I wasn't meeting these demands; satisfaction that I was the sole food provider; anger that I couldn't get a break because I was the sole food provider...It was a mess inside my head that I could have 100% done without, because I was already "emotionally compromised" with my hormones all awry in post-pregnancy. Ugh.

If I could go back two months and advise myself with my newfound wisdom, I'd suggest three things:

Be prepared for breastfeeding to suck (no pun intended). It's hard, inconvenient and everything about it made me want to quit except knowing that "breast is best" and I should try. Which is hard knowing that formula exists as a much easier, more convenient, nearly identical alternative. It's still inconvenient and I'm hoping to hold out and make it to at least four months, when six seems to be about average (my original goal) and twelve is the specialists' recommendation. Twelve is absurd; I had a hard time getting to two months! I'll get to three and hope that I can find a good pumping schedule when I return to work to continue breastfeeding past that. Four months is when we can start introducing food and we'll see if I have the will-power to keep breastfeeding after that...

Start formula early as a replacement for at least one feeding. I battled in my head, along with many of my friends apparently, the idea that if I couldn't produce enough milk for my child as nature intended, that somehow I was failing in motherhood. This battle raged for a couple of weeks and gets a girl downright depressed. Seeing that almost all of my friends went through this same emotional distress, I don't see that I could have avoided it but I wish I would have had that internal discussion earlier, gotten it out of the way, and look at things slightly more practically. Even the pediatrician was recommending I replace one feeding with formula per day simply as a stress release for me. And introducing formula made it easier to plan when we went out. I'd not have to stress out about somehow finding time and resources to produce an extra bottle's worth of milk to arm ourselves with when away from the house, which is hard to do when there's no reserves to speak of as my child wants every drop the instant I can make it... So, breast milk is the best and that's Jett's main diet but replacing one feeding a day with formula has been a godsend in giving me even a tiny break. And it allows me, if there's opportunity, to pump for a feeding and stock up some reserve milk for when Jett starts daycare or when we're on outings away from the house. And, the formula seems to fill him up a bit more and he sleeps longer...

Pay no mind to the books that try to prepare you for some type of feeding schedule. My experience was that my child wanted to eat ALL the time. Because the books suggested 2-3 hour feedings, I will ill-prepared for feedings every 45 minutes...and ended up resenting my child for being seemingly gluttonous. But the book talks about AVERAGES and not NORMS and there's a huge difference. What was normal for Jett was to eat a thousand times a day (give or take a few) and I should have gone into this simply knowing that when Jett cried and rooted, he was legitimately hungry and I should feed him. Simple as that. Instead, I held out on him thinking that he couldn't possibly need to eat because it hadn't even been one hour, let alone the 2-3 the books quote...Forget the books and go with what's playing out in reality. I have to remember this for future learning sessions!