Breast or Bottle Feeding

 

Sometimes, life is just harder than we expect it to be. Maybe we put too much pressure on ourselves? Maybe we buy in too early on romantic ideas about the future?

 

• Prince Charming
• Picket Fence
• Glass Slippers

 

Nobody tells you the truth. Prince Charming? How many frogs are you willing to meet first, Cinderelly? Picket Fence? Why? So you can be HOA compliant? Screw that shit. Glass Slippers? Someone just try to pry these UGGs off of me with a goddamn crowbar.

 

Nevertheless, when I was ten, I started plotting and coursing out my future. I was easily influenced by song lyrics and so I turned to the masters like Whitney for inspiration.

 

Age ten was also when I fell in love for the first time. His name was Jon and his family lived close to mine, in a blue-collar suburb of New Jersey. He was out of my league and his hair was prettier than mine, but that didn’t matter when it came to matters of love.

 

Please excuse my check lists. They make me feel organized.

 

• Have kids
• Teach my kids well
• Let my kids lead the way
• Marry Jon Bon Jovi

 

Over time, I learned. My checklist needed some adjusting. But I still, you know, yearned. I imagined what a perfect wife you would be. I was going to have an amazing career. I was going to be the Indian Connie Chung. I dreamed about the perfect husband I would have. How I would look as I tossed my smiling children into the air, believing that the still developing Polaroid image matched what I envisioned. And so what if I took some poetic license? The future had a few great things in store for me.

 

Namely, “Pilates” and “Brazilian Blowouts.”

 

In my hazy Polaroid picture, I was always a very giving, selfless mother (with great posture (Thanks, Pilates!) and even better hair (Thanks, Keratin! You sure make me shine!)). I just didn’t realize how much more complicated my checklists would become.

 

• Can cook meals to keep the whole family happy. And healthy.
• Can still maintain killer gym workouts and a toned physique.
• Can work hard for the bacon, fry it up in a pan while still keeping things sizzling in bed.
• Raise balanced, well behaved and kind children without ever touching a remote control.

 

My checklists would even look perfect. I would make calligraphy check marks.

 

I guess, after a while, I just really didn’t understand how MANY checklists there would be.  Or how MANY new items I would add to that list myself. How many times I allowed someone to add new items to my checklists for me. Checklists which not only became unrealistic, but unachievable.

 

Look. I am not saying that marrying Jon Bon Jovi, was ever achievable. But I was ten. As a grown woman, once I checked off the items, “Married,” “Strong career” and “Make children, per instructions from Whitney,” that list grew so fast, sometimes it was easier to just stay in bed and cry than try to tackle all of it. The boxes kept coming, and I could never keep up with my beat up Sharpie. Never mind calligraphy.

 

I don’t even know how to DO calligraphy.

 

I think I hit an all time low at one point in my life when I could not accomplish what comes so naturally for so many women.

 

Breastfeeding.

 

“Breast is best.” I knew this. I know this. And I planned to. I really did. But things didn’t quite work out how I expected. Rather than use this post to tell you why it didn’t work, or how much I tried or how many tears were shed and how much pain I felt, let me just cut to the chase.

 

It didn’t happen. It just…

 

It didn’t.

 

And I can’t always explain to everybody why it didn’t work. And I don’t have it in me to try to convince everyone how much I tried. And I will never be able to get over that feeling of initial judgment when someone asks not if I breastfed, but instead how long I did it for.

 

Note: I usually avoid having to answer by running away and saying, “Lo siento, no hablo Ingles,” but this doesn’t work well with friends and family, who know that the only Spanish thing about me is that my husband is the spit and image of Eric Estrada. And I like rice and beans. Que bueno!

 

I am proud of my friends who have successfully breastfed, appreciating it more because I knew how challenging it was. I hear my friends talk about their abundant milk supply and the feeling of bonding they shared with their children. As they talk and commiserate about things like chapped nipples, I applaud them. Trust me, I was so READY for chapped nipples.

 

Sometimes checklists have to be amended. I had to scratch off, “Handle chapped nipples.”

 

I recall one time being on Facebook and seeing a friend’s post about how one of the formula companies had sent her some Enfamil. I recall how ANGRY she was. She wanted everyone to know she was going to write them a scathing letter about sending that “poison” to her door. She got a LOT of likes.

 

I left a comment asking if she wouldn’t mind leaving it on her porch since I was driving that way anyway.

 

Ok. Ok. I didn’t. But the only reason was because my son was using a different formula. Otherwise, I would have been all up on that shit.

 

There are days where I still feel guilt about my lack of success with breastfeeding my children. And it bothers me. I sometimes wonder if it has impacted my children. There is always that nagging thought in the back of my head when my daughter gets an ear infection or my son gets a brutal cough. Or when my son thinks he’s a pink cat and crawls around the house purring, “MEOW.”

 

At times like that, I can’t help but think, “Is this because I didn’t breastfeed?”

 

I can play that game with myself, but it will just detract from all the things I am doing right as a parent. I have no idea why my son thinks he’s a cat or if their colds are because of me or the snotty kid they played “Ring Around the Rosie” with the other day.

 

For now, my checklists seem to have shifted.

 

• Be happy
• Smile
• Remember that our children are the future and try not to mess them up too badly

 

For now, this checklist is fine with me.

I have been very lucky. I have had the choice to breastfeed all of my children. Not everyone has the choice; not everyone wants the choice. But, though I have had my own share of hurdles in the adventure that is motherhood, nursing is something that has been relatively easy and effortless for me. Not painless, mind you, but mostly free from the trials that some women face.

 

Some days, I need to remember why I choose to breastfeed at all. Those are the days when I feel like if another tiny human touches me again, I might scream. They are the days when my breasts are sore and cry out for a week without a bra on 24/7 or any sucking action whatsoever, whether by baby or pump. Some days, I would do anything in my power just to wear a normal Le Mystere instead of my saggy, uncomfortable nursing bra.

 

But I know that in another six months, when I am beginning to wean my very last baby, I won’t remember the gruesome details so much. The experience will already be part of my memories, and after four babies, my memory itself is unreliable. I have approximately two brain cells left now, I am convinced, and they are needed in their entirety to walk straight and drive the car. So before the Mommy Amnesia sets in, here are ten things I will miss about nursing my babies, though please note that these things are not breastfeeding-exclusive. They just happen to be the things I think of when I think about nursing…

 

 

1. The quiet moments of nursing, the forced time to sit and be still. As a parent, stillness is not only rare; it is luxurious. I savor the time I can claim just to sit or lie down with the baby and be together, focused on her. After four babies, I have mastered the art of walking while nursing, but I try not to practice that skill. The chance to hit the “pause” button — even now, when it is definitely complicated to do so in the midst of three other children and the rush of daily life — is too precious.

 

2. Lying beside the baby and feeling her little feet and tiny toes flex rhythmically against my stomach or leg while she nurses. I love those dainty toes connecting with me. Too soon, her body will be long and lanky, like her brothers’. She won’t be the chunky ball of wonderful rolls and curves that she is now. I bury my face in her sweet cheeks and scrumptious neck while I still can.

 

3. Bright eyes looking up at me, and the way she stops and stares at me quizzically all of a sudden, like she just noticed I was there too. It takes her so by surprise that she stops nursing for a moment and just looks at me, locking my eyes with hers. When she was tiny, she stared for a second, then continued to nurse, though slowly, like she was taking me all in or making sure that I was something she was okay with having right above her head. Now that she is older, she will stop, pause, and sometimes break into a big, milky, gummy smile. It is tough to hold a latch when smiling. Those gummy smiles are the sweetest.

 

4. The chance to stroke soft little cheeks and tufted wisps of baby hair, the smell of soap and milk together.

 

5. The baby sometimes balls her fists up and holds them so they are together, as if this act of nursing takes all her concentration and might.

 

6. When those teeny-tiny hands stroke and fidget while she nurses. She loves me, and she doesn’t even know what love is yet.

 

7. The way she bobs her head from side to side when she is preparing to latch, stretching her lips and wildly searching for her target like a baby animal. It’s a little scary seeing that coming for my breasts, but it’s also cute.

 

8. Dozing off beside a nursing baby, waking up to a baby asleep with her chin on my breast. In a few short years, will that little face really tell me in a fit of anger that I’m not her best friend anymore, like her brothers did? How will I ever send that face off to Kindergarten to be cared for someone else for the majority of her waking hours?

 

9. The feeling of being her homebase. There is not much in a baby’s world that cannot be solved or soothed by nursing. In so much of parenting, I feel a little helpless. In contrast, nursing is like holding a superpower. I know that as time marches on, my baby’s little problems will become the bigger problems of bigger kids. I know too well. I’ll miss the ability to create world peace for her with just a simple gesture.

 

10. Most of all, the baby I am nursing. In no time at all, she’ll be running after her brothers and leaving me behind. I’ll get to wear my proper bra and drink a beer guilt-free, and my breasts will dry up and once again look like tube socks half-filled with uncooked rice. But I will never have my baby back again. And that will be all right and as it should be, but that does not mean I won’t miss her.

My boy-o is 12 months old. He’s eating more food (and more food and more food…he’s like a starving teenage runaway) and nursing less. Thus, our breastfeeding relationship will soon come to an end. It’s a happy/sad time. I like breastfeeding, but I also like a lot of things that I give up or regulate to do it. Like being alone for more than 4 hours at a time, and not having to plan my vices around the baby’s eating schedule. So, I shall celebrate his weaning day by indulging in some of the things I’ve missed. Huzzah! I will:

 

1. Sleep past 6am. Even if the baby lets me sleep in, my boobs don’t. When the clock strikes 6am, the girls let me know. Sleeping over. Must relieve pressure immediately. Must feed baby, pump, or suffer in bed as I pretend I’ll fall back to sleep. Sometimes I do all three. I can’t wait to do none.

 

2. Jump my husband’s bones. Remember how in 10 (Mildly Shallow) Reasons to Breastfeed I bragged about having unprotected sex for baby’s first 6 months ? (Side note: tons of people called out my claim that exclusive breastfeeding can be a reliable form of birth control. Google “lactational amenorrhea” and you’ll see I’m not full of it). I could’ve, but most days I didn’t want to. Even the thrilling and naughty prospect of unprotected sex wasn’t generally enough to get me going. Still now, in baby’s second 6 months, I’m seldom raring to go. Thanks largely to breastfeeding, I’m too tired from being at his beck and call night and day, my estrogen levels are pathetically low thus so is my libido, and after having the boy attached to my boobs all day, I’m not often in the mood for his father to take his place there. Or anywhere. In other words, breastfeeding is my sex life’s assassin. But after my daughter was weaned, it was like Spring Break in my bedroom for a month. In other words, weaning is the assassin’s assassin.

 

3. Put my pump in the dustiest, darkest corner of the attic. I have a love-hate relationship with my pump. Mostly hate. So I’ll banish it to the attic and forget about it until I either have a third child and begrudgingly dig it back out, or admit to myself that I’m not having a third child and gleefully give it away.

 

4. Have coffee and margaritas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Because I finally won’t have to plan excessive caffeine and cocktail consumption around when the baby needs to nurse.

 

5. Buy all new bras. Milk boobs are glorious but post-milk boobs are not. I haven’t been lingerie shopping in ages, so I’ll perk up my ta-tas and myself by buying all new, super-flattering, inappropriately sexy MILF bras.

 

6.Run 5 hours of uninterrupted errands. I’ve nursed and pumped in plenty of parking lots because I was delusional and thought I could squeeze a week’s worth of errands in between feedings. It’s pretty awkward when security knocks on your car window to make sure you’re not casing the jewelry store you’ve been parked in front of for 30 minutes. It’s even more awkward when your breasts are out or there is a tiny, disembodied hand sticking out from beneath your shirt.

 

7. Take medicine for no good reason. Unless I’m at Death’s door and my doctor specifically approves, I do not take medicine when breastfeeding. But oh how I miss it when I have a headache or feel like crap on a stick. I will thus indulge in the analgesic bliss of modern medicine for even the most minor pain and tolerable physical discomforts.

 

8. Complain about missing breastfeeding. Awwww/groan. Yes, breastfeeding makes me tired and sexually apathetic, and it can be a total pain in the tush. But it’s also regularly scheduled bonding time with one of my favorite people on the planet. What’s not to miss about that?

I am not breastfeeding. I did not, and I will not.

 

Period.

 

There, I said it. Hold your fire. I’m sure there are women (and probably some men) out there gasping and shaking their heads. You know what – I don’t care.

 

This is the first time I have said those four words with such finality. It’s usually said quickly, eyes down, flinching under the weight of judgment.

 

As Pumpkin approaches her first birthday, happy and healthy, I have finally reached the point where I am okay with our decision and I don’t owe anyone an explanation for that.

 

Actually, let me back up. My first statement is not entirely true. I did breastfeed. For five weeks. I tried to breastfeed anyway. Pumpkin and I spent those first five weeks crying and staring at each other, bleary-eyed and confused. She was constantly hungry. I was constantly wondering if she was getting any nourishment at all. Hubby just sat by helplessly watching the two loves of his life get increasingly weaker, more miserable, and more hopeless.

 

But I wouldn’t give up. I had read all of the information out there from the AAP, the La Leche breastfeeding mother Nazis, and all the other internet gurus with the requisite qualifications to post on an anonymous blog. I was convinced that I was a terrible, selfish, unloving wench completely undeserving of a child if I did not sacrifice everything to breastfeed for at least the first year (if not two). I knew, somehow, that I was being judged as a mother just for the mere fact that I had googled the phrase “switching the formula.”

 

Eventually we surrendered. The way Pumpkin voraciously attacked the first formula bottle I offered and then proceeded to double her birth weight almost overnight, I knew that she was going to be okay. But was I?

 

For the last 50 or so weeks I have secretly beat myself up over this decision. I beat myself up despite the fact that I may actually have the healthiest and the happiest baby on Earth. This isn’t just my biased assessment – daycare workers, doctors, other family members and even strangers confirm this for me on an almost daily basis.

 

Although she is healthy and happy, she does still get ear infections, and lots of them. We have even had to get tubes and she still gets infections. In my obsessive google-polling of every idiot with a WiFi connection, I have “heard” that I could have prevented this suffering by breastfeeding. So the self-beatings continued. If there was any way I could have tried again, I probably would have, even though it probably still wouldn’t have been the right decision for us. Unfortunately, that well had run dry many weeks ago. I was all but convinced that I actually was that terrible selfish person that the boob-pushing moms thought I was.

 

But now, as we prepare to celebrate one year together, Pumpkin and I are both standing up for ourselves. Her literally, as she is just learning to walk; and me, figuratively, as I know I am not a bad or selfish mother and I also know that our decision was the right one for us. While I won’t presume to love my child more than any other mother, I will say that I absolutely love her as much as any other mother, regardless of whether they are human milk machines or not. I love her unconditionally, endlessly, and fiercely. I would spare no expense and would give any part of myself for her health and happiness. For us, that part of me just wasn’t providing those things for her.

 

And I didn’t quit breastfeeding for selfish reasons. I didn’t do it so I could sip martinis or stay out (either at clubs or in the land of nod) all night. I was worried sick about her milk intake. Some of that was probably crazy-first-time-mommy-post-partum-sleep-deprived freaking, but it was freaking nonetheless and it was taking away from the joys of those first few weeks together. I wanted to breastfeed because people told me I should. She just wanted to be fed and loved. At that time in our lives, those two desires were just incompatible and she won. Our house became a different place with the very first sip from the bottle and I won’t apologize for that and I do not regret it.

 

None of this is not to say that if we have another baby in the future we won’t try again and, maybe, future baby and I will have a different take on the whole thing. But for me and my Pumpkin, it just wasn’t right and I refuse to spend any more time regretting it or blaming myself for the inevitable ails of her childhood. Either way, Pumpkin is never going to remember where her first milk came from, but she will always know that she is loved without question and she will never want for anything I can provide her.

 

And besides, it’s Hubby who had ear infections as a child so, obviously that is his fault.