I feel compelled to write something about my unexpected relationship with breastfeeding. Just this week I read a great, balanced post about breastfeeding on a mommy blog I like, and then today, one of Hollywood’s newest moms, Kourtney Kardashian, blogged that she just stopped nursing her 15 month old son.
I was about eight weeks pregnant when my family began asking if I would be breastfeeding my baby. I say “asking,” but really it was more like telling. They were quick to advise me about the health benefits of breastfeeding and about the bonding, too. I told them that I hadn’t given it much thought, and that I’d need to do my own research.
The truth is that I can’t stand being told what to do. The other truth is that I was scared of breastfeeding. It was one thing to squeeze out a baby the size of a watermelon and it was a whole other thing to put my breasts to work, too. And if I were to be really honest, I was terrified I would fail at it. I was more fearful of failing at breastfeeding then I was of giving birth, but now that I have done both, I can say that I should have feared the latter, more.
Soon after I gave birth to a healthy baby boy we named Mylo, my midwife introduced him to my breasts and we fumbled quite a bit. I was in awe of what just happened, of what just came out of me and I remember wanting to be on my Blackberry more than I wanted to breastfeed. And because Mylo was exhausted from the whole birthing experience I turned him over to his father while I got to work fielding calls, emails, texts and Facebook. What a mistake that was.
While my son did suckle a little bit during his first couple of hours of life, it was not enough. The doctors on the maternity ward informed me the next day that his bilirubin level was dangerously high and that we would have to spend another night.
So while the first night in the hospital was exciting because my husband roomed in with the baby and me, the second night was just me and a cast iron, industrial size hospital breast pump machine. Jason went home to our menagerie and Mylo spent the night in the NICU under the lights. The indescribable high I felt from labor, birth and the fact that this incredible little person had just entered my life was gone, and a cold hard reality about my new found responsibilities had set in.
I woke every two hours to pump my breasts only to fill the NICU bottles with droplets of my colostrum. My nipples were the size of my big toes and I was in pain. At the behest of the NICU nurse I mixed my colostrum with formula to help Mylo’s bilirubin level go down. By the next day it had gone down a little and we were reluctantly discharged.
Breastfeeding my son in the hospital on day two of his life.
Only I am to blame for how breastfeeding began and believe me, I feel great regret about it. But I also think I have redeemed myself. After the bilirubin setback, I made breastfeeding a priority for at least six months.
When we got home from the hospital I walked around the apartment in an ugly nursing bra feeding Mylo almost every hour until my milk came in on the fourth day. I kept a journal. I fed him until he dozed off and until I dozed off. Eat, sleep, feed. That’s all I did. I had new found respect for our four-legged friends.
But breastfeeding did not come without its challenges. The first few weeks of breastfeeding were met with mind-numbing headaches almost the instant as my son began to suckle. My midwife thought I was dehydrated (but I was and always have been a BIG water drinker). I didn’t know how I could possibly continue until Mylo’s pediatrician and my lactation consultant confirmed it was a common hormone-related side effect that would work itself out. Three weeks into breastfeeding the headaches were gone for good.
After my painful experience with the hospital pump, I feared my Medela Swing Breast Pump and put off using it for weeks. (Little did I know that it was 1,000 times gentler than the hospital pump.) Then there was the bucket loads of spit-up to manage and the reflux that Mylo was diagnosed with.
After Mylo’s two-month appointment with the pediatrician I proclaimed to my husband, “two months down, four months to go!” But the challenges that accompany breastfeeding have a way of working themselves out. The pain goes away, you find a rhythm, the baby’s stomach matures and the reflux goes away, the spit up becomes less, and, dare I say… you grow to love it. I sure did.
It also helped that I found comfort and friendship in an army of new moms in my Brooklyn neighborhood who were struggling with nursing issues of their own. I have breastfed Mylo in public with 20 or more women at a time, in movie theaters, in my car, in dressing rooms, at restaurants and even in bars.
A little over a month ago I wrote a post in which I called breastfeeding a 2 1/2 year old “strange.” While I know that is definitely not for me, I do regret saying what I did as I know I offended many women. It was shortsighted of me to put an end date on nursing my son. For someone who didn’t even know if I wanted to breastfeed at all, I have not only passed my six month goal, but I have not set a new one.
People always have something to say about how long is too long or not long enough to breastfeed. I was one of them. But I have learned that this is a personal decision that is best left up to the baby and their mommy, as I have decided to leave it up to my son and me.
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I would be delighted to hear about other mother’s struggles and/or fears about breastfeeding and how they overcame them.
