The truth is...

Breastfeeding has been a huge part of my life since Nora was born, but not one that I have often written about in detail, mainly because I have conflicted feelings toward it, but don't want to discourage any woman wanting to try.  I have spent hours upon hours in conversation with other new moms on the subject, and I'm finding that everyone's experience is different, and it can even be different with a second baby than it was with the first.

But here's the truth: I don't love breastfeeding.

I had some issues when Nora was first born with my milk coming in.  It takes most women several days to get a decent supply of milk, and in those early days colostrum is enough to feed a baby.  However, most women say that they get a sense of "whoa...there it is" when the milk "comes in" and all of the sudden they could feed all the babies in greater metropolitan area.  This never happened to me, and it was a struggle to get enough of a supply to exclusively breastfeed.  Since I was a first-timer and having an abnormal experience, I didn't feel like I had a lot of support, but luckily my OB (God, I love that woman.) gave me some suggestions and also made me feel like I wasn't a failure as a mother if I didn't end up having enough milk.  Eventually I did have enough, but she saved me a lot of tears in the meantime.

Nursing was painful at first; pumping was worse.  The first time I pumped in the hospital, I said a bad word. The s word. In front of my beautiful baby...and the nurse, who was kind enough to pretend not to notice. But I know she noticed because I said it really LOUDLY.  The first time I pumped, there was literally .7mL.  You read that correctly: point seven milliliters. This is basically a few drops.  We salvaged what we could and Ryan fed it to her through a tiny syringe feeder.  We supplemented with formula in the meantime - she was screaming, and I was trying to recover from a c-section (no small feat).  The lactation consultant said she was "disappointed" that we had to supplement...but what did she want me to do, create milk out of thin air?  Perhaps she was upset with me for throwing up everywhere the first time she came in, but I cannot be held responsible. Apparently mashed potatoes and c-section drugs do not mix.

As much as pumping sucked (no pun intended, though it's pretty obvious, yes?), I continued to do so after every.single.feeding.  Again: every.single.feeding.  She was also a sleepy newborn, so we often had to wake her to eat.  It was kind of cute, but it was a long process that included a sometimes long process of talking to her, moving her little arms and legs, undressing her, changing her diaper, or whatever we could do to help her become alert.  So my schedule was feed baby, pump, feed baby whatever tiny amount was pumped, give her a bottle if that wasn't enough, attempt to eat/sleep/shower/take meds/whatever needed to be done, begin process of waking baby again, repeat. All day. All night.  Ryan helped as much as he could, and often gave the bottles, but with breastfeeding, the heaviest weight of the load falls to the mom, and even the most helpful man on the planet can't make it an equal effort.

At Nora's 2 week appointment, her pediatrician wisely advised, "don't pump at night. You need sleep." My milk still wasn't completely in at that point and I was losing patience (sanity) quickly.  So I happily dropped the nighttime pumpings, but obviously continued to wake to feed her every 2-3 hours, or whenever she decided to be awake.  At the time, she had just gotten back to her birth weight, so we had to wake her up in the night even if she didn't wake herself.

I felt that I existed only to feed my child.  I could not even process doing anything else.

Once my milk finally fully came in, things got a little easier. The pain eventually subsided, and I never got (knock on wood) the dreaded mastisis. (Because horrible flu-like symptoms and on-fire boobies is exactly what every new mother needs.)  She went through phases in the first 3 months where she wanted to eat every hour all day, leaving me little time to do anything. Nearly every conversation with Ryan began with "honey, I think she's hungry..."  To which I would reply, "I am taking a shower, so I cannot feed her RIGHT NOW."  Thank heaven for our friends and family that brought meals to us. We didn't cook a single thing for a month. 

For months, nearly every night when Ryan got home from work, I was sitting on the couch, feeding the baby, watching Friends reruns.  The house was inevitably a disaster; the laundry was not done; the dog was not fed and definitely not walked (it was a month or so before I was stable enough on my feet and healed enough to walk the dog). I was tired from being up several times the night before.  Some women say they don't mind getting up at night with the baby, but I think they're lying. It doesn't matter how cute your baby is, sleep deprivation is no fun.  I don't know if it would have been any easier had Nora been formula fed, but when it's your boobies in demand all day long, it can start to feel lonely quickly.

It was finally starting to get easier...

when the Great Bottle Refusal of 2012 began. Only very recently has Nora starting taking bottles again, and she still will not take them from me (so I still have to nurse her if she's hungry and we're in public).  During the Great Bottle Refusal of 2012, we tried everything. We spent lots of money on different kinds of bottles - bottles whose boxes promised that they were good for breastfed babies, made an easy transition from breast to bottle, would help her colic. They were lying.  Nora hated bottles and got to the point where she would scream if one came near her mouth. She knew what she wanted, and it was my ta-tas.

And all I wanted was a sportsbar, a very large beer, and a night with my friends.  But it wasn't happening, because the baby needed to eat, and I was the only one who could help her.

As a result of the Great Bottle Refusal of 2012, I've become pretty good at nursing in public.  Let me reword this: I've become pretty good at covering up and looking down, minding my own business, and praying no one approaches me. This is not as easy as it sounds: though there are laws specifically allowing nursing mothers to nurse anywhere, we do not live in a society that readily accepts naked breasts in public, except maybe during Spring Break. So, I often find myself entering a new place, thinking "where will I feed the baby?"  I attended a wedding reception where there was not only nowhere to change a diaper but also not a chair in a private corner or bathroom to be found.  I ended up feeding her while standing in the bathroom stall - and this is not the only time I have done this. 

To add to this, even though I technically can, I really don't want to feed her out in the open, even with a nursing cover.  People have a lot of opinions about breastfeeding.  Just last week I was nursing in the women's room (thankfully it was actually a room with chairs connected to the bathroom, and not just a bathroom), and woman walked in, shouted, "Oh my gosh! THANK YOU for nursing your child! Thank you! Seriously, and in public! Thank you!"  What on earth am I supposed to say?  You're welcome?  I tried to ignore her, but ended up half-smiling and said "ok..."   Go away, lady.  I guess I should be glad that she was appreciative.  I don't know what she would've done had I been giving her a bottle. (And how would she have known whether that said bottle contained breastmilk or formula? See, friends, this is why we should keep our opinions to ourselves. Or just understand that breastfeeding is a very personal thing, and not for us to decide for anyone else.)

Then there are others who think it's good that she didn't want a bottle. "Oh, that's great! She knows what's best!" (Um, thanks to the awesome invention of the breast pump, it's literally the same thing inside a bottle.)  Or, "how great! Now you won't have to wean her from a bottle!"  No, now I will have to wean her from me.  Me, who cannot go anywhere alone for more than 1.5 hours, in case the baby gets hungry.  Those of you who have been through this before know that babies eat every 2-3 hours, but that time starts from the time you start nursing until the next time they start nursing. So if it takes them 1/2 hour to eat, as it often does in the first few months, you have only 1.5 hours until they are hungry, again.

So the Great Bottle Refusal of 2012 caused a lot of tears, as well.

I know there are a lot of good things that breastfeeding provides: it's healthy, it's an easy way for mom and baby to bond (although, sometimes it's a little too bonding), it provides antibodies that help their little immune systems, it's easier to digest, and so forth.  It's also free, which is a big motivator for me. (I'm cheap.)

I know all of this, and I'm grateful that it has ended up working out for us.  (Really. I'm not just saying that.) But it doesn't change the fact that every day, at a bare minimum of four times a day, no matter where I am or what I'm doing, I have to nurse her.  It is easier now, but when she was very small, she would sometimes nurse twelve times in a twenty-four hour period. When a friend came to visit shortly after she was born, she asked "So, does she eat three times a day? Is she sleeping through the night yet?"  Nora was somewhere between one and two weeks old.  I nearly punched her, but it probably would have reopened my stitches from surgery, so I didn't...but I may have silently wished that someday karma would provide her with a infant who wanted to nurse all the time and wouldn't take a bottle.  I had some crazy postpartum hormones in my system, and I was not to be messed with.

And that's the truth about my breastfeeding experience thus far: take it or leave it.  I know it's not lovely, and I haven't discussed how beautiful it is to share this experience with my baby, but it is what it is, and I'm doing the best I can.  I'm sure when I wean Nora around one year, I will have a pang of sadness that this phase is over, but I think I will also feel a huge sense of relief that I'm done.