And now, some words about my boobs.
June 29, 2004When I was pregnant, I was all about the attachment parenting. I thought Dr. Sears was neat-o. Yes! I will sleep with my child until he’s 23! No, I will never let him cry alone in a cold, dark room! I will wear him in a sling, also until he’s 23! (23 will be a hard year for him, but hopefully his career will provide a distraction.) I will Nurse Him Down and Night-time Parent and we will be so attached, our skin will fuse together and we’ll be conjoined and then we’ll need surgery. And I will nurse, oh how I will nurse! Yes, attachment parenting—yes I said yes I will yes.
The various tenets of Attachment Parenting were kicked to the curb by the time Henry was a few months old. The sling caused searing neck and back pain. Pain wasn’t mentioned in the Attachment Parenting rulebook. We stopped sleeping with Henry after I rolled over when he was asleep on my chest, causing him to slide off me and plummet to the floor. (Luckily, we were at my parents’ house, where they were wise enough to carpet their rooms in a deep, plush pile.) We began letting him cry it out (no angry emails, please! I’m sensitive!) because after a few months, he would not fall asleep if we were in the room. Would not. We tried and tried. We rocked and joggled him. He glared at us. We crooned lullabies. He found them hilarious—and stimulating. So we put him in his crib, or “prison,” as Dr. Sears put it somewhere or another, and he cried for a bit, then he fell asleep. Maybe he was more comfortable feeling like a convict.
But then, the nursing. How I wanted to nurse. I could laugh off most of Dr. Sears’ pronouncements, but not the chapters on nursing. When I was pregnant, I read book after book on the subject. Scott and I attended a breastfeeding class (where we watched a Nordic filmstrip featuring—I would never joke about such things—beautiful Scandinavians tweaking and massaging their nipples, all in the name of milk production). We practiced with foam boobs and rubber dolls. I had it down. I had a midwife who happened to be, and this is fact, Paulina Porizkova’s mother, and since she was hot, I figured my first post-birth nursing would be just like we saw in the movie—a gorgeous blond goddess helping me guide my engorged teat into the baby’s waiting lips, the milk flowing like the Hardanger Fjord.
As it turned out, after delivery my midwife was engaged in all kinds of postnatal unpleasantries. So when Henry was ready for his first snack, the nurse was the one who helped us out. And although I had done all the reading there was to do, although I had watched the soft-core breastfeeding film and practiced with the foamy boob, I laid there quietly while I watched this nurse twist my nip into some crazy point and shove Henry on in the wrong way, at the wrong angle; everything about it was all wrong. But I had just given birth and I was as helpless and weak as a newborn kitten, and Henry was getting something, so I said nothing. Then he was whisked away for warming and measuring, and I got an eyeful of my poor, poor nipple. And it was bleeding. Hey, nurse! Thanks! You suck!
Thus began four months of such pathetic, painful breastfeeding that even Dr. Sears would have reached out a fuzzy-parenting paw and handed me a bottle. First there was the bleeding, and the pain, dear God, the blinding pain. Then there was jaundice, which lasted and lasted, which caused Henry to sleep the days away and barely eat. So my milk supply dwindled, despite all the pumping. Then I was told he had a weak suck, and we did all kinds of insane mouth exercises. Then I was told he had a high palate. And he wasn’t gaining enough, so I had to supplement and pump more. Then, adding even more pain to the pain, I developed a YEAST INFECTION in my MILK DUCTS—which, unlike the yeast infections in the ol’ down below, causes searing, shooting hot daggers of pain, causing you to CRY OUT and CLUTCH YOUR BOOBS, often in public. And Henry had ideas about where to suck! And it was never anywhere near my nipple! I’d have to wrench his head in the right direction, and I learned that infants are strong little buggers. I would be sweating and cursing and crying and trying to just get him on the damn nipple, THAT’S WHERE THE FOOD IS, and he’d be all, “You’re not listening! It’s over there, by the armpit, I just know it!”
Throughout it all, my milk supply remained somewhere below a trickle. I pumped, I drank Mother’s Milk tea until I wanted to throw up, I took herbs that tasted a little worse than ass, I pumped more, and still, Henry would have a few halfhearted sucks, and then pull off to look up at me like, “Okay, this is cute, but seriously, where’s lunch?” Everyone thought I should stop nursing--everyone but Sexy Midwife, who was so hot that I figured her opinion meant more, right? I was convinced giving up would brand me a Failure as a Mother. Dr. Sear’s Baby Book told me that formula would make my son a bumbling half-wit (I may be exaggerating), and I cried and cried. I live in Park Slope, where the ratio of Women Nursing to Everyone Else is, at any given moment, 3:1. I would be shunned. Rocks would be thrown. Henry would grow up to learn how I had failed him, and he would struggle to forgive me. I had become a little nuts.
Then his four-month doctor’s appointment came, and I learned that he was only 11 pounds and hadn’t gained an ounce all month, and BAM, just like that, I gave it all up. I packed away the boobs, I set the pump on fire, I bought the formula. I wiped away my tears. And in the months that followed, I watched Henry change from a gaunt skritchy infant with visible cheekbones to a plump-cheeked, laughing baby who, miracle of miracles, no longer cried for hours every night. And I wasn’t even the least bit shunned. Although, while he was still using bottles, I made it a point to avoid Norway.
Reader Comments (50)
I had trouble nursing my daughter, initially. See, it turned out that I was flat, but for some reason we didn't figure this out until after she was born. I had to pump, feed the poor thing from a tube until she was convinced milk flowed from my thumb, and wear these incredibly huge shields designed to draw out my nipples, and which made me feel like a Valkirie (dh didn't object, lol!).But I had good help - my midwives came over every single day for ten days, working with me, encouraging me, and not giving up until we got it.And nursing was fun after that. Thank goodness the second child went a lot smoother (my shape having been remolded to suit).And slings... I did love my sling, but I got the kind that sits on your hip. Lots less backache - it was like carrying a really heavy purse that occasionally leaked.
Formula is fine. It was invented for a reason, and if not for formula, your kiddo would have been nursed by the destitute woman down the street, who probably liked to drink cheap burbon while she did it. ;-)
We're planning on a third, and there is NO WAY IN HELL that I am going to torture myself again. The blood, the cracking, the dagger-like sharp, shooting pains. Oh woe!
I think I'm more of a lazy parent than an attached parent. I'm just glad Dr. Sears has all that warm fuzzy stuff so I can defend myself. I sleep with my baby b/c I'm too damn tired to get up and walk CLEAR ACROSS THE HALL to feed him in the middle of the night. Kudos to you for being organized enough to mix bottles and not find them rotting under the car seat three days later.
Don't feel guilty about anything. Your beautiful boy is thriving and gorgeous. We all just do the best we can, yes?
Why is this not published in a booklet and attatched to every box of of serono products known to mankind?!
I'm literally quaking in my very fashionable ugg boots!!!
I feel your pain. At least some of it. My four-week-old (with a strong suck, but a small mouth) has finally got the hang of nursing. I currently have a diagonal scab on each nipple from the squishing into a point every couple of hours. I'm looking forward to being able to skip that first painful minute, but haven't given up on the whole thing yet.
We did supplement with formula to get over the jaundice. I cried, but figured I'd rather my baby eat formula (and risk all the bad things that might happen) than not eat at all and face the certain bad things that would result in.
Now, what I've found is that, in general, the hellishness passes and you are left with a wonderful arrangement that I truly envy.
I'm amazed you stuck it out as long as you did. The night I decided to quit (I think a week into the whole thing) Logan tried to convince me to wait until morning so I could at least see someone before I quit all together.
I couldn't even endure for that long. It was over. Sometimes I have regrets but my kids are fine. I mean, between you and me, they're kind of doltish....but what can you do really?
Why doesn't anyone warn us about breastfeeding?! It's like a big conspiracy or something. I asked my sister-in-law, while I was in tears during the horrible neverending time I was trying to breasfeed my son, why no one had ever told me how much it would hurt, and she said, "Because no one would ever do it." *boggle*
Breastfeeding is worse than LABOR, because it NEVER ENDS. Thank god I got smart, too, and got those bottles out. My kids are so healthy and intelligent it's ridiculous. :D
in a quirky twist, i wound up with so much milk that i had to pump off a bit before, or it would squirt down his wee throat with such force that he would choke. and absolutely ANYTHING would get me all engorged. my baby, somebody else's baby, thinking about a baby, babies of other species, and thwhap another shirt, another bra, another doubled up set of those little pad things, soaked through. the result of all this being that i was able to breastfeed with no pain or trouble or anything for something like 18 months, gradually weaning him off and boy did i feel like things turned out well. not least because i had enough trouble keeping track of diapers and all, and if my bottles hadn't been attached... well, breastfeeding was good.
except that, uhm, i still had milk for some 3 years after we quit. just a bit, from time to time, but THREE YEARS.
i think the amount of advice available for parents today is great, but there's a downside in that every bit of advice seems to carry with it the "and if you don't do it My Way, you're Killing Your Baby!"... better than dr. sears is one mom, saying "sometimes i doubt myself". thanks for bringing this up & out. (where all good boobs should be. hee).
I am in awe that you stuck it out as long as you did, Alice dear, and I wept tears of horrified empathy at what you went through.
But I was lucky, and I didn't go through that. Pain and discomfort--never remotely approaching Other Awful Unspeakable Postpartum Troubles--was relatively brief, so my post, if I ever have one, about the horrors of breastfeeding would be more about the pariah you become the moment the breastfeeding is in a place where others can see your and your desperately hungry infant (in a women's clothing store dressing room: "Would you like me to put a chair in the ladies' room for you?" "Well, I dunno--how would you like to go have a snack by the toilets?"), or if it lasts one moment past the first year. Or, in my case, two years and three months past the first year.
It's like you already said so very well--we must be judged, because no other punishment for bringing little beings into the world and loving the bejesus out of them is severe enough.
One of my friends had a very similar experience to you, Alice. Her baby also had a weak latch. When she gave up breastfeeding after several weeks of trying (including several lactation consults) and switched to formula, her baby stopped screaming 24x7. I couldn't believe she was beating herself up about it. It was the absolute right decision in her case. You have to go with what works for you and your baby.
Yep. Actually, literally, Paulina Porizkova's mom. And she was awful purty.
Can you ask your midwife for me?