breast feeding

What a nightmare!
Working in a NICU, all I see are moms trying to breastfeed infants with serious health problems, so I was well aware of how difficult breastfeeding could be. In fact, I wasn't even sure I wanted to because it seemed to be such a source of frustration and stress for the moms I work with and I just didn't want to put myself through that. But, everyone kept telling me that it's not like that with a healthy normal baby and that I should at least give it a try, so that's what I did. Before she was born, my stance on BFing was that I would try it just to see if she was an instantly good latcher that breast fed with no difficulty, but if she was not, I wasn't going to stress myself out about it like I see so many moms do, instead I would just pump out my milk for her and give it to her in a bottle. No problem, right? Wrong.
Let me start from the beginning in the hospital. Right after she was born, I didn't have the desire to try to breastfeed because honestly, I am a very logical thinker and it didn't make sense to have her suck on an empty nipple. I had gestational diabetes, and although it was well controlled, I still worried about her blood sugar dropping, so I wanted her to actually eat right away. Also, I had lots of visitors and WANTED those visitors. I was excited to have the grandparents and my siblings see the baby. I didn't want to be sitting in our room with the door closed trying to get a baby to feed from an empty breast while my family waited out in the waiting room. I know this is what people do all the time and that my family wouldn't have minded, but I minded. So, I gave her a bottle of formula.
And I continued to do so for the entire hospital stay. I had planned on feeding her formula from a bottle until my milk came in anyway because I see too many babies come into the NICU for high bilirubin because they were primarily breast feeding before any milk was available, so basically they were starving and dehydrated for four days. I didn't want any part of that. The pediatrician that saw her in the hospital kept pushing me to BF while I was there, saying that the longer I wait, the harder it will be. I told him my worries about jaundice and dehydration and that if I couldn't breastfeed, I would just pump the milk and give it to her and that the actual nursing wasn't that important to me.
I only tried to nurse her one time late at night in the hospital for about five minutes. She was frustrated that there was no milk, so I stopped and didn't try anymore in the hospital. It was hard, because there were always people in my room, and I knew it was going to be a struggle and was honestly a little embarrased and scared to try breast feeding with anyone around. I wanted to wait until I was home and my expert mom could help me. I didn't want the pressure of the nurses or lactation consultants and I didn't want people grabbing my boobs all the time. Not my thing. So, I simply told the nurses I would be bottle feeding her until my milk came in so they would leave me alone. I pumped frequently when there weren't visitors to get my milk to come in and by day four it was in.
I started out only trying to feed her when my mom was around to help because I think I was nervous that I would get frustrated without her guidance. So, if she wasn't around, I pumped every three hours and bottle fed her, supplementing with formula until I had a full supply (which took until about day 6). She was a terrible latcher with a really strong overbite so it was hard to get her bottom lip out to suck and each attempt took about 20-30 minutes of screaming and trying to latch before she actually would be successful. Then, she would suck for about five minutes, then come off and start crying again. It was a very frustrating cycle. Each feeding would take an hour to complete and then she'd want to eat an hour later. I was only able to have any latching success if I was laying down on my side and she would lay down and face me. The cradle hold would make her soooo mad.... she acted like she was being confined and smothered. She would use all her strength to push away from me and the more I tried to keep her in position, the worse it would get. So, this made it impossible to go anywhere in public because I can't exactly lay down everywhere I go, and she also wouldn't eat if I had a nursing cover up on. She would get hot and fussy and didn' like the cloth draped over her. This also made it hard to go anywhere in public. Every time I had to feed her at someone elses house, I would have to leave the room for an hour at a time so we could lay on a bed with no cover on. I felt so isolated from everything and everyone. I felt trapped in my house on the couch, and there was almost no point in getting dressed because during her 30 minute latching ordeal, milk would be spraying out everywhere making such a mess on me, her, my clothes, and the couch. The couch had to have sheets over it all the time to keep it from getting soaked and everything smelled like dry milk. I would cry and she would cry with every feeding. It was so much more frustrating than I even thought it would be. It annoyed me that I was the only one up all night, exhausted because I couldn't just feed her and then go back to sleep, no, I had to be up for a very loud frustrating hour each time she woke up, while my husband lay there sleeping.
She was ALWAYS hungry, probably because for one, I wasn't making much milk and also because she would burn so much energy screaming and desperately trying to latch on. It was to the point that I would be annoyed with my own baby just because she wanted to eat. Then, finally when she was about two weeks old, I was once again at my moms so she could help me try to breast feed her and my mom noticed that I was really not doing well. At this point, I had done nothing but breast feeding every feed for a week. No bottles to supplement like I had in the beginning. I wanted to just keep trying, because I knew eventually she would get it, but in that week, we had made NO improvement and I was starting to get really depressed about it. I hated that I was trapped to the house, that I wore sloppy PJ clothes all day, that I was the only person who could feed her, that every feeding was a crying stressful disaster for both of us, that I didn't sleep because they took so long, that I was resenting my husband for having freetime while I was miserable and even my baby for simply being hungry. I really think it was keeping me from bonding with my baby instead of encouraging it like all the breast feeding nazi's say it does.

My mom asked what was wrong as I sat at her house seeming sad, angry, distant and frustrated with my baby. I broke down crying about not wanting to breastfeed and she simply said "then stop". I didn't expect her to say that because she breast fed six kids and I thought she would really want me too. She was very supportive of me doing what worked for me and my baby and not letting others pressure me into doing something that was making me miserable. So I stopped. Thank God I have a supportive mom!


I still had horrible guilt for the first couple of days because I know breast milk is the best food for her, and I just felt like a bit of a failure even though I had originally said I wasn't going to stress myself out about it. The night I had decided to stop was some kind of national breast feeding day or something like that and there was a segment on the news abou it (of course) and the model Gizelle was quoted saying: "not breast feeding your baby is selfish... why would you give your baby chemical food at such a young age? I think not breast feeding should be illegal." This didn't exactly help me feel any better about my decision, but I still knew it was the right decision for my family. I had originally thought that if I couldn't breast feed, that I would just pump and bottle feed every feeding. But, once I tried this, I realized how impossible this was to keep up with. I can't pump in public, so once again I would be confined to my house, feedings take twice as long because it takes 15-20 minutes to pump and then another 15 for her to eat it from the bottle, and I'm aslo not spending that time with her each time I pump... I would have to lay her down, ignore her and go sit down and pump. And I wanted to love and spend time with my baby, not be hooked up to a machine for half the day.

I have heard that babies only need 1oz of BM a day to get the antibodies from their mom, so I decided that is something I could do. I pump once in the morning before she wakes up and once at night after she goes to bed. This way, I'm not missing out on any time with her, and I'm still keeping up enough supply to provide her with antibodies. I only get about 3oz total each day, but I'm happy with that. I have been able to bond with my baby sooooo much better NOT breastfeeding. I can now smile at her, talk to her and be incredibly happy to feed her. It's a much more positive experience for both of us now. People who say you bond better with your baby if you breast feed clearly had an easy time breast feeding, because if it's difficult, it has quite the opposite effect. I really don't see a difference anyway, either way, you are holding your baby close to you and providing it with nourishment while it looks into your eyes, who cares what it is they're sucking on.? Some people are just so hung up on this breast feeding thing that they loose sight of what's important. There is so much more to being a good mom than just providing breast milk and i really resent people for making me feel like a bad mom for not doing it.

I don't think it's better for my baby that we have so much stress associated with eating and a mom who is about to loose it. I think it's much healthier for her to have a happy mom who gladly feeds her formula. I feed formula to so many babies at work who end up totally happy and healthy, and there are moms who adopt their babies or just don't make milk for some reason or another and formula may not be a perfect match to BM, but it's a fine substitute.
Once I quit breast feeding, I was also able to get out of my baby blues funk becaue I didn't constantly feel frustrated and I was also able to get up and go.... get dressed, get out of the house,and organize my day into some kind of schedule. For some people, I understand that this isn't important and laying around half naked all day feeding your baby in bed sounds great, but it's just not for me. And I realize that it's the natural thing to do and that in some cultures there wouldn't be a choice and the baby would eventually just have to learn....well I'm sure that in those cultures, there's more acceptance and ease of BFing in public and I'm also willing to bet that the infant mortality rate is much higher due to not enough milk or other problems with feeding, so I'm lucky I have a choice! It's so much easier to feed in public now, which I have to say is unfortunate that our society doesn't cater to/ accept breast feeding more. Having tried to go in public and breast feed, it is such a pain! Cover ups suck, and there's no good place to go and feed your baby. I think a lot of people don't breast feed for this reason alone. It's funny that we push brest feeding on moms so much, yet don't make it very easy for them.
So, why didn't it work for me? Should I not have given her bottles before we had established breast feeding? Maybe. But then would she have gotten dehydrated and jaundiced? Maybe. Should I have allowed the nurses and lactation consultants to help me in the hospital instead of trying to keep them away? Maybe. But then would my hospital stay and first days with my baby also have been stressful instead of enjoyable? Maybe. Is it because I had a negative view on breast feeding from the beginning and I was nervous and this got in my own way? Or is it just that she has a strong overbite and I didn't make enough milk to keep her full? I've heard that women with PCOS/insulin resistance (me) don't produce as much milk. Who knows what the reason is, and it doesn't really help anything to play the "what if" game. All I know is that I did what I thought was best for my baby at the tme and I'm still doing the best I can to make what I feel like are the right decisions for her.