The Natural Way?! Part Two

Tina Fey on the subject of her failed attempt at breastfeeding:

I was defensive and grouchy whenever the topic came up. At a party with a friend who was successfully nursing her little boy, I watched her husband produce a bottle of pumped breast milk that was the size of a Big Gulp. It was more milk than I had produced in my whole seven weeks – I blame Entourage. As my friend's husband fed the baby, he said offhandedly, "This stuff is liquid gold. You know it actually makes them smarter?" "Let's set a date!" I screamed. "IQ test. Five years from today. My formula baby will crush your baby!" Thankfully, my mouth was so full of cake they could not understand me.

We get it. "Breast is best." But are there really people out there who are saying, "No way! Keep those away from my baby!"  It seems to me that everyone I know who doesn't breastfeed their baby came to that decision after days or weeks of literal blood, sweat, and many many tears.

You may be familiar with my experience of breastfeeding Lila.  I think the best word to describe it would be "miserable" or perhaps "guilt-ridden" or even "Why did God invent this way of feeding children and why am I so bad at it and why does everyone make me feel guilty about it?"  One of those.  With Lila, long story short, we were starving her for days before we realized that I had absolutely no milk supply.  We started supplementing with formula using various apparatuses, anything but the dreaded, horrible, nipple-confusing, Nazi-worshiping bottle.  Everyone kept telling me my milk would come in, so I waited and pumped and waited and cried.  At the point of that post I wrote on breastfeeding, Lila was one month old and I think she was getting somewhere around an ounce from me for each feeding (she needed three or four).  By the time I stopped nursing her at six months old, she never got more than two ounces from me at a single feeding.  Go me.

This time around, I told myself it would be different.  "I know what problems to look for this time," I said.  "I have a lot more experience." So you can imagine my joy when the nurse came in to my hospital room and said apologetically that we needed to start supplementing because Olive had a bad case of jaundice and my supply was too low to combat it.  "Oh fabulous," I thought.

We started the old song and dance of nursing and then formula feeding and then pumping.  I got out of the hospital only to come home to three other children who enjoyed pulling the pump apart as I was using it or who waited just until I was all hooked up and couldn't move to get stuck underneath something and scream bloody murder until I untangled myself and came and got them out.  I'm starting to think that my body hemorrhaged on purpose so that I could go back to the hospital where life was easier.

Fast forward to an ambulance ride, a DNC, and two blood transfusions.  I decided to pump while I was back in the hospital, and I was actually able to get a decent amount even though I couldn't sit up and had to lie hanging off the hospital bed to do it. (Yes, I do realize as I'm writing this that I am crazy, but at least I got to watch that TLC trailer park show while I was doing it.)

Since then our home has gotten a little quieter, and with nursing and pumping combined, Olive has been able to get significantly more breast milk than Lila ever got.  But Olive's been a very finicky eater.  She'll want to nurse and nurse but be wearing herself out because she's not getting very much, so then she'll fall asleep, and then she'll want a bottle, but then she'll want to nurse, and by the time the feeding session is over, I have maybe thirty minutes before the next one starts.  So we're pulling the plug.  I've got her on an all bottle diet now.  I pump a few times a day because I figure if I have a little bit, I might as well give it to her, but the craziness is done.

Why bother writing about this? Well, my first breastfeeding post is one of my most popular posts in the life of my blog.  It seems that misery loves company, and if you're trolling the internet looking for support on bad breastfeeding situations (honestly most people seem to have it worse than I) all you're going to find is "Eat lots of oatmeal!" "Pump every thirty minutes!" "Overdose on Fenugreek!" "Your baby will never get to Harvard without breast milk!" and so on and so on.  I thought it was time that there was a different perspective available.

So take heart, failed breast feeder!  To quote my lactation consultant, "Formula will not kill your baby." You are not a bad mom and you are in good company.