beanski

bottle dwelling

It was two months ago that Cameron started getting almost all of his breast milk (is it his milk or my milk?) out of bottles, which means that I have spent the last two months tethered to my breast pump. I went this way because the milk lets down on my right side way too fast for him causing him a gassy belly and causing me persistently bleeding nipples from him trying to slow it down enough to eat. I'm talking six ounces flying out of my right breast in like three minutes flat when it takes ten minutes to empty my left. I blame the surgery that I had to remove a lump in my breast when I was pregnant with Renee. She was obviously better at chugging that Cam because it never bothered her, in fact, as my memory recalls, she preferred that side. Get in, get out. A girl after my own breastfeeding heart.

Up until last week, the only time I nursed him was in the middle of the night and only ever on my left side. He seemed to enjoy it and that was the only time of the day that I was enjoying it and I figured we could make our relationship work that way forever.

But then one night he decided he hates nursing and wants nothing to do with it. Honestly, I can't even make a move to lift up my shirt and the boy flips the frick out. I sort of lived in denial about it, refusing to accept the fact that he didn't want me and just continued along down my pumping every seventeen seconds routine that I had grown accustomed to, adding a pumping session during the day to compensate for the extra milk he was having at night out of the bottle.

Then, I woke up Monday morning feeling resentful towards him, angry almost. I tried to nurse him because I was running short on pumped milk and I just couldn't bear the thought of pumping again after being up most of the night and he wouldn't have it. He arched his back and cried and acted like I was torturing him.

I decided that I had finally had enough and sent formula to mix in to his bottles at daycare. It pains me to give up on nursing, to walk away once and for all five months earlier than I wanted to, or had planned to. It literally makes me sick to my stomach. I know that the upset belly he had all night last night and the odd consistency of his poop this morning was my fault, a product of a choice that I am making for him.

I hate feeling that way. What it came down to, though, is that I had to choose between feeling angry at him or feeling angry at myself for failing and well, I just don't think a seven month old baby should be getting the blame.

We just couldn't make it work, Cameron and I, and it wasn't for lack of trying.

Please tell me his belly will get better. Please tell me that it will only take a week or two and his belly will stabilize allowing us to get more than 10 minutes of sleep. Please tell me that I'm not a bad mother for making this choice.

sometimes breastfeeding really sucks

Our nursing relationship started out rocky. I was an overly tired hormonal woman with torn up nether regions coming face to face with a screaming and very hungry baby.

And though it pains me to admit this now, when I am indeed head-over-heels in love with the little boy, what I really wanted at the time was to spend time making sure his sister knew that nothing in this world could take my time, my love, my energy away from her.

Nothing except for this baby that refused to be separated from my boob for more than ten minutes at a time.

He had a long journey and by golly, the boy wanted to eat. And eat and eat and eat.

And so it goes. So it goes the story of our lives together up until this point; me feeding, him eating, most days upwards of ten times per day. It hasn’t slowed since I returned to the workforce except now I spend my time being milked by a machine rather than by a human. Twenty ounces of pumped milk he requires in addition to the four times I nurse him per day.

I don’t know if he needs twenty ounces of breast milk during each of his eight hour stints at daycare or if he’s being fed because he’s crying and wants a nap but can’t sleep in the midst of all of the noise. But alas, that is a post for another day. The daycare post that I have never written and will likely never write because I can’t spend time and energy and tears dwelling on something I have no ability to change. The post where I judge everything she is doing because surely I could do it a hundred times better.

I love our daycare provider. She just isn’t me.

So, twenty ounces per day it is.

I spend four sessions per day with my Medela, each session lasting fifteen minutes, to barely scrape up enough milk for the little bruiser. Most days I only had to pump twice for the girl but then she needed twelve ounces to his twenty.

You couple this with the bleeding nipples and the constant arching and wrestling and begging him to just please relax, be patient and eat already and I often wonder if I am doing him more of a disservice than a service by insisting that he be a breastfed baby.

During at least half of the feedings I am certain that the little piggy would rather have the bottle.

If it hurts, you’re doing something wrong; that’s what the Breast is Best books all claim. Yet each of the three lactation consultants I have seen have told me that everything looks good with the latch and here I sit with sore, bleeding nipples wondering why on earth I can’t just cut my losses and quit.

But I can’t do it.

First, I thought I would wait until I went back to work to see if that helped because I’d be pumping instead of nursing and quite frankly formula was not an expense we could afford on one salary.

Now, I tell myself to wait for the introduction of solid foods to see if that magically fixes everything.

And after that I expect I’ll have some other reason why I should just wait another little while to switch him to formula.

I am beginning to think that maybe I need it as bad as he does because I am not ready to let him go and detach him from my body just yet. Because during half of the feedings, when he's content and warm and snuggled in close to my body contently gulping away, I just can't imagine feeding him any other way.

It's on the good days, the days when I recognize that I am doing this as much for me as I am for him that I don’t mind the blood and the pain and the time I spend in the conference room listening to the constant WEE-UNK, WEE-UNK of the pump.

Because he’s only little for a very little while. And I already miss the littleness.

consider yourself weaned

I have avoided the subject of breastfeeding on this blog for a long, long time. It is one of those issues that, depending on your experience with it, polarizes the troops. Some formula-feeding moms are paranoid and think breastfeeding moms are judging them and some breastfeeding moms are doing just that. Everyone is guilty, including me. This post is not to say what I think it right or wrong because I can see both sides. The purpose of it is to document my experience with it, if only for prosperity's sake. Or maybe to help someone out there reading that is struggling with breastfeeding or someone that is wondering if they can do it. It was a HUGE part of my life for almost an entire year and if I can't look back on it and document my very personal experience with it on my blog, I have let my blog become something other than its original purpose.

A support group was crucial.
Both of my sisters nursed or are nursing both of their babies. They told me over and over early on that I could do it and that at some point she wouldn't want to abuse my hoots every ten seconds. I didn't believe them but they were right.

Stubbornness, selflessness and determination.
This whole journey has been about her. It may have started about me and my obsession with perfectionism in everything I do, be it my job or being a wife or being a daughter or a mother. Those first few weeks when we were struggling to learn how to latch and she was struggling with her preemie baby sleepiness, I admit it was about me. It was about my determination and my profound internal NEED to give the people that I love everything I am capable of giving and then some. She took to nursing like a crazy baby and I didn't feel like it was my decision to make her stop. She pretty much weaned herself because my milk dried up so I let her decide.

Listen to the advice you want hear and ignore the rest.
The nurses as the hospital told me preemie babies don't take well to nursing. I ignored them. People told me that I wouldn't be able to keep up a mik supply using nipple shields and guess what? I nursed the little monster for 11 months exclusively using a nipple shield. Not every case is the same. Just last week my sister who nursed her son was struggling with her new baby's latch. It isn't easy and there is no right and wrong. There is only each individual baby.

Perfectionism is a good thing in some cases. I don't think this is one of them.
My experience nursing Renee isn't without regrets. I look back now and shake my head that her dad has hardly fed her in her entire life. He gave her plenty of bottles while I was home on maternity leave but after I went back to work, I was always struggling with not having enough milk. I (we) could never go anywhere because using the milk I had pumped at work would mean she wouldn't have enough for daycare. I talked a lot about supplementing with formula but I could never do it. I wish I had. I got up in the middle of the night (sometimes twice) to pump to have enough milk for daycare even though my baby learned how to sleep through the night when she was only three months old. It put a lot of strain on me and it put a lot of strain on my husband. For that, I have to put regrets down on paper, so when this baby that is currently growing in my tummy is five months old, I can look back and remind myself that Renee had formula at the end and everyone lived through it. There is a time and a place. Sometimes getting away or giving up some of the control is a good thing for everyone. If I hadn't gotten pregnant when I did, I would have never learned this. And a year from now I would have still never gotten out of the house for more than three consecutive hours. While I will absolutely choose to do it again and will do everything in my power to nurse BabySki2 for as long (or longer) than I nursed Renee, my husband deserves to be able to take care of her/him without worrying obsessively that s/he will want to eat while I'm gone.

The Mommy Magnet
The bond that nursing created between Renee and I is definitely there. There is no denying that. While my whole heart explodes with love every time she stops crying the minute I touch her, I can't help but wondering if I created our current troubles. Are the separation anxiety issues that we are currently facing with her a direct result of my refusal to let anyone but me feed her for an entire year of her life? I don't know if the two are related but I can't help but wonder. It breaks my heart that she cries when I leave the room. It hurts that she won't spend time with her grandmas without thinking that I am deserting her. Did I make her feel like I am the only one capable of caring for her? She is totally fine with going to daycare and with taking bottles there because it is part of her routine. Would she be OK with Ski and I going out for dinner or for a night away if I had allowed someone to give her a bottle when she was younger? These are questions I will never know the answer to. I do know that I will try to answer them with my second.

The transition was sad and harder for the mom than the baby.
I miss snuggling with my baby. I spent months bitching and moaning that I had no life and then my milk dried up and I haven't nursed her since Thursday night. And I miss her. I feel sort of unsure what to do with my new-found, post-nursing freedom. I do know if I wasn't knocked up I would drink A LOT of wine. I ran errands this weekend and I gave her a bottle and she drank it in her car seat. For eleven months I scheduled errands around her every-three-hour nursing schedule and here I was, out of the house for five or six hours in one shot. I was never a public nurser, not because I have a problem with people that do, just because I was never really comfortable with it. I am a creature of habit and the habit of that last year was to be at home to feed the baby every three hours. Can I understand why someone would choose to not do that? HELL YES, I can. I can understand not wanting to and I can understand not being able to have it any other way.

Oh and one more thing, formula is FREAKING expensive. I think it is the biggest form of gouging out there. She's been having formula for one month (2-3 6oz bottles a day) and I can't believe how much it costs. How does one afford it at the beginning when they eat every fifteen seconds?

I would love to hear anyone out there's experience with breastfeeding. Did you try it and would you do it again? What secrets did you learn that might help me with the next one? What was the hardest part?

to wean or not to wean

I spent most of yesterday crying because the nurse practitioner at my clinic was really cold regarding this pregnancy and the questions and concerns I have. I called to ask a few questions regarding breastfeeding while pregnant and about my half of a uterus. First, the receptionist was rude. She told me I couldn't talk to anyone until I had the pregnancy confirmed. So I went in and peed on their magical stick and SURPRISE, I'm pregnant. Yeah, I think I mentioned that. She went through her canned speech about how they want to see me at eight or nine weeks pretty much like she hadn't heard a word I said when I called initially. I then asked (again) to speak to a doctor about nursing while pregnant and about the septum in my uterus because the doctor that did my c-section told me that my future pregnancies would be high risk. Apparently the bimbo receptionist didn't care. Anyways, the nurse practitioner called me back, basically said 'go ahead and wean her' and goodbye. She didn't give a rip about my concerns. I don't think Renee is ready to be weaned. I don't think Renee is even CLOSE to being ready to be weaned. I don't think her mom is ready to wean her yet either. So I did some internet research. The internet says that it is OK to nurse while pregnant. I was sort of satisfied with that (La Leche was my source and I trust them for the most part) and figured I'd talk to my doctor in a few weeks when I go in for my first OB appointment. Then I laid awake all night last night worrying that I am now hurting both of my kids at the same time. I don't know what to do. This morning I called the hospital where I had Renee and asked to speak to one of their lactation consultants. She laughed and said 'you absolutely don't need to wean her.' Especially if she's growing and gaining weight and eating solids. I'm really irritated that my clinic just throws out opinions without checking with people who know more about it than they do. It seems OK to trust the La Leche League along with the lactation consultant whose job it is to work with breastfeeding mothers over some stupid nurse practitioner who really just wants to get me off the phone as soon as possible so she can go home, right?

I hope I don't regret this. I'm planning on GRADUALLY weaning Renee. My goal is to be done nursing her when she is one year. I will be about 16 weeks pregnant then. It's too bad I'm not telling anyone about this baby. The only people I can ask for advice are strangers.