On bottle feeding: Our breastfeeding story

At trader joes yesterday little man and I chatted with the sweet check out lady who shared stories of her two rambunctious boys and she recommended to me her many reasons of why she had them 17 months apart.  But, all I heard? "and you're already so very used to nursing" and the blood rushed to my face and I had to pretend I wasn't about to cry or that I heard the rest of what she had said.  It's incredibly hard to share this, but I need to.  I need some peace and writing out the good and the bad is part of being the authentic person I aim to be.

I've dreamed of having a baby for as long as I could remember.  For many years I imagined a future child as I lay in bed, it was always my favorite thought to think of before closing my eyes for the night.  Part of that dream always  involved nursing my little one.  Perhaps peacefully in the quiet of the night in his perfect nursery in our beautiful custom rocker.  My mother breastfed me, all my friends breastfed, I couldn't wait.  It seemed so beautiful, right, and natural.  I read a bit about it, I observed my sweet friend who had a baby three months before me (perfect timing I thought!  She can give me the inside scoop).

But beyond that I was not at all prepared, woefully so.  I should of read more, I should of understood the challenges,  but I didn't.  So fast forward to August 26th 2015 and our little man is welcomed into the world after 17 hours of labor (which I enjoyed!  Didn't expect that).  After 5 minutes of skin to skin he was whisked off to the Nicu for monitoring... Hmm that wasn't part of the plan at all.  Nor was the fact that he was kept there much longer than needed preventing us from trying nursing the first 6 hours.  When he was finally back in our room and we tried it didn't go well, he fought my breast every time we tried.  I was showed different holds but after a few minutes was essentially left to my own devices.  We were discharged the following day and things didn't go better at home, the next day at the pediatricians office we learned his weight has dropped 8.5%.  My milk wasn't even in! Luckily a kind friend offered me some of her frozen stash.  That night I offered it to him in a sirenge to avoid nipple confusion--he gobbled it up and slept much better.  But after two more days of craziness at the breast I offered him a bottle and sobbed the entire time.  He loved it, it was an incredibly bittersweet moment offering a bottle to my three day old son  I wasn't even sure if I would give him a bottle at all before he was born.

I also finally pumped on Saturday when I felt engorged.  Joy filled me when I saw that first ounce.  He gobbled it up right away.  Life then became about pumping and feeding.  My lactation consultant wanted me to focus on pumping and hoped that maybe he would be able to latch when he got a little bigger.  The trouble was most days I couldn't keep up, a second friend brought me milk, I was grateful and sad at the same time.  He was eating a lot, sometimes 35 ounces in a day.  I was taking all the supplements in the world, pumping as often as I could (never as often as he ate though).  And still, a good day I got 12 ounces.  Then, as the weeks went on, my nipples began to hurt more and more.  Nothing could touch them, the shower would make me scream.  Finally right around 5 weeks as I felt tears about to turn on my pump I asked my lactation consultant to come assess.  She diagnosed me with Raynaud's phenomenon of the nipple.  This wasn't going to get better, it would get worse.  My heart broke.  The next few days I was barely getting any milk, it was as if my body had just given up.  We stopped right at 5 weeks and I couldn't of been more sad.  I was grateful to be free of the pump but heart broken to have missed out on this wonderful bonding experience and ability to nourish my child with only my body.

And it still hurts.  A lot.  Every morning I mix up my honest company organic formula and prepare bottles.  Every night I feel sad that I have to wait to warm up a bottle to feed my little man.  It hurts and frustrates me.  But through it all he has thrived.  He has gained weight like a champ, has doubled in size since birth, and is honestly a joyful little guy!  He has occasional hard days but mostly he spends his wake time smiling or sticking out his little tongue or telling us his many thoughts.  He soothes himself to sleep 90% of the time, loves to be in my wrap, and generally makes my life infinently wonderful.  He is perfect and healthy and I am so blessed.  I'm not sure I'll ever fully understand the mess that happened with our breastfeeding journey.  It was far too short, but I know in time it won't be quite as painful to remember.  I am learning as a mama that not all parts of our story go the way you want them to.  Motherhood is beautiful but oh so messy and full of surprising twists and turns.

Someday William, I hope you read what I write to you hear and know how hard I try, and how deeply you are loved... and to wrap this up, my dear one:  a few lines from our favorite book:

I wanted you more

than you ever will know

so I sent love to follow

wherever you go.

It's high as you wish it. It's quick as an elf.

You'll never outgrow it...it stretches itself!

So climb any mountain...

climb up to the sky!

My love will find you.

My love can fly!

And if someday you're lonely, 

or someday you're sad, 

or you strike out at baseball, 

or think you've been bad...

just lift up your face, feel the wind in your hair.

That's me, my sweet baby, my love is right there.

-nancy tillman (wherever you go my love will follow)

Be still my beating heart...

On Mommyhood

This little man is ten weeks old, and feels like high time to write down some of my thoughts on life with him thus far!  I hope to do a better job of writing about our little family in the coming weeks and months.  Somehow my day's end so quickly and not much is accomplished but I know I want to remember everything I can about these early years!

(Smile shots always end up blurry!!)

(he loves sticking his tongue out these days!!)

It's difficult figuring out the words to accurately describe motherhood.  Its so much more incredible than I ever possibly imagined (at the same time, harder!).  When I was pregnant I was pretty confident in how I would handle a baby of my own, after all, I was a nanny to infants with years of experience.  I spent most of my pregnancy in a blissful daze, having a baby was something I had dreamt of my entire life.  The one thing I have always known is that being a mom was the job I have wanted most.  Everything else was just something to occupy me until it was time for this stage of my life.  Most days I still cant believe it, I am in utter awe of these sweet little boy that Michael and I created, who grew inside of my body for nine months.  How incredible and empowering giving birth is, how in awe I am of my body and what God created me to do.

Each week with our perfect, beautiful son has been more and more wonderful.  I go to sleep looking forward to the next time I get to see him (sometimes six hours later and sometimes less...).  During the day when he naps I often miss him and prefer to let him snooze in the room with me rather than upstairs in his crib.  I knew he would sleep in the room with us at first, and until he is sleeping through the night I have no plans to move him to his crib.  Falling asleep hearing his sweet little sleepy sighs is the greatest thing, its wonderful.  He has begun to really wake up and interact with us, recognizing me, his daddy, and his grandparents and giving smiles and coos to greet his favorite people!  Seeing Michael with him, mesmerized and in such love melts my heart.  It's getting harder and harder for him to be away during the day, he wants a million photos and videos and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to be home with my sweet little one.  It's incredible that I can love him even more today than I did the moment he was laid on my chest, giving birth literally felt like part of my soul was suddenly outside of my body.

I've certainly surprised myself in some ways by how I feel about things and how I am choosing to parent.  I had planned on sleep training and had read some books during pregnancy and had experience with that with the little ones I had nannied.  However, I fed on demand as instructed and it felt natural and made the most sense to us to do our very best to keep him happy and satiated.  Re-reading the books post birth made me upset... I couldn't imagine letting William cry alone in his room.  I knew I couldn't do that.  A friend of ours had us over for dinner and revealed her two week old was already on a schedule of eating every three hours, I couldn't believe it and felt like a bad mom for a while after hearing that.  But, after doing lots of research as I am often inclined to do I realized none of that is necessary.  Some people absolutely need a schedule to function and be a good parent and thats okay!  (crying it out however is absolutely not, and using that to get your baby to sleep doesn't "train" but rather shuts down their nervous system to prevent death) but for me, our days are flexible but shaping into consistency all on William's own terms.  He wakes between 7-8 and can go 2.5 to three hours between bottles from then on.  It's amazing how self-conscious I felt about this!  My advice to anyone with a baby would be to always remember that YOU are the expert on your child.  

In the end I am not surprised at all that attachment parenting is 100% for me.  After all, Michael and I both have degrees in psychology and fully believe in gentle parenting as opposed to older styles that we experienced.  Attachment theory isn't knew and is very fascinating to me, developed in the 1960's by John Bowbly and Mary Ainsworth and defined as "a lasting psychological connectedness between human beings... a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space".  Attachment is characterized by behaviors in a child such as seeking proximity with the attachment figure when upset or threatened.  I think this definition is pretty incredible and makes motherhood a pretty amazing and incredible responsibility!  Securely attached children go on to be very confident and actually very independent!  So after refreshing myself on this I realized that my instincts as a mother outweigh the opinions of anyone else.   So for me, I want this little man to be with me every second he can be.  I want to wear him until he's 18, and I'm very okay with that.  I just wanted to write down my thoughts on this, and please know I also do my best not to judge anyone because I know we are all doing the best we can.