Don't you love it when you have to eat your words? This is a story of being humbled. It's about the time that I experienced my first big failure of motherhood, and the blessing it turned out to be.
Breast is best. I've heard that for years and I absolutely believe it. I got my degree in public health so I knew the many benefits (physical, mental, emotional, etc.) of breastfeeding your baby. Before I had one of my own, I had many opinions (they were facts in my head) about the best way to raise a child. Breastfeeding was, no doubt, the best way to go and anyone who didn't breastfeed probably just didn't try very hard. That was what I believed to be true. Then along came Evangeline.
She was quite small when she was born. Perfectly healthy, but on the small side. She wasn't ever able to latch and we all attributed it to the fact that she was just weak because of her small size (and the fact that my nipples aren't ideal for nursing). I had been trying to nurse her all that first day without much luck, and by that first night she was so hungry she was just screaming. Clueless and desperate, I sent Skylar to the store at 2 a.m. to get some formula. My baby needed to eat, after all. The next day, my midwife came out to our house for the routine postpartum check. I told her about the night before and was reassured that we did the right thing. Amber gave me a nipple shield and said it would help Eva nurse until she was bigger and stronger and could do it on her own. For two weeks, I nursed my baby round the clock. She would literally be latched on (with the help of the nipple shield) for about 20 hours a day. Something didn't feel right about the situation, but everyone just kept telling me that it gets better. Eventually, hearing that only made me more frustrated and concerned.
The day Eva turned two weeks old, I got a nightmare of a phone call from my brother. My sister and her five kids were visiting my parents in DFW and her youngest, Garrett, had drowned that afternoon. He had been rushed by life flight to the children's hospital, but was brain dead and would not survive. We hurriedly packed our things and Skylar, Eva, Indiana (our dog), and I made the 250 mile drive to my parent's to be there for Veronica and her family. We spent nearly a week there, learning what it means to mourn with those that mourn. But all that deserves a post of its own, so I won't go into that here..
While it isn't ideal (or recommended) to do much traveling with a two week old, it is doable - though we quickly found out it has its consequences. We were out of our comfort zone, stressed, grieving, living in a hotel, and spending our days at my parent's house that was FULL of 25+ people at any given time. I continued trying to nurse Eva, but it was getting harder and harder given the circumstances. Soon I noticed that her diaper output was dropping and she hadn't been gaining much weight. After a few nights of being there, Eva began having trouble staying latched on even with the nipple shield. After a 4 hour stretch of nursing and her falling off the boob, she gave up and just cried because she was still so hungry. I decided to give her a bottle of formula just to see how she did. Up until that point, she had had a bottle a few times. She sucked down 5 ounces in less than an hour. That's a lot for a 2 1/2 week old! I realized I had been starving my poor, struggling baby.
I made the decision that I would continue to try to nurse, but that I would also pump and bottle feed Eva breast milk until we could get back on track. I knew that bottle feeding could very likely deter her from going back to the breast later on, but we were in a constant state of traveling at that point, and I needed to make sure she was getting enough to eat. Much to my surprise, however, when I started pumping I discovered that my milk supply had dropped drastically and I was barely producing anything anymore. Eva had been having such a hard time getting much out of nursing, thus causing my body to cut my supply way down. Also, the stress of the whole situation can really do some damage in situations like this. After talking to lots of people, I formulated a plan for getting my supply back up. I would pump every 2-3 hours, in addition to increasing my water intake and supplementing with various herbs. I would still nurse her, but pumping and bottle feeding would be her primary source of food for a while. Thus began a very difficult journey.
While discussing all this with my mom, she decided to look up the local chapter of La Leche League and we saw that they were having their monthly meeting the next day. What were the odds? I attended the meeting and talked to the women about the problems I'd been having. They were supportive, but I began to feel a bit discouraged because it was all just uplifting talk. Nothing particularly helpful. The last 15 minutes of the meeting, however, the last leader showed up. She just so happened to be a board certified lactation consultant. After talking to her and having her watch a bit of Eva nursing, she checked Eva's mouth and found that she had a severe lip and tongue tie. THAT was why she wasn't able to nurse well. She was able to give me a referral for a dentist that could perform the surgery she needed and I made an appointment with him for a couple weeks out (that was the earliest they could see Eva).
After a few days of pumping all the time, Eva began to prefer the bottle and fought me hard at the boob. I continued to try to nurse her a couple times a day, but because I was having to pump so much, there was hardly anything in there for her and she HATED it. After a week of being in DFW and a few days into my pumping adventure, we headed back to San Antonio for a few days before flying up to Utah for Garrett's funeral. My supply wasn't increasing at all, but it was at least maintaining, so I continued even though my nipples were being torn to shreds and I was losing pieces of skin off them. The night before we were supposed to leave for Utah, I woke up in the middle of the night with a high fever, chills, and horrible pain in my boobs. My mom had warned me of infection and told me to get to the doctor, but I never made time to do it. Now I was facing the consequences. The next morning, I went to urgent care and was told I had mastitis. I was so engorged and with that and the infection, pumping was so painful. We had to drive back up to DFW that day so Skylar could attend a conference for work, then we'd be flying to Utah after that. That was a miserable journey.
We spent a day in DFW then four days in Utah. With all the traveling and stress, it was incredibly difficult to properly take care of myself, pump on the appropriate schedule, and take care of Eva while attempting to pump on the appropriate schedule. (Without fail, every time I'd try to pump, Eva would wake up and need me. It is literally impossible to pump and take care of her without another person helping.) My supply began to shrink even more, despite my best efforts. After flying back into DFW, Eva's appointment with the dentist was the next day. The surgery went remarkably well. I was still hopeful that after the surgery we'd be able to nurse, but I knew we'd need help so I called the lactation consultant who diagnosed Eva a couple weeks before. She wasn't able to see us until five days after the surgery, and I began to worry that by that point we'd be so far gone from nursing that we wouldn't be able to make it back. My mastitis cleared up, which made pumping easier, but then Eva got thrush in her mouth AND her bottom.
When the day of the lactation consultation arrived, Eva was in so much pain and was screaming all the time from the thrush, that I had to cancel the appointment. There was no way it would be productive and would end up being a waste of time and money.
Throughout all this I wanted to breastfeed my baby so badly, but in trying to make that happen she and I were both getting extremely stressed out with everything working against us. The bonding that's supposed to take place early on was being strained and I wasn't able to enjoy my sweet, precious newborn. As we approached her 5 week mark (the day when the lactation consultation was supposed to take place) and I was having to solely bottle feed her, the thought of having to go straight formula became less stress-inducing and more relieving.
After cancelling the appointment that day, I was soothing my crying child who was in great pain and feeding her a bottle. For the first time I felt like I was finally bonding with her. Finally, I was able to just take care of my baby without the strain of trying to take care of her "the BEST way." And my decision was made: I will no longer be breastfeeding my first born child. I won't even be pumping to give her breast milk anymore because 1) I'm barely producing anything anymore and 2) I cannot pump unless another person is there and able to take care of Eva while I do so, and I don't have that luxury at home.
And guess what? I'm still a good mother. From struggling to get her to latch, to starving her, to later finding out she was lip and tongue tied, to pumping and shredding my nipples, to getting mastitis, to surgery, to thrush, to the shrinking of my milk supply, all while traveling all over the country to deal with the stress of my family's grief over my nephew's death, I can honestly say I gave it my best effort. Perhaps I could have tried to reschedule with the lactation consultant to see if we could still try to salvage nursing, but my poor baby has been through enough. We've finally begun to get into a routine which just happens to involve formula and a bottle (we're still in DFW - we're not even home yet) and we're FINALLY bonding. I can't bring myself to disrupt her little life yet again to battle with her over nursing. There's no guarantee we can even make it work at this point (and even if we could, my milk is almost gone anyway), and we're finally getting to a place where we're happy. And isn't that what matters? Sure there are benefits to breastfeeding that formula doesn't have, but we weren't reaping many of those benefits in her short 5 weeks of life so far. My baby will still be happy and healthy and our relationship will thrive from here on out.
So, I failed at breastfeeding my baby. But because of my perceived failure, I was given the gift of having my eyes opened. Now, whenever I see a mother who loves her child, that's all I see: love. I no longer see that she's breastfeeding or bottle feeding, cloth diapering or using disposables, co-sleeping or crib-sleeping, helicopter parenting or letting her kids be independent. There are so many RIGHT ways to raise a child. If a mother loves her child, then she's doing what works best for them. And who am I to say what's best for them? In my very short experience of motherhood, I have been given a wonderful blessing: I'm far less judgmental and far more compassionate than I ever used to be - all because of my "failure."
And now,some cuteness:
