World Breastfeeding Week 2013

To celebrate World Breastfeeding Week for 2013, I would like to take a minute to write about one of the biggest causes of my 'mommy guilt'.  That guilt stems from my inability to breastfeed my kids longer than 3-4 months.  I feel a lot of sadness when I think about it, and I am mildly ashamed to admit that it still haunts me even today, more than a year after I stopped breastfeeding my son.

Before I even found out I was pregnant, I knew that I wanted to breastfeed.  There were several reasons behind this but namely it was selfish in that I knew that it would save money and be easier than warming up bottles all the time.  At the time I didn't realize all of the benefits for both mother and baby of breastfeeding.  I remember chastising people silently who would give their children because "how hard could breastfeeding be"?  As it turns out, it was a lot more difficult than I realized... I never even thought that there would be a problem for me not having enough supply to feed a baby.  I had always had a larger chest and stupidly thought that the bigger your boobs, the more milk you were capable of making.  Unfortunately, that is not entirely the case.  I now know that you are equally as capable of producing enough milk to feed a child if you have a smaller chest than if you are more well endowed. 

Once Isabella was born, she immediately took to nursing.  She was a natural and that really helped with the first time mom jitters.  However, like most moms, my milk didn't come in until after I got home from the hospital and they warned me that she needed to be on formula until that happened because she was losing too much weight.  I was immediately devastated.  Didn't they believe me that I could do this?  Why weren't they more supportive?  It was the saddest that I have been in a long time.  My husband and mother were there to support me but it is definitely sad when your child's doctor is saying something completely against what you would like to do. 

We seemed to be doing well, but I was totally unprepared for how much a newborn would have to eat.  I think that with all of the support in the world, I still would have been unable to continue to breastfeed my daughter.  I wasn't feeding her often enough and because of that my supply started to dwindle.  Once it started diminishing, I began researching like crazy on how to get it back, but it was too late.  I was stressed out and tried everything that I could to increase my supply from drinking more than double the water expected during the day, eating right, eating more fatty foods from healthier fats, from eating lactation cookies, and drinking tea with fenugreek and taking fenugreek pills.  Nothing seemed to help and it was only getting worse by the day.  I was pumping so much that it was starting to affect me mentally and around 3 months, I threw in towel.  I was barely making enough milk for one feed during the day and I was absolutely devastated.  I felt like the biggest failure of a mother ever. 

Luckily feeding her taught me many things, namely that I can be comfortable feeding my children in public, that I can stand up for what I believe is right for my children, and that I needed to be more prepared the second time.  I had learned a lot from Isabella's breastfeeding experience, but unfortunately my body hadn't quite learned that it should produce enough milk for a child.  We started off great with Silas and I was able to feed
him really well.  I had an understanding of how much he should be eating and was able to feed him on demand throughout the day and night.  Unfortunately, around the same time that I began to experience problems with Isabella those same problems reared their ugly head with Silas, except that this time I was able to pump for awhile longer.  Again, I was absolutely devastated.  Failure x 2.  I knew that Corry didn't want anymore children and that this would be my last chance to breastfeed a child and as hard as I was trying, I just couldn't force my body to do what I knew that I needed to do. 

I was incredibly jealous of other mothers who were breastfeeding their children.  It seemed like everywhere I turned there were women who were feeding their children, or talking about feeding their children.  Hell, even around this time Selma Hayek was making news being in a different country breastfeeding someone else's child.  It was everywhere and I wasn't able to escape.  It sounds ridiculous but I feel like I needed time to grieve and come to terms with my body failing me with this issue.  I am not too proud to admit that I still am very jealous of moms who are able to breastfeed their children effortlessly.  Because of the circles that I associate with, I see more than my fair share of teen moms and moms that don't necessarily want to breastfeed and they are able to produce more milk than I was ever able to come up with.  That is such an incredible gift that some women take for granted and I wish that I was able to do it longer.

I appreciate this blog for times like this when I can open myself up and talk about something I have had issues for over a year.  I want to, if nothing else, let women in my position know that they aren't alone in this and that great things can happen to you as a parent even if you get off to a rockier start than you imagined.

-Sara