More than just my milk

I remember a comment someone made to me when I was struggling with breastfeeding Jonah, and feeling inadequate as a mother. She told me to remember that I was "more than just milk", and that Jonah needed my nurturing in many ways beyond nursing. I said, "of course", but really, inside, I was thinking "Are you kidding? Have you seen this baby?".

Our friends teased us that they didn't know what Jonah looked like for the first 6 months of his life; he was always nursing. Nursing in a carrier, nursing in his sleep, however, wherever, that's what he did. To be fair, he also screamed, but that was when he wasn't nursing, so I was incentivized to keep him on the boob pretty much 24/7.

I don't know which was the chicken and which the egg, but Jonah ended up as a baby whose only consolation was my breast. He nursed for comfort as well as nourishment, which is totally healthy and normal, but it was taken to the extreme. He never had any interest in cuddling or being rocked; if I was holding him and not nursing he was pissed.

Looking back, I definitely learned to equate nursing with mothering, and that basic equation led me to view giving him formula as tantamount to failure as a parent. This was the one thing he wanted from me, the one thing that I could give him and no one else could, and I worked so hard, day and night, to give it to him. It all worked out ok, but with my milk supply issues it probably would have been much easier on both of us if I had been willing to supplement.

Fast forward to my second baby, and breastfeeding is even harder than before. I have had to supplement with Galen, almost from birth. And while I thought I was prepared for the possibility, it has been very much a struggle not to feel like a failure. Every bottle that I gave Galen was painful for me, a reminder of the fact that I couldn't give him everything that he needed. Feelings of worthlessness plagued me, and followed me into bouts of post-partum depression. No encouraging words, no rationalization, nothing could shake me free from my own self judgement.

Until Galen, himself, managed to show me what I could not see on my own. We had been struggling with sleep issues for a while, and I was trying to get him down one night with little success. He was fussing while nursing, and I knew he was hungry, so I gave him a bottle. But he didn't want it, he just tensed up and began to cry. We were in the bed together, side-lying like we always sleep, and I kept trying over and over while he got more upset. Finally, I sat upright, picked him up and cradled him in my arms. He melted into me, and began rooting around for the bottle, which I gave him. He had just wanted to be held by me. It ended up being one of the sweetest, most tender moments that we had shared, with me giving him all of my love and nurturing, and him lapping it up. He finished the bottle and then wanted to breastfeed, so we laid back down and he nursed to sleep.

I don't think I can convey the shift that this allowed inside of me. I had been stressing, quite a bit, that Galen had been nursing less and less, and not knowing how to deal with the possibility of him weaning so young. But this one experience of closeness and true mothering while giving him a bottle made me realize that it will be ok.

I am so glad that I have worked as hard as I have, with my family's amazing support, to make nursing last this long, against all odds. It has given us a wonderful, strong bond, and strengthened Galen's body. And if it is not meant to go on much longer, I will miss it, and mourn it, but I will continue to give my baby everything that he needs. It is still my face that he looks for, my touch that soothes him. It's taken me a while to get here, but I finally know that I am, truly, more than just my milk.

Natural, but not easy.

It seems horribly unfair that something so natural can be so damn hard. I have tried pumping constantly. I have tried nursing constantly. I have taken every herb under the sun, and even the best of the pharmaceuticals. I have tried breast compressions and I have prayed to the dairy goddess to make the milk flow, but nothing seems to make it work the way it's supposed to. Part of me feels like any reasonable person would have given up by now, but I can't. I can't stop trying. But it hurts my heart. I am tired of it hurting.

Don't get me wrong, though. I absolutely love breastfeeding. Never before nursing have I experienced the deep, unending bond that it brings, nor the inexplicable joy that comes from nurturing another being with my body. It is the very best thing for my baby, and I will continue to breastfeed as long as I have any milk to give. I just wish there was a little more.

But I guess that's parenting- giving everything you have, wishing it could be more, but it still having to be enough. Here is an anagram I wrote to remind me of what's important, what it's all about. Maybe it will help you too.

P-atience
A-daptation
R-espect
E-mpathy
N-urturing
T-rust
I-ntuition
N-ot knowing
G-rowth

And above all else, Love, Love, Love.

Milk that someone else made

So, I have this problem: I seem to make really, really hungry little boys.

Jonah eats every one of us under the table, including me when I was pregnant and now that I am nursing two. It really is quite impressive. And little Galen just can't seem to get quite enough. Once my milk supply is up to his demand, his demand increases, and I am struggling to catch up again. I can write a whole 'nother rant about the panicked insecurity that my fear of starving him brings out (Jonah lost A LOT of weight in his first days before we knew anything was amiss), but that's not what I am thinking about now.

I am thinking about milk. If we're lucky, it's our first earthly food, made perfectly just for us. Breastmilk changes, miraculously in my opinion, throughout the first days, then weeks, months and even years of a childs life to match their nutritional and immunological needs. When I am battling an illness, the antibodies that my body produces are passed to my baby through my breastmilk, and his immune system is strengthened. Nothing, no supplement, can come close to that. So what is a mama to do when she is told that her baby needs supplementation?

I have found myself faced with this decision for the second time now. After the gut-wrenching, self-inflicted, guilt-fest that I enjoyed the first time around, I was determined to be OK if I need to give babe #2 some formula. It is not, after all, heroin, as a kind friend once pointed out to me. But it still sucks, even when it is the right thing to do.

Our midwife offered, when we first began supplementing, to put out a request to her clients asking if anyone had extra breastmilk that they would be willing to donate to us. I said no, at first because I really felt that it would only be for a day or two, but as the time has gone on I've had to look more closely at my hesitation. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I have resistance to feeding my baby another woman's milk.

What's up with that?

Formula is made by someone else too, after all; someone I don't know, someone who may be perfectly well intentioned, but whose motivations are certainly influenced by profit. And every study out there is clear in the superiority of breastmilk. So why do I, self-professed hippy, have any hesitation with giving my baby the best option I have?

It isn't squeamishness. I am full of nothing but awe for our bodies and what they do. It isn't fear. I have absolute faith in my midwife, and trust anyone that she would guide us to who would be willing to share milk. I think it's mostly sadness.

Confronting the choice to give my baby milk that someone else made is coming right up against the pain of not being able to provide for him myself. And that hurts. It is a kind of impotence, at least that's what it feels like. I hate that it keeps coming back here, but here we are.

I have embraced and pushed through the pain. I have been shown intense generosity by three women who have given us an amazing gift, and I am so grateful. My son's belly is happy, he is thriving, and I don't worry about him not having enough. Of course, I want to be able to give him everything he needs from my own breast, and I hope to soon enough, but milk that someone else made is the next best thing.