My Love-Hate Relationship With Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding was a choice I made years ago. I made it for so many reasons the biggest of one was naively loving the idea of doing everything as "natural" as possible, because that's the right and correct thing to do. Well I've since decided that it's downright shocking that the human race has even survived this long considering how difficult it is to feed your baby. I will continue to hope that not everyone has such a rough time. I can try to assume that most of my issues came from the artificial means of his birth and initial feeds. Maybe it all would have worked out better if he had been able to start by breastfeeding immediately, instead of all of the time I spent with the pump. But I digress. Let's really nail down the nitty gritty.

I exclusively pumped for Legan for the first two weeks of his life. The third week I spent nursing him 2-3 times a day, but mostly having to supplement those feeds with either tube feeds or bottles. The rest of his 8 feeds were done fully by bottle or tube. Once we got home we immediately jumped in to exclusive breastfeeding. I thought about easing in, it might have been easier on the both of us for many reasons, but in the grand scheme I was just entirely fed up with being a slave to the pump.

So here's my loves of breastfeeding:

I love the perspective here, it's from my view. Look how little he was and how HUGE that boob is. It's surprising he wasn't scared off, squashed, or drowned.

1. The money! I LOVE not spending the money on formula. Right?! Why spend any dollars on something you can make for pretty much nothing. If you ignore all the extra food I'm eating of course.

Even from his first week finally latching, he had to hold on to this for dear life, way better than an impersonal bottle!

2. Bottle washing! I love NOT having to wash so many bottles everyday. Granted, I'm still pumping into bottles so we're washing a few, but not like 10-12 a day, and yes that's how often he's eating.

Nothing like a picnic on a park bench overlooking a river...except I didn't get to eat.

3. Food on the go! I don't have to bring any food with as long as he's going to be hanging out with me. I do have to think ahead a little if I'm leaving him with someone else, but we can leave the house together and even if we don't end up coming home, food is taken care of. Granted...we'd run out of diapers pretty fast but that's a different story...

You can't tell, but we're nestled on the couch here, probably watching a telenovela.

4. Bonding and cuddles. There is something great about knowing that I'm still 100% providing for my little man. Watching him get chubby and only eat from me is a great feeling.  Plus I have the perfect excuse to steal him away from people, and to sit on the couch with him for hours. He's always hungry, so I can pretty much just have an excuse just for taking him all the time.

He's got his drama hand going here. He's AMAZED just thinking of the health benefits of his meals.

5. Health. All joking aside I really do think that the nutrition provided from mom's milk is the healthiest option for babies, especially when they take it right from the breast. I love helping out his immune system and giving him the best chance of a happy digestive system.

However, these last 5 weeks have been full of many other moments too.

Typical morning, feed him, then pump while he rolls around half milk drunk.

1. The evil pump. There are no words at all to express my hatred of that thing. However, because I started pumping, and then overproducing him, I'm now stuck in an awful cycle of pumping and producing more. Short story long: now I don't know how to stop without being in a lot of pain AND drowning him. So for now the pump stays.

Yup I feel ridiculous, but he eats with a bib on, in order to make sure my white shirts don't go see through in Target...

2. The leaking. It has slowed down from the milk showers I took in the first couple of weeks. However the other night I found myself on the toilet, enjoying being able to take a dump by myself for a minute...and then there's milk running down my crotch. Oh yeah, and nothing I could do about it.

He said no thank you...

3. The Nope Face. This is what happens when Legan either has a huge gas bubble or is just done feeding. Now it's all fine and dandy when he gives me the nope face when I offer him the boob and he declines. But when I suddenly get the nope face mid-nursing session it means I get bit. HARD. IF I'm extra lucky, it comes with a side of head twisting so that he resembles a lion tearing flesh off of an antelope. Minus the fur and the teeth but still. I squeak. On another occasion, he gave me a different nope face - instead of clamping his jaw shut and pursing his lips he just stuck out his tongue and licked the nipple slowly. I mean, he got his point across, it was definitely NOT latching. My mother-in-law got a kick out of it as well.

3 am on no sleep when he's been attached to me more often than not for the last several hours. I'm sore and exhausted and feel like I can't make him happy.

4. Cluster feeding. This is what happens when he takes too long of a nap (or overnight sleep session) and he needs to make up for it by feeding every 45-90 minutes, for about 4 hours. This is specifically engineered to make sure that I can't get a pee break, a shower, or a meal of course.

They're awfully cute. But I still sometimes hate them.

5. The Pacifier Effect. This comes in two parts. 1: He won't take a pacifier from me. He smells or sees or uses his 7th sense (his 6th sense is related to being hungry at the precise moment that every meal of mine is ready) that I have the real thing and he won't take silicone for an answer. 2. Therefore he uses me as a pacifier. Usually this happens after a long day of biting me with the nope face and cluster feeds, so I'm starting sore with a full bladder...and then he insists on latching on and sucking for another hour, even when not swallowing. On days where it's extra special there's still milk in my boobs when he decides to this, and he gets ANGRY that he can't use me strictly as a pacifier. This leads to crying without the boobs and then crying with the boob. The only answer is to give him to daddy so he can take an actual pacifier.

Even after he's done eating, he still wants all of the boob cuddles. It's like his favorite bed that also serves him his favorite food AND he doesn't have to get up to go to the bathroom ever. He never wants to leave.

And my one final note, what I love-hate about breastfeeding. I'm the only one that can do it. I provide ALL of the food and frequently I'm the only one that can give him what he wants. I mean, he won't starve to death if I'm not home (because I have GALLONS left over anyway and I'm still pumping out an extra 10-16 oz a day), he WILL take a bottle, but honestly he doesn't like it. He gives the bottle the nope face. It doesn't squeak at him though, so it's no fun at all. But when he's hungry and wants cuddles, he's definitely looking for his mommy. So that part is great SO MUCH of the time. Except when I'm totally exhausted or starving or have to pee...and I just desperately wish that he was formula fed so that I could leave for hours and not have the pump or anything. That's not most of the time, but it is some of the time.

This was our last day in the hospital!

Honestly though, I think if I didn't have to do any housework at all and all of my food was provided to me, I could manage to find time to use the bathroom enough that I would love being at home and nursing him all the time. If only he didn't try to tear my boob off.

His mid feeding burping face. Also 3 am....

 

He's lucky he's so darn cute! Just fed and for once content to cuddle in my lap!