Confession: I Hate Breastfeeding- One Mom's Struggle 'To Do The Right Thing'
Breast-feeding isn't all the roses and rainbows proud bare chested women make it seem like. It's something that truly we get pressured into, only to be told it's okay 'sometimes'. Not everyone has the same experience good or bad, and infact some people actually hate it. That's right... I said it. That ugly word referring to such a beautiful, magical, thing. Most people who do, express that feeling in secret, because how dare we feel anything but pure joy while we struggle to do something very difficult.
How dare we.
-There is a light at the end of this tunnel, eventually Mommy weaned (after over 6 months) and she reports to me happier than ever.-
"Shauna: For the record, I am all about supporting moms who felt the way I did, so I'm always open to conversation. I intend to write an update, as I continued to exclusively breastfeed for several more months after writing this, and it did get better, as most things do. But at the time I wrote this, I was really struggling."
Confession Time: I fucking hate breastfeeding.
Shauna; first time-last time mom- MA
I know, I know, what kind of mother could possibly loathe this process that is so binding and emotional, the all-important act of sustaining your baby with your body once they could no longer live inside it? What kind of monster could produce enough milk for her baby with little issue and wish she could just give him the goddamn formula guilt-free? Me. This kind of mom. I hate it. I hate everything about it right now. Let me tell you why:
No matter what anyone says, it does not just come naturally. This thing that is supposedly the most natural thing in the world, this thing that we have been able to do as women since the dawn of time, can be like fucking rocket science to some. My son had jaundice when he was born and started off with syringe feeds of formula (yes, I know there are reasons to refuse that, but I encourage any critics to step into my hospital Johnny and look at my tiny, weak, yellow newborn baby and then decide if you would be willing to refuse what the doctors told you was the best idea).
He was bottle fed for nearly four weeks, and did not know how to latch to the breast once we got the okay. We’ve sought help, and perhaps had minor improvements, but he inevitably just sits here fiddling with my breast until I literally cannot stand it anymore and take him off. Five minutes later, he is screaming to nurse again. He just can’t figure out how to get what he needs from my breast. This means I’m spending several hours at a time trying to accomplish one feed, going back and forth with a screaming baby who doesn’t understand why I’m trying to sandwich-shove my nip into his face. Speaking of several hours…. I have zero time for anything else. My life revolves around my boobs and being practically chained to the couch. I’m either spending hours playing the “I want to eat, no, I want to gum at your nipple, no, NOW I AM STARVING, FEED ME IMMEDIATELY” game, or he’s nursing for 45 minutes every 90 minutes. AND I’m supposed to pump for 10 minutes after each feeding to help my supply.
Do the math. I’m lucky if I get to pee or shovel some food in my face. None of these scenarios are ideal, especially in the middle of the night. It might work fine if I had a housekeeper, or a pet sitter, or an errand person, or a chef, but I do not.
Pumping. Pumping is goddamn awful. I feel like a dairy cow; in fact, this whole thing has actually made me want to forgo all dairy forever out of sympathy for dairy cows. It is messy; as if lactating alone doesn’t make you smell like stale milk, when you spill milk all over yourself while detaching your pump and don’t have the opportunity for a shower (see point made above), you really start to smell like a yogurt factory. And it is, again, TIME CONSUMING, especially once you factor in the extra laundry after you spend your day spilling boob juice on all your shirts. When my son was first home from the hospital and still battling jaundice, he had to still be formula fed, so I was pumping every 2 hours and freezing my milk. That wasn’t so bad except when I was home alone and having to feed him a bottle, burp and change him, and pump. And 9 times out of 10 he will wake up while I’m pumping and scream to be fed again. Oh, and let’s discuss the cleaning and maintenance of the pump. After every use, you must take apart and wash and dry your pump parts. So unless you have a plethora of extra pump parts, you have to disassemble your pump, wash all components in soapy water, rinse, and air dry. Then there’s cleaning the tubes and letting those dry, which never happens before the next pumping session. And never mind the aggravation when your pump malfunctions. And sitting up in the middle of the night trying not to fall asleep and spill milk everywhere is a feat I’m sure I will never master, even with the alarms I’ve set which at this point of exhaustion I sleep right through.
THE PRESSURE. Not only is my son’s nutrition completely dependent on my overtired ass (as is every other aspect of his life), it also cuts my husband out of the picture (who was helping with formula feeds during the night and wants to be involved with everything), which is especially frustrating because that’s the thing that took a lot of my stress down a notch. And the worst thing about a newborn is the feeding, when you make the switch from bottle to breast. I’m told I should not give bottles anymore, to encourage his adjustment. This means my husband cannot feed him while I shower or grocery shop. In a perfect world, my son would apparently be surgically attached to my tits while I washed my hair or perused the produce aisle (and of course public breastfeeding is a completely different issue). Again, no time or opportunity to care for oneself or the home or do anything but nurse.
THE GUILT. Listen, I’m well aware that as a mom I have to make sacrifices and do things I wouldn’t necessarily want to do, or not do things I’d love to do. And I AM sacrificing. I’m still up with him all night, in my case every two hours at least. I’m not going hiking or out to karaoke; in fact, I prefer not to leave the house at all. I’m not putting on makeup or getting dressed up or even showering as much as I’d like. But sacrificing my sanity to breastfeed my baby is starting to take a toll. If I am abjectly miserable and anxious and stressed, my baby is not getting the mom he deserves. If I am crying every day while desperately trying to give him my breast, to fit my and seemingly everyone else’s “breast is best” rhetoric, neither I nor my baby is winning.
For those who scoff at the cost of formula, while I do realize it is not directly monetary, breastfeeding is only free if you consider your time to be worthless. Thankfully most insurance companies are now required to provide a pump, some will only provide a manual, which for someone with carpal tunnel like myself, is impossible. Then add in the cost of nursing bras and clothes that give easy access, storage bottles and replacement parts (because you can’t wait for them to in the mail when they break), freezer bags, nursing covers that half the time your baby won’t eat underneath, salves for when your nipples are chafed and cracking from nonstop pumping or nonstop nursing, nipple shields when baby won’t latch without them… I’m sure there’s more but I am too exhausted.
And lest we forget that amongst all the “breast is best” talk, people somehow still expect your baby to have the common decency to wait until you’re in the privacy of your home to be hungry. How dare you burden society with a limited view of your breast skin? How dare you suggest that your breasts are something other than entertainment? How dare you let your hungry baby scream until you get home? Can’t you shut that kid up? How dare you refuse to sit in a public bathroom stall to feed your baby while someone loudly defecates on the other side of the partition? You are a milk machine, your baby is nothing but a receptacle, it’s no one else’s problem, it’s your fault for having a baby. If you didn’t want to deal with this, nobody forced you to reproduce. LOL at nobody forcing you to reproduce, by the way, when every day someone is asking you when you’re having a baby and thousands of morons are picketing Planned Parenthood, but that’s a completely different rant.
