Just Give Your Baby A Bottle!??!?!

My friend, Christine's story aired last night: Breast-feeding mom says judge 'embarrassed' her during jury duty

Can't believe how many comments have been made saying she should have just pumped and left her baby with someone. Obviously comments from people that have never exclusively breastfed a baby themselves.....or attempted to give an EBF'd baby a bottle for the first time.

I breastfed and bottlefed both of my children, and am still breastfeeding Nellie at 14 months old. How easy people think both breastfeeding and pumping are, as if you just put the baby or pump there and WAH-LA, free-pouring milk. Most of you that have breastfed your children know that this, most of the time is NOT the case. It certainly wasn't for me. I made it 8 weeks with B-Bee, through intense pain, tears, heartache and actual bloodshed. I have never been able to make enough milk and he was readmitted to the hospital with severe jaundice at 4 days old. With Nellie I was much better prepared, but thinking back to those early days of supplementing her....it's still quite emotional. We supplemented with an SNS feeder, syringes, medicine cups, and finally bottles. I pumped every 2-3 hours for 20 minutes each time to increase and keep my milk supply up. This was on top of nursing on demand and supplementing with expressed milk, donor milk and formula. I did this for 4 months, and let me tell you pumping is NOT easy. How do I even begin to describe my "effective pumping position", hunched over off the rocking chair for starters.....holding the bottles & flanges in place, squeezed against my breasts (but not too much), balancing to adjust the pump settings.....hoping not to spill even a tiny drop of "Liquid Gold" when I was done. It didn't end there, after pumping there was the washing of equipment and setting up for the next session and supplementing.

Nellie HATED the bottle at first. We tried and tried to get her to take it....and she's a screamer. At first (and sometimes now if what she really wants is Mommy) she would scream and arch away at even the sight of the bottle.
For the first few months of being on the bottle she especially wouldn't take it from me. Why would she when the real thing was right there? She had lots of trouble gaining weight because of this, combined with my lack of milk supply. It seemed she screamed her entire first few months of life, we wondered if she had colic. The doctor even thought that may have been the case, until she figured out the bottle and was finally completely full for the first time - at about 2 1/2 months old.

I'm definitely not the only breastfeeding mother that has ever had supply issues, though most mothers supply issues aren't nearly severe as mine were. Almost every single breastfeeding mother I know (and that is a large percentage of all my mommy friends) has taken supplements, herbs, had nurse-in days, etc. to increase their supply. Nellie now nurses only about 3-4 times a day (morning, mid-morning, nap & bedtime...and whenever she needs a little extra comfort). Even with my very little milk supply (at peak supplementing I was giving her about 20 oz of donor milk / formula), I get engorged if I don't nurse or pump for a full day. I remember going out on the occassional date night with Daddy-O and by the time we were done with dinner and a movie, I couldn't wait to get home to Nellie. Then it was always the decision of do I wake and nurse her or pump and risk waking her anyways? Nursing is ALWAYS better than pumping. Babies' suckling is much more effective at producing a let-down and draining the breast than any pump will ever be. (I know, a breast is never completely drained since it is constantly producing as milk is expressed.)

At 7 months my breastfeeding relationship with Nellie finally found its meaning. She learned (over the course of months) that she gets most of her intake from a bottle and she is a comfort nurser. She wants me there when she wakes up, when she's upset, when she's hurt, when she's tired, and she has to nurse down at night. She is absolute proof that breastfeeding your baby isn't just about meeting their nutritional needs. It's also about being there for your baby, being their comfort, teaching them to trust. It's about the deep connection and bond with your child that would never be quite the same without all that time spent being so close together.

Back to Christine's story, how can these people expect a mother that has this type of relationship with her child just leave them with a sitter / stranger and without their main source of food and drink? The comment that really gets me is the one about why can't she leave her child with her husband or mother. Grrr.... I can't believe that someone can be so closed-minded to think that perhaps a mother may not have a reliable husband or geographically-close or capable relatives. NOT saying that that's the case with Christine, since I happen to know she has a wonderful husband. A similar comment was made to me when B-Bee was 6 weeks old and I was walking with him on the empty track at the gym, since he wasn't old enough to go into the nursery there yet. It was a staff member and he was so rude that he made me cry. At that time ALL of our relatives lived at least 1000 miles away and I missed my mom terribly.

Anyways, I've ranted and now it's 1:13am. It's definitely been a long time since I've blogged such a long post. Thanks for reading. Feel free to share your stories....and use as many characters as you need!