Motherhood Uncensored

Breast is best for baby. But what about mom?

Over the last few days, I've been asked to comment about Mayor Bloomberg's Latch On NYC initiative, which aims to increase the number of breastfeeding mothers in the New York City area. 

I won't go into all the gory details about how I feel about it, because I did so on HLN News Now with Katherine Stone from Postpartum Progress. Unfortunately, that link is a short clip of a lively five-or-so minute conversation we had, but it gives you an idea of how I feel. 

Then they asked me to write an Op-Ed piece in which I got all angry and told Mayor Bloomberg to get his hands out of my bra. 

When I calmed down a little, I figured out what really bothered me about the whole thing. And really, what's always bothered me about this whole Breast is best stuff. 

This coming from a mom of four who breastfed for just over seven years. 

Yes. You can bet I counted. 

I'd love to know your thoughts!  And if you've written about it, like Mom-101 , PhD in Parenting, and Ask Moxie did, leave your link in the comments. I'd love to read it. 

If formula equals failure, who's grading?

I'm not quite sure how I ended up with a formula feeding = failure stance though I suppose it was good for something.

I owe my rapid 80lb post partum weight loss after my first kid to it. It also made me tired and reallllly sick of cranberries.

After each respective kid, I realized that after a few months, hopefully six if I could make it, the whole formula versus breastfeeding debacle didn't really matter that much. My kids would sooner be reporting about how much I cried or yelled at therapy than what I fed them in a bottle.

And the sleep, the ability to escape from my house without a baby for longer than a few hours, might actually make me a better mom.

Yes, I breastfed them exclusively for six months (and then continued through over a year), but not without a heavy price.

Sure, my kids will "supposedly" be smarter, healthier, thinner. But where is the research that says it's better for moms to nearly kill themselves to breastfeed their kids exclusively for a certain period of time than it is for their kids to get formula?

I stopped exclusively breastfeeding Bridget at around four or five months, at which point she got baby food, and then formula on occasion when I traveled.

And then right before I weaned, she was getting more formula bottles than breastmilk.

I loved being able to leave the house and not have to worry about saving milk. I really loved being able to roll over when she cried in the middle of the night and let my husband get up and give her a bottle.

And I wondered why the heck I hadn't done this sooner.

I know, I know. I'm not supposed to say this because we moms are supposed to suffer it out. I mean, that's what life is like with a baby -- sleepless nights, inconvenience, a change in lifestyle. And so what if our babies might not be gaining weight or our nipples hurt like shit or we haven't slept in days because the baby is attached to our boob all night long?

If we somehow say that breastfeeding is not easy or inconvenient, then we're not breastfeeding advocates and we'll turn mothers to the "dark side."

But I like to think that women aren't that stupid or impressionable. And if perhaps, we take the pressure off and make expectations a little more realistic that moms it might be better than this "all or nothing" attitude that a lot of uber boobers have.

I want all women to try to breastfeed. I wish they could do it exclusively for three months or six months. And then continue on past a year.

It bums me out when moms won't even given it a try.

But let's stop bashing women who can't. Let's celebrate that they breastfed for three months or six months, whether they did it exclusively or supplemented with formula.

And then let's figure out a way to help them if they need it. And give them support if they decide not to.

Just because you're willing to give up your independence, your sleep, your breasts for however long, doesn't mean you somehow love your kids more.

What I did to breastfeed my oldest daughter was stupid. I used to be proud of it, like I was somehow a hero for eating four foods every day for months at a time.

But now I wish I knew that there was no such thing as failure. And that there were two people to factor into my choices: My baby. And me.

 

I'm not pro-breastfeeding. I'm pro-mom.

There's nothing like a sweet little breastfeeding baby nestled in a sling to evoke a myriad emotions. Even guilt.

For many women, the inability to breastfeed, for whatever reason, makes them feel guilty, that they're somehow less than a woman, a wimp even, who is depriving their child of nutrients, vitamins, the IQ they'll need to get them into Harvard.

Or something like that.

I was a breastfeeding martyr with my first daughter. Scabbed bleeding nipples. A Total Elimination Diet for a year.

It was nuts. I was nuts.

I finally sort of maybe convinced myself that we'd all be okay if I couldn't breastfeed my son for as long. Or even at all.

It turned out that my martyrdom was a result of poor support and education. And lack of knowledge about challenging and sometimes downright horrible parts of breastfeeding.

And it was also from this idea that I had to be the sacrifical mother in order to be a good mother.

I've heard people say that if we shared all the hard parts of labor, of breastfeeding, of mothering that no one would want to do it.

I say that if we share all of this, then we'd all be happier moms.

With Margot, I noticed a feeling of emptiness and depression every single time I nursed. At first, I thought I was going nuts. But then, after reading and asking around, I realized that I wasn't just making it up. And it wasn't until I had Bridget and experienced the same feelings that I learned it had a name - Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex. 

For me personally, it was decreased just by awareness as well as an increase in physical activity and weight loss. Many other women don't have as easy a resolution. Others stop breastfeeding.

And for that I don't judge them. In fact, in many ways, I admire them.

The challenge I face as a mother is allowing myself to be an important part of the parent - child equation. When I'm healthy and happy, my kids are better off. I can be a smarter, stronger parent and a good example for them.

When I'm suffering, I'm miserable. And it's not worth it.

That all sounds good. I preach it. But I struggle every single day with making that a reality.

Regardless of what the studies say about immunities and health benefits and intelligence, if you're not able to functionally care for your children, it doesn't matter.

Because, most importantly, you need to be present for them. In both senses of the word.

This doesn't mean I think moms shouldn't try to breastfeed. Nor that they should give up when it gets a little tricky or challenging. I'm the first to tell moms that breastfeeding gets so much easier at six months. And even easier again after 12 months.

I've breastfed for a total of 56 months and counting.

But I will say that it's important to value your own health and well-being. And to know your limits.

You and your child will be much better off with you feeding them from a bottle with a smile than breastfeeding through agony and tears. I wish that we could change the dialogue from "pro-breastfeeding" or "anti-formula" to "pro-mom."

That's not necessarily what many breastfeeding advocates may want to hear.

But I strongly believe it's a voice that needs to be amplified. Especially in my own damn head.

Breastfeeding for weight loss. Not.

After losing one whopping pound and then subsequently gaining it back this month (I'm looking at you pie that'll make you cry... about your butt that will not shrink), I would like to tell all the people who continue to perpetuate the myth that breastfeeding helps you lose weight to shut the hell up.

In the nicest way possible, of course.

Now I realize that I have just opened the flood gates of women who have actually lost weight while breastfeeding who will now tell me to shut the hell up and stop dissuading people to breastfeed.

Meanwhile, I'm on month 55 of total months breastfeeding a baby over the last six years so, um, please. I'm hardly against breastfeeding.

I'm just against breastfeeding as a viable post partum weight loss program.

But to those of you who have shed pounds breastfeeding, I shall quote a very bad movie that I can't seem to turn off every single time it's on because I have a secret crush on Kevin Connolly:

"You're the exception. Not the rule."

Breastfeeding does a fine job at returning your uterus back to its teeny tiny state. But it does not, for me and most women I talk to, shrink anything else. 

You have to eat extra calories in order to sustain your milk supply, though I suppose that doesn't mean the entire box of Trader Joe's dark chocolate star cookies.

At 2am.

Or the couple of Fat Tires.

Every night.

But hey. That's basically what Snooki's diet is and she lost a bunch of weight!

I get the biology of it. And I completely agree with nine months on, nine months off. Or something like that.

But if one more person asks me if I'm breastfeeding and then proceeds to tell me that the weight will just fall right off, I might have to sit on them.

With my big gigantic very exclusively breastfeeding ass.

Boob man

I finally pulled out the breast pump after a little under a month of breastfeeding, and it instantly reminded me how much I hate pumping.

My kids, however, thought it was the best toy ever. A bunch of empty bottles with weird two-part caps! and tubes! and horns!, oh my!

I know what I'm doing with that thing when I'm done with it.

I realize that some women are expert pumpers (I bow to you, mamas), but I personally have the hardest time letting down with the breast pump no matter how much "it stimulates the sucking of a small newborn baby."

Sorry. That big plastic cone shaped thing does not a baby mouth make.

But I have something to attend this weekend that sort of requires that I leave the baby home for a couple of hours, so I figured I should probably pump some milk and let my husband try to give her a bottle.

That in itself is anxiety provoking enough since none of my kids have been the best bottle takers, or as I learned,  just never good nervous daddy holding the bottle like someone just handed them a gigantic vibrating dildo takers.

Yes, it's as awkward as it sounds.

And worse, he can do absolutely NOTHING else but feed the baby. Or hold the baby. Or hold and feed the baby. Maybe.

Meanwhile, I think I may have just talked myself out of leaving the baby on Saturday.

And so, I dug open my new pump, the kids using the horns like kazoos all around me, and started pumping. Or really, what should be called "boob torture device that simulates squeezing water from a rock except not as pleasant." 

I even tried nursing Bridget on one side so I could let down on the other.

No such luck. Though I did, for a moment, feel like I was nursing twins.

Five second solidarity, nursing twin mamas.

So as the milk dripped ever so slowly into the bottle, I noticed my son staring at it. And rightfully so - you don't actually see the milk when you're breastfeeding the baby and I imagine if you're used to milk coming out of a cardboard container in the fridge, well, it's pretty weird.

He looked at me. Then my boob. Then at me again,

and exclaimed:

"I can't believe boobs can do that!!!"

If only to be a fly on the wall at my son's school tomorrow.