Just A Girl and a Boob-Hoover

Me trying to decipher all of this

Entering the realm of parenthood means learning a whole new language. It starts in pregnancy with things line fundal height, anterior placenta, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, etc. If you scroll through any sort of forum or community board about pregnancy and parenthood the language gets more obscure – LO, SO, 38w4d, 6w PP, PPD, MIL, EBF, MOTN session, FF, the list goes on. For our purposes, the two acronyms that apply are EBF and FF – exclusively breastfed and formula fed. A baby that is “EBF” only nurses, “FF” babies take formula. The curveball Noah threw us didn’t have an acronym, so I made it up – PP. Primarily pumping. Or EBFBPP, exclusively breastfed but primarily pumping. It was too many letters.

I struggled with breastfeeding early on emotionally, we didn’t have any serious issues except for when he wanted to feed literally every hour and I thought I was going off the deep end. It’s hard to feel like you still don’t have your body back after being pregnant for 40 weeks. The pro-breastfeeding movement promotes that women’s breasts are not sexual, they’re for feeding babies. Yes, that’s true, they are for feeding babies - but for many people their breasts are part of their feminine identity in more ways than just baby-feeders. Breastfeeding can sometimes screw with that identity a little because it can feel like they’re purely functional, nothing else. What used to be an intimate part of your body is suddenly on display, all the time, to lots of people. They lose their novelty REAL quick. On the same token, I think even those that struggle with breastfeeding develop a deep appreciation for their body and what it can do. Anyway, I’ve stuck with breastfeeding through stubbornness, a learned but wavering enjoyment for it, and a commitment to what I believe is bets for Noah. I digress.

Noah was EBF (remember your acronyms, people!) until I went back to work, then I pumped during the day and nursed him any time I was home, including over the weekend (very little to no pumping). It was going fine… and then it wasn’t. Bottles are easier for babies, milk flows consistently and they don’t have to work hard to get it. He started getting frustrating with nursing because he had to work at it (GET A JOB, LAZY BUM). It would take a few tries and sometimes some crying from him, me, or both of us, but we hung in there. I started wondering if we should add more bottles in for all of our sake, but I remembered how convenient breastfeeding is and reverted back to my mantra: Don’t Quit On A Bad Day. We didn’t quit.

Then we travelled. Traveling is stressful anyway, but it was out first time going on a long trip with Noah and I was FREAKING. OUT. I probably drove Adam insane with the amount of text message, prioritized to-do lists, packing lists, incessant planning, and worrying. It went as well as it can when you have to drive 10-12 hours with a 3-month old. Anyway, during our travel Noah went on a full-on nursing strike. A nursing strike is when baby abruptly starts refusing to nurse. I wouldn’t say it was abrupt, we kind of trended towards it for a few weeks, but he started straight up refusing to breastfeed directly with me. I thought it was situational (stressful situation, new and chaotic and temporary environment, etc), but it continued at home even with me trying to trick him into it again. I tried dark, quiet rooms, catching him before he was starving, skin-to-skin contact, singing, silence, different positions, etc. Suddenly we were faced with the situation I had pondered before – switching to primarily doing bottles of breastmilk – and I did not take it lightly. For all of the times I wallowed around thinking I couldn’t wait for the experience to end, when I was faced with the fact that we might not make it to my goal of a year I was crushed.

The Internet is great and terrible, and that holds true for this, too. It tells you that exclusively pumping will probably hurt your supply. There’s random statistics that pumping will only ever get you 60% of what the baby gets (may be true for some, but for me primarily pumping has actually upped my supply). You can read a multitude of stories of people that eventually had to supplement with formula and stop breastfeeding altogether. On the flipside, I learned that this is actually really common for his age. Between 3-4 months babies are way more aware of their surroundings and easily distracted. It seemed like a lot of people with babies in that age range had experience an intense nursing strike, too. And to my comfort, a lot of them had gone to still keeping baby fed with breastmilk.

If you’re wondering why I’m so against using formula, I’m not. Another term you get used to as a parent is “fed is best”, it’s kind of a middle finger to the “breast is best” saying from people that are unable to breastfeed or choose not to for personal reasons. I agree that fed is best – if your baby is fed and everyone is happy then so be it. For me, though, I feel strongly about the benefits of breastfeeding and breastmilk, and in my mind I should provide that for him because I can. Plus, formula is DAMN EXPENSIVE, especially if you want to get formula that isn’t basically a bunch of soy and corn syrup. The internet tells me formula can cost $1000-$1200 on average per year. My pump cost $300, I do buy storage bags, steam cleaning bags, I got extra parts as a baby shower gift, but I may buy another $200 or so of stuff over the year, maybe more. Either way, it’s probably half the cost of formula feeding over the first year.

Are there steps to take to get him off the bottle so much? Sure, but not all of them are practical. You can cut out bottles entirely and spoon/cup feed until he accepts the boob again. Not practical for us. I came to a point where I had to decide if it was more important to directly nurse or to just receive breastmilk in general, and I realized the latter was more important. The delivery system WAS important, but not as important as the fact that he was still getting the benefits of breastmilk.

Now here we are almost two months after Noah's first nursing strike and we're back to the point where we can add some nursing back into the mix. It’s a curveball I wasn’t anticipating (I suppose that’s why they call it a curveball in the first place…?), and just another thing I didn’t really consider may happen. Pretty much everything on this journey is new and weird and unexpected, just add this one to the list. You have one thing in your mind and reality is totally mismatched… and I’m pretty freakin’ zen about things! Seriously, I’ve worked hard to go about pregnancy, birth, and parenthood with as much fluidity and flexibility as possible, that way I wouldn’t get heartbroken if things didn’t go how I “wanted” or “expected” them to. I have hopes, sure, but I don’t want to dwell on it when it doesn’t happen – for example, I hope to sleep at night but I don’t. Some nights I do, and those nights are awesome. I hope to continue our mix of primarily pumping with a nursing sessions when we can until my goal of a year, but like all things so far I know that could suddenly change. But for now it works, and I’ve learned that’s what matters.