Breastfeeding

I am not, nor have I ever been, the kind of person who thinks "breastfeed or die". That said, I do think that every mom should at least try. And when I say try, I mean actually try. I have so many mommy friends that say "Oh, breastfeeding just didn't work for us. We're doing formula now," when their baby is only a few weeks old. Really? That's not much of an attempt at trying to breastfeed!

Don't get me wrong. I have a ton of respect for all of my mommy friends, and at least they didn't all go straight to formula right from birth ... but STILL! It takes a lot more than a couple weeks, or a month, or even more than that, to really get the hang of breastfeeding ... at least for most of us. I know that as a whole, we are made to think that breastfeeding has to come naturally and that it does for all of us ... but let's face it, that's just not the case. But just because you aren't a breastfeeding expert right from day one (or two, or five, or ten, or thirty) doesn't mean you have failed and you need to switch to formula.

For us, I had no doubt in my mind that I would breastfeed. I knew all the good things about it, and I knew that doing the formula thing would be much too expensive for my liking. I was glad that breastfeeding went so well for our few days in the hospital. But it seemed like as soon as we got home, it stopped going well. It was so bad, in fact, that I started pumping for every feed. I didn't jump straight to that, though -- I did try to feed Aden, but it would get so painful I would cry and would have to stop. Then I would pump and feed him that way. But I still kept trying to feed him myself. Eventually, my nipples developed the callouse they needed, and I didn't have to pump for every feed anymore. We were finally successfully breastfeeding when Aden was about a month old, maybe even older. It was not a quick process ... but we did it. I really kept trying, and I didn't just give up at the first sign of a problem.

And that was not the last of our problems, either. When Aden was over 6 months old, and still spitting up a lot, we realized something wasn't right. After taking him to the doctor, the first possibility was a milk allergy. Uh-oh, time to give up breastfeeding, right? Wrong. The first thing I did was stop drinking milk or eating other things with lactose. Well ... I tried to, anyway. We did have to start supplementing with formula a lot at that time (nothing we were strangers too -- he sometimes had formula before that when he was babysat), because it was hard for me to stop drinking milk altogether! Eventually we learned that a milk allergy was not the problem, and we found out he had reflux. He had medicine for that for a few weeks and the problem was solved.

We ended up breastfeeding until Aden was about 10 months old. And, as I'm sure you've realized, we were not problem-free. While it did seem to come naturally to both me and Aden at first, it didn't stay that way. But I kept trying. It was so frustrating for that first month or so, but once we got the hang of it, I was glad I never gave up.

So I dunno ... it just really gets to me when friends of mine say "oh, it just isn't working for us" when their baby is still so young. At least they sort of tried in the first place, but really ... there are so many problems you can encounter in that first little while. It's not like the whole 6 months or 10 months or year you'll be breastfeeding will be that problematic. Yeah, some people do run into problems later on (like our whole possible lactose allergy), but the first month is by far the hardest. And it's not like breastfeeding is the only problem that comes up in the first month either. Your hormones are still on a rollercoaster, so it's not as though motherhood in general is the easiest thing in the first month ... and we still all get through that, because it's not like we can just give up motherhood. So why give up breastfeeding that quickly?

Bah .. I don't know, I guess I just don't get it. Like I said, at least those moms sort of try ... but to give up within the first month? It just doesn't seem like much of an attempt to me. I suppose if you weren't that into the idea in the first place, it's fine ... but if you really had your heart set on breastfeeding, and you give up only in the first few weeks ... I'm sure you see where I'm going with this ...