Breastfeeding: A Personal Story
When I was pregnant, the question of whether or not I would breastfeed kept coming up. It wasn’t until much later in my pregnancy that I made the decision to 100% breastfeed my son. I had all the facts from both sides, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Much like childbirth, all I heard was horror story after horror story about how hard it is to breastfeed. It seems like every article out there tries to hard to inform women about how sore and exhausted you will be and that you won’t bond instantly with your child, but often overlook the benefits and what a rewarding experience it can be in the very beginning.
Armed with a stack of books, a tube of lanolin, nursing pads, and determination, I decided to breastfeed for at least one year. We had a few bottles for expressed breast milk, but I didn’t bring a drop of formula into the house, convinced that I’d give in and formula feed in the midst of a hungry screaming infant and bleeding nipples. That day never came. For me it was more a matter of willpower as time went on.
My son started nursing like a pro less than an hour after he was born. I was a little clumsy at first, having never nursed a child before, but he knew what to do and had a perfect latch. I looked down at his tiny profile and wondered how this seemed unnatural to anyone. Although I was a little awkward at positioning and holding him, there was nothing unnatural or sexual about it. This was how it was supposed to be.
I can’t say that we bonded instantly because of breastfeeding but it definitely helped. When you have family come visit after the birth of a child, everyone wants to hold him. The only time I feel like I really had with him in the early weeks were when I was nursing him. I secretly think this is what most women mean when they say they bonded with their child while breastfeeding – it’s the only time you have in quiet to be with your child if your family is there much. It’s nice that my son was so loved and welcomed, but the family was rather insensitive to my maternal need to hold my newborn.
As he got a little older and was cranky most of the time (I suspect acid reflux was the culprit), the only thing I felt I could do properly was nurse him. I didn’t seem to have the right bounce to get him to sleep or to calm down, and it didn’t help that everyone kept telling me what to do when I needed to figure it out for myself. Nursing my son was the one thing I could do right and no one else could come take him from me to do it themselves. Being able to do just that one thing gave me the confidence I so badly needed. That confidence (and prolactin) gave me strength which I believe kept from crossing over to formula and the dark place of severe PPD.
When my son got to be about teething age, everyone told me that I’d stop nursing him when he got teeth. Seeing as he wouldn’t take a bottle or sippy cup, I just didn’t see how I could do that. Everyone “telling me so” only motivated me to prove I could do it. I was going to breastfeed until one year and I was going to prove everyone wrong if it killed me! Again, teething turned out to be not as bad as everyone made it out to be. My son did bite me, but he learned not to and I still have my nipples attached to my body to prove it.
His 14-month birthday is today and I have been getting “you’re still breastfeeding?” from all sorts of people. The local La Leche League has been of great support of nursing past age one and I’ve met many women nursing children close to my son’s age. I encourage anyone who needs any sort of breastfeeding support to look up your local groups and attend a meeting.
I’m not saying that I didn’t have my fair share of problems – I had soreness, engorgement, and couldn’t even find a nursing bra that fit properly. However, it wasn’t the horror story that women often complain about. I was fine after 8 weeks, as many women are. Rather than encourage women by sharing my horror story to prepare them, I’d rather share my story in hopes that they’d realize not everyone lives the typical horror story – many of us actually do live the fairy tale