The most important thing I can say on breastfeeding is that women should not be judged for how they feed their child. Unless they’re filling up their newborns bottle with Coke and Whiskey then I think we need to mind our own business.
The time and place to cross that line of minding our business is when a new mother needs support. So I believe weeks like #worldbreastfeedingweek are helpful to bring issues surrounding maternal health to the surface, like working collectively to ensure there is equal access to education, support, and resources that enable women to breastfeed. You can read more about it here.
I started getting more active on Instagram because of nursing. I was up at night, and sitting for long stretches alone with Margaret, and while during some of those I was simply sniffing her sweet baby head, for others I was on social media and luckily stumbled upon resources that were so helpful during the postpartum period.
My journey to nursing with Margaret had been difficult. In the hospital the nurses and lactation consultant would hover over my breasts and critique her latch, pulling her off as soon as she got on because it “wasn’t a god latch”. While I’m thankful I delivered in a place with resources like lactation consultants, I look back on this and wonder the role it played. While in the hospital, Margaret rapidly lost weight. When the on-call pediatrician from the practice we’d chosen came by to evaluate her before we left, he noted that she was close to the danger zone of 10% weight-loss and instructed us to get formula from our nurse before we went home, and to use it if she has a difficult night. So of course we relayed this message to our nurse who said “Who was the doctor? So not Dr. ******* your pediatrician? Just someone in the practice? Because SHE would NEVER have suggested that. No you don’t need formula, she’ll figure it out.”
So we left without the formula and had the worst night I could’ve imagined. We slept for under an hour, Margaret was inconsolable and barely nursed. We had a pediatrician’s appointment that morning so we went and it was the same doctor who’d seen us in the hospital. He looked at Margaret’s weight which was literally right at 10% of weightloss , and asked how the formula had gone. When we told him what the nurse had said, he calmly asked for her name and when we gave it to her he left the room. He told us he’d reported it because what had happened was dangerous and inappropriate. We left the office with formula and clear instructions on what to do. We also left with an appointment for the lactation consultant and a scale at home to weigh Margaret compulsively.
So formula played an interested role in my journey to feeding Margaret. I feel like I left the hospital mildly afraid and ashamed of having even asking for it. My confidence in my ability to get Margaret to latch was totally shaken and not to mention I was still physically recovering from labor.
There is so much more to my nursing story with Margaret, as there is for most mom’s feeding journey. But this is an important part of my relationship with formula. Eventually I came to view formula as part of my arsenal realizing that breastfeeding doesn’t have to be all or nothing. For me with both girls formula became something that actually helped me breastfeed for longer. I eventually realized I’d rather drop a feeding or two in exchange for formula so that the rest could be nursing sessions, rather than feel so overwhelmed at the goal of exclusive breastfeeding or perfection that I gave up completely. Luckily both my girls cooperated with this and so as the months wore on I no longer saw formula as a failure but as a tool.
To read more about my breastfeeding experience and specifically how I and why I ended the relationship you can read about it here in The Last Time
