May 2008. The nurse hands me my pink new baby, who is rooting and rubbing his lips in a frantic signal of hunger. But once at the breast, he is clueless. He puckers his lips, darts his tongue around, tries to suck in all the wrong ways. Neither I nor the nurse nor the lactation consultant can get him to latch on right. Finally I give him a bottle of formula, which he immediately and enthusiastically starts sucking from. The nurse looks at me and turns down her lips. "They break your heart, don't they?" she says. I'm just thrilled to watch him eat.
Over the next two days, a string of lactation experts visit my room in the maternity ward, and try their hand at getting this baby to latch. Their diagnosis: he keeps his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, which makes it impossible for him to suck. There are exercises already for the two day old baby: I am to push his tongue down with my pinky finger 8-10 times a day and hold it down for a couple of minutes each time. This will get him used to the correct sucking position. In the meantime, I'm using a breast pump and supplementing my meager colostrum with formula. It breaks my heart.
June 2008. The baby has latched on correctly without trouble a grand total of four times in the last month. The rest of the time, I diligently offer him the breast every two hours. For twenty or thirty minutes there is what feels like a battle of wills between me and my little bundle of joy: latch on wrong, latch off, repeat. When he finally gets it right, it's a thrill like no other. He nurses for half an hour, much longer than the milk lasts, and goes into a deep and contented sleep right at the breast. I'm still supplementing with formula about half the time. But exhausted as I am from this relentless schedule of nursing every two hours, it feels like a huge step forward from the hospital when I feared it would never happen.
July 2008. Supply issues. The latching problems and the supplementing have taken their toll. The pediatrician tells me not to worry about it and just keep supplementing with more and more formula, but that doesn't sound right to me... So I read up, and every website and book tells me he's wrong. To jog my milk machines, I'm doing everything everyone tells me. A teaspoon of fenugreek seeds soaked in water four times a day. "Mother's Milk" blessed thistle tea. Nursing every two hours, and pumping inbetween. Oatmeal for breakfast every day. I'm the walking dead. Supply inches up, and the baby, who has now turned into an Awakey Pants, gets one third of his total intake from formula. Every ounce of formula reduced feels like a victory.
August 2008. No more formula. Suck on that, Otherwise-Awesome Pediatrician!
September 2008. Mr Awakey Pants stops taking a bottle altogether. I'm uncertain about this development: it means Saurabh doesn't get to give the baby expressed milk, which he used to do a couple of times a night. Precious extra sleep is an impossibility now. But it feels good and right that finally, we're doing this the way nature intended.
October 2008. Mr Awakey pants has figured out that the milk machine is attached to the same body whose face he sees during playtime. In the middle of nursing he sometimes stops as if surprised, gives me the sweetest gummy smile, and says "goo". My heart pops a fair few seams.
In other news, eating oatmeal every goddamn day is getting to me. And now that I am no longer quite so exhausted, I've begun to question the maniacal zeal of the pro-breastfeeding websites and books. By now I know from personal experience that not all they say is true; that they whitewash the hell out of this experience; that they definitely give formula a very unfair appraisal. When "What To Expect...", the supposed bible of moms everywhere, resorts to blatant scare tactics - for example, when it says that formula leaves rubbery, plasticky curds in the baby's stomach - how can I believe formula is as bad as they suggest?
November 2008. Mr Awakey Pants is 6 months old, and has begun to find the whole world around him not only extremely interesting, but also in constant need of his personal supervision. His nursing sessions have become a test of my patience and pain tolerence: he latches on, drinks a sip, hears a sound somewhere and whips his head around to track its source, then remembers that his milk is waiting, and latches on again. Repeat ad infinitum. By the time he is done, it's almost time for his next meal.
"I'm done with this breastfeeding bullshit! I'm weaning this kid tomorrow!" I yell at Saurabh when he gets home from work.
December 2008. We nurse successfully in public. With a blanket, of course. I'm unreasonably proud I did it, just as I was unreasonably dreading it. Pushing a sated and sleeping baby around the mall in his stroller, shopping feels like fun again. I'm getting my life back.
January 2009. Mr Awakey Pants has become a very active nurser. By now he knows all the tricks - how to make the milk flow faster, how to squeeze out every last fatty trickle of milk, how to keep his nose clear of the breast so he can breathe unimpeded. His cuteness is overpowering. His antics make my milk ducts clog up.
I spend three days in pain, cursing under my breath as he drinks. I'm not insensitive to the irony of the situation: he caused the blockage, and only he can remove it by nursing frequently. Every time he latches on, I vow that the moment he heals me, I'm done with this breastfeeding bullshit. Saurabh holds my hand and listens to my rants.
February 2009. He wants to stand up and drink his milk now. No, he wants to sit sideways. Then he wants to try stretching out on my legs and nurse upside down. Now he wants to nurse while beating his legs against the wall, holding on to me by my hair. OUCH, baby. NO MORE. I'm weaning him right this minute, goddamn it!
March 2009. This article leaves me with tears in my eyes. I recognise the truth of so much in it.
We were raised to expect that co-parenting was an attainable goal. But who were we kidding? Even in the best of marriages, the ... burden shifts, in incremental, mostly unacknowledged ways, onto the woman. Breast-feeding plays a central role in the shift.
When people say that breast-feeding is “free,” I want to hit them with a two-by-four. It's only free if a woman's time is worth nothing.
I know breast is best for the baby. I know formula is the less-than-ideal alternative. If I'm ever crazy enough to have another kid, I will probably breastfeed her, too, for at least as long as I have nursed Mr Awakey Pants - not just because breastmilk is good for her, but also because I've enjoyed this experience overall... the bonding, the games we play while he nurses, the close contact.
But it's impossible to deny the pressure a new mom is under the BREASTFEED OR ELSE. She is told a hundred lies, a million half-truths, ten million exaggerations in order to get her to consider breastfeeding to be the be-all of being a good mother. During those harrowing days when my supply was low, I felt like a *bad mother*. Kellymom.com and "What To Expect" told me stupid, breezy things like "even if you think you have low supply you probably don't" and "low supply issues are easily corrected". They're not.
They tell you breastfeeding is easy because it's natural. It's not.
They tell you breastfeeding is free. It's not.
They tell you breastfeeding is convenient. It's not.
If there's one thing you take back from this post, let this be it: do not be bullied, misled, guilted or tricked into breastfeeding your baby. Do it only if you consider the effort and sacrifices worth it.
April 2009. Mr Awakey Pants is weaned.
The opportunity was too good to waste. I am visiting my parents in Shanghai. Which means my mom is there. My mom's done this a million times - well, at least twice. She'll help me get through Awakey Pants's crying and my weak resolve.
Only, it was so much easier than I expected. He cried for just one hour at night just before bed, and even then he was comforted by my presence. The next morning I offered him a breast just to test him, and he refused it.
My poor baby. My good,
good baby.
He misses it, I can tell. Every time I put him down for a nap, he cries because he remembers he used to do something comforting just before going to sleep and now he can't do it. I hold him close and rock him until his eyes close and his whimpering stops. I'll miss nursing. But for now I'm celebrating my freedom.
A song comes to mind, one I heard just a couple of months ago when I watched "
Kannathil Mutthamittal", aka "A Peck On The Cheek". It sums up the experience of parenting in a haunting, beautiful lyric set to great music.
It goes like this:
Little flower from God,
What is it that your eyes seek?
You are where life begins,
And you are where the sky ends,
You came like the breeze,
And stayed in my living breath,
O life that seeps and throbs in my chest,
Little flower from God,
What is it that your eyes seek?
You are my kin, just as you are my foe
Blossom of love, thorn in my womb,
Gentle rain, tiny thunder,
The body that is born, and the spirit that leaves,
And life that transcends death.
Little flower from God,
What is it that your eyes seek?
You are my wealth, just as you are my poverty,
The verse I wrote, and the miss-spelled word,
Borrowed light, tears in the dark,
You are my sky, and the wings I lost,
You are the sorrow that I took home to raise.
Little flower from God,
What is it that your eyes seek?
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