New Post for all the Breastfeeding Nazis in the House
Isn’t that imaginatively titled? Well, I have not the words, but I still persevere.
I may have a new post up over at GNM. It’s not up yet (ed. to say: it’s up! I wrote about road trips this week), but then again it’s only 4:15 a.m. and the grasshoppers are probably sleeping. I am not sleeping. We have too much going on this weekend and I’m a little worried. It’ll all be fine. Or it won’t. That’s life.
Did you hear that they stopped handing out free formula in diaper bags at a bunch of hospitals? They did. Because they’re “supporting” breast feeding. What? Some of us do well with nursing. Some of us don’t. And some of us, in spite of the fact that our nipples crack and bleed, because we’ve given birth to “Barracuda Babies” (that was my Lactation Nazi’s description of both my kids) well, we press on and it works out.
In spite of the exhaustion.
In spite of our husbands shouting, like evil drill sergeants, “DO YOU WANT TO JUST STOP NURSING? DO YOU WANT ME TO JUST GO TO THE STORE RIGHT NOW AND BUY SOME FORMULA? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?”
My response to that was: “Yes.”
Yet he refused to go to the store! Tease. Luckily I had cases of the formula stashed in the pantry. (“Crack cocaine,” as Amalah’s unkind Breastfeeding Nazi described it. Here’s her post, go read it.) While I was pregnant I signed up to be on everybody’s mailing list — Similac, Enfamil, the Amazing Free Stuff site… And they all sent goodies. Thanks! Cuz I love some goodies.
I think we used one small can of the formula, or maybe we didn’t, who knows, then I gave the rest to the foodbank. They were thrilled. Turns out, it’s expensive and foodbanks are more than happy to take it from you.
Yes, I’m glad that breastfeeding worked out for me and my babies, in spite of the “nipple issues,” in spite of my losing 50 pounds in two months (combo wallop of thyroid problems and mommy-starvation from nursing. My babies were well-fed, I was ravenous), the hideous pumps, the people who gave me grief about “isn’t he/she a little old for that?” (My daughter nursed ’til she was 2; my son until 18 months.) Of course I’m glad. But if it hadn’t worked out?
I would have felt like crap because of all the shaming I would have gotten.
, 
.
Sing it, sister!
I could not breastfeed either kid. Yes, I did lactation consultants, & rented hospital-grade high speed pumps that do their best to hoover out every last drop. I took fenugreek, drank beer, and even got prescription medication to try and boost my milk supply. Tried hand-expressing, staring at pictures of the kid, and spent two hours, on average, for every feeding with kid #2 (first to feed the preemie via bottle who was really slow to eat, then to clean up after the preemie with reflux who just lost part of her lunch, then to pump the milk that may or may not stay with her next time.)
Spent days bundled in bed with baby on what was laughingly billed as a ‘nursing vacation.’ Worried about nipple confusion and formula contamination and depriving my child of everything he/she needed to be healthy in this world.
When I stopped with kid #2, the nursing nazis I knew oh so generously gave me a ‘get out of jail free’ card. (It’d been a touch and go process to end up with a healthy baby in the first place; my body’d been through the mill as a result.)
I took it – but fumed, steamed, and moved that much further away from their rigidity.
August 4th, 2007 | #