Postpartum Depression

Or, postcards from the edge 

Wow, it’s crazy to think that the events I’m about to transcribe happened this time last year, in late August and September. It seems like just yesterday, and also a lifetime ago. Back when I launched into this blog I seriously wrestled over whether to write this post. The bulk of this story has focused on my pregnancy with Caleb, so on one hand it would make sense to end it with the delivery. But for me, as for many other women, the effects of the pregnancy lingered long after Caleb was born. So in that sense, ending the blog with his birth would be telling you a half-truth instead of the whole story.

  

It has taken me a long time to write this chapter, partly because for a while after I finished the last post I still wasn’t sure if I would go through with this one. And then after I finally decided to write it and was nearly done, Blogger decided to crash and delete everything. A meltdown ensued. Tears shed. Curses uttered (okay, more like yelled). Wine and chocolate consumed.  

But Blogger issues notwithstanding, this post was just plain a beast to write because there were so many moving parts to incorporate. That’s why I decided to write a post within a post. This one will deal with the postpartum depression (PPD) and anxiety and physical challenges I experienced, and this "Postpartum Part Two" post will focus on our struggles with nursing (since I figured not everyone would be interested in reading about breastfeeding, but I know there are women out there who, like me, appreciate knowing they aren’t alone in the battle of the boobs).
 

The greater difficulty in writing this part of the story, though, is that it has required me to go back and relive the darkest period of my life, a time I had gladly begun to bury in the past. What I'm about to share with you is intensely personal. Despite the impression you might have formed from all I've shared up to this point, I'm very much an INFJ and have the Myers-Briggs test scores to prove it. And I know full well that by sharing these things with you, I'm opening myself up to speculation, misunderstanding, and outright judgment.  

Yet while it's extremely difficult to relive the trauma and scary to make public my most private thoughts and emotions, even more sacred to me are Caleb's feelings. 

I am keenly aware that Caleb will be able to read this blog someday. In fact, that's one of the biggest reasons I wrote it, so that one day he would be able to read the full details of his special story. But I would never want him to read this post and think that what I experienced in those first few months after his birth was about him. It was not. It was about me, and about things that were going haywire with my hormones, not my heart. So Caleb, when you read this, please know that your mother loves you very much. I always have, from that first moment in the acupuncturist's office when I discovered you. And I always, always will.

Now introducing...the light of my life

Now you might be thinking, "Well if this is such a personal matter, why is she sharing it at all?" Good question. I'm sharing it because when weighing all my misgivings against the possibility that reading this part of the story might help even one person, I decided it was worth it. 

And I'm sharing this part of the story because, in my opinion, not enough of us women do.  

Back when I was battling postpartum depression and anxiety and struggling with breastfeeding, I felt completely and utterly alone. And yet when I started sharing my struggles with a few close friends and began reading the blogs of other moms, I discovered that some of them had gone through eerily similar experiences. So then my big beef became, "If so many of us have gone through this, why hasn’t anyone told me about it before? Why doesn’t anyone talk about it?" 

Moms can be each other’s loudest cheerleaders and harshest critics. We are mothers in an image-obsessed culture, and I will readily admit that I am as guilty of feeding into it as anyone. But I have learned over the years that despite our carefully crafted appearances, we are all fighting a personal battle of some kind. Sometimes the life that looks most put together is the one most profoundly falling apart. So while it's true that nobody likes a Debbie Downer and discretion is the better part of valor, if we only project the rosy and at times unrealistic side of motherhood, then we perpetuate a damaging cycle and do each other a grave disservice. 

So I’m talking about it. Because after all my complaining I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t. 

Let me be clear, though, that as it was not my intent to scare people by sharing all the gory details in the labor and delivery post, this post isn't meant to frighten new or expecting moms. I don’t want to scare you. But I also don’t believe in hiding the ugly parts to shelter you from what "could" happen, because then if it does happen you might be left unprepared and feeling like you’re the only one experiencing it, as I did.  

Okay then, enough with introduction, am I right? Time to put Sara Bareilles’ “Brave” on repeat and do this thing!

Warning signs

I left off the last post right after I had delivered Caleb, when he lay nestled on my chest for the first time. What I didn't mention was that a few moments after I saw the doctor lift him out of me, one of my first thoughts was, "That's not my baby. That's John's baby." It was the weirdest thing and to this day I don't know why that thought went through my head. Maybe it was because even then it was apparent that Caleb looked a lot like his daddy. But whatever the reason, my brain could not make the connection that the baby I had loved and cherished and cradled inside me so long was the same baby who now was crying and squirming and immediately making his needs known. 

Then in a flash, the nurses plopped this baby I didn’t recognize on top of my chest and said what in my still foggy mind was a jumble of phrases that included "he's hungry," "skin-to-skin contact," and "need to start nursing right away." When it became apparent that Caleb and I were struggling with this whole nursing thing (which women are taught to believe is SO natural) the room became a blur of different strangers squeezing my boobs this way and that and contorting Caleb in different positions to try to get him to latch on.

Wait, you want us to do what now exactly?

After several nurses tried to help, all by offering different and mostly contradictory advice, they said we'd need to meet with a lactation consultant. Of course, it was a weekend and she wouldn't be in till Monday. So in the mean time they said I would need to start pumping to try to make the milk come in faster. When I pumped that first time, which I quickly discovered was more art than science, I had no idea that the pump was going to become my chosen instrument of torture for the next seven months. 

Meanwhile, Caleb was jaundiced and very sleepy. We had to wake him up to try to get him to nurse, which usually ended up being an hour-long exercise in futility. Once in a while he would miraculously latch, but within minutes he would fall asleep or give up. On top of that, I was hurting so badly from the perineal tear I could barely move, so John had to do all the diaper changing and tending to Caleb when I wasn't trying to nurse or do “kangaroo care.” 

Even in those first few days it was obvious to me that John was transitioning into his role as dad much more smoothly than I was transitioning into mine as mom. He was happy to change diapers and help me nurse and do anything that needed to be done. One time I awoke from a nap and looked across the room and saw him with his shirt off, carefully cradling Caleb against his bare chest as the nurses had instructed him. I'll never forget his next words. Still looking down at his infant son he said to me, "Everyone says he's perfect. I know he's not, but he's everything I want." 

Talk about heart melting! Meanwhile there I was, thinking that everything I wanted was a new ice pack, some more painkillers, and a big dinner.

Two peas in a pod

By day two, the doctor and nurses said we were going to have to start giving Caleb some formula because he hadn't had a bowel movement yet and it was important he start getting the jaundice flushed out of his system. I DID NOT want to give him formula. I had always planned to breast feed, and while I knew that sometimes there was an adjustment period in getting things figured out, I had assumed that it would work out for us. Both John's mom and mine had breast fed their children at a time when it was only beginning to come back into vogue, and my whole life, whenever I pictured myself as a mother, nursing my baby was a natural and assumed part of the picture. But I also knew that if we didn't start getting nutrients into Caleb it would spell trouble, so I agreed to it, thinking this was just a small bump in the road on our way to breastfeeding bliss. After all, several of my friends had experienced difficulty in the beginning and had to give bottles to their babies, and nursing had always worked out for them in the end. Why would our story end any differently? 

Every feeding period it seemed like a different nurse would come in and try to help me get the hang of it. One nurse, noticing how gingerly I held Caleb, said to me, “It seems like you’re terrified of your baby.” The words shamed me, because she was right. I was terrified. And I felt completely inadequate for this task suddenly thrust upon me. 

After drinking from the bottle a few times, Caleb's digestive system started working. On Monday, the lactation consultant came in and met with us. She talked about the importance of breastfeeding and said that kids who are breastfed get sick less, have lower rates of obesity (because apparently the fat in formula goes to their body and the fat in breast milk goes to their brains), have higher IQ's, are less likely to get leukemia (and who wants to give their kid cancer?) and are more likely to find lasting love and create meaningful lives for themselves (just kidding on that last one). 

After she finished preaching to the choir, she tried to help us nurse. But even she was flummoxed by the situation. Eventually we were able to get Caleb latched on, thanks to a nipple shield that my Mom had to run out and buy at Babies R Us, and while he didn't nurse for very long, it felt like a small victory. The lactation consultant said, "Stick with it. Ninety percent of women give up on breastfeeding, but I can tell it's really important to you, so keep at it." Ninety percent of women give up? I was shocked at the number. After all, most of my friends were breastfeeding their children and it had worked just fine for them. So I was 100 percent certain that I wouldn't be among the 90 percent of my fellow females, who in my mind must not have cared enough or tried hard enough to make it work. 

Meanwhile, I was still struggling to even get up and walk. One time when John was out of the room and Caleb started crying, I tried hobbling over to change his diaper. My “you-know-what” felt like it was going to fall right out of my giant mesh underwear, and then to make matters worse I suddenly felt the urge to go the bathroom. But before I could limp over to the toilet, I went. All over the place. I called the nurse and she came in and helped clean me up (God bless nurses. Seriously.) Then she told me that a third degree tear can sometimes cause continence problems…at both ends. Continence problems? What the @#$%?! What to Expect When You’re Expecting didn’t say to expect this! 

That afternoon as we packed up to leave the hospital I wondered how in the world I was going to manage all this at home on my own. Thankfully I had John and my mom, but this whole “being responsible for the life of a tiny human being while I can barely control my own bodily functions and can't seem to figure out how to feed him” seemed incredibly daunting.

Are you guys sure you know what you're doing?

From the mountain to the valley 

After we arrived home, I rapidly descended from the mountaintop of my miraculous pregnancy to the deepest valley I’d ever known. The suddenness and severity of the fall shocked me. Everyone expected me to be deliriously happy, and I did, too. But instead I was deliriously crying all the time. So while during the pregnancy I had felt like Peter, walking on water, now I felt more like Elijah, drowning in sorrow just days after my greatest triumph.   

If you’re not familiar with the story, Elijah was a hero of the faith and one of the most powerful prophets of the Old Testament. He raised a boy from the dead and caused fire to rain down from the sky in an epic showdown with the king’s false prophets. And yet instead of rejoicing after that spectacular victory, Elijah dove into a deep depression. He walked down from the mountain, found the nearest cave, and cried out to God in despair, battling serious self-doubt and even contemplating suicide. 

I remember hearing this story in Sunday School and thinking, “Man, what an idiot!” This guy had just seen God do truly incredible things and instead of being happy he was wallowing in self-pity? How was that even possible? What an ingrate! 

Yet as I found myself fighting my own battle with overwhelming doubt and despair, so soon after seeing my own set of miracles, I began to really relate with Elijah. It was a very humbling realization. But through it, I now understand that sometimes the higher the mountain, the deeper the valley afterward. And sometimes the deadliest enemy we fight is the enemy within ourselves. 

I want to make clear, though, that in comparing my depression to Elijah’s, I’m not suggesting that PPD was something within my control or something that I chose. But you know what? Maybe it wasn’t something Elijah “chose” either. I think it’s worth noting that when dealing with Elijah’s depression God didn’t begin by slapping him upside the head and telling him to “snap out of it.” Instead he gave him time to rest and then came to him in a whisper. Not a shout.

A pain in the rear

  

Okay, but enough of the soapbox, let’s get back to the story. People don’t talk much about the fact that the pain from the delivery can persist long after the baby is born. Thankfully while I was pregnant I had read this both hilarious and informative post, "Happily After Giving Birth -- 10 Things They Don't Tell You," from one of my favorite bloggers, Pregnant Chicken, so I was somewhat prepared for the post-natal scene, but nothing could have truly prepared me. The tear was so painful I could barely move, and let’s not even get into the bathroom situation. I had been taking painkillers, but the lactation consultants told me they might be making Caleb sleepier and decreasing my milk supply so I stopped taking them and relied solely on liver-destroying amounts of ibuprofen, which weren’t cutting it. (A doula later recommended a natural herbal painkiller called Arnica Montana, which actually did take the edge off a bit).  

On top of that, the bed rest was still taking its toll. Caring for a newborn after spending three months in bed was like going from 0 to 60 in nothing flat. A few days into it my feet and legs were hurting so badly I wondered what in the world was wrong with me. And then I remembered, “Oh yeah, I haven’t used them in three months!” 

I talk about all this more in my "Postpartum Part Two" post, but basically I spent my first weeks with Caleb fighting him to nurse for an hour, then pumping, then going back to lay in bed because it hurt so badly to sit up. But I couldn't sleep because I was so distraught over everything. And then 45 minutes later we started the whole cycle over again. After spending months in bed during the pregnancy, it felt like I had just traded one prison for another. 

I felt trapped. 

John and my mom fed Caleb his bottles, changed him, and rocked him to sleep. I would hold him sometimes to do skin-to-skin contact, which helped a little with the bonding, but then we would try to nurse again, which consisted of him screaming in frustration over not being able to latch or not getting out enough milk. So nursing created more of an antagonistic relationship between us than anything. But breast milk was really important to me, both for my health and his, so I continued to pump him milk, which other people then mixed with the hated formula and fed to him. As a result, I felt like one of those cows you see at the state fair hooked up to the mechanical pumps, mindlessly pumping and then retreating back to my stall. Completely disconnected from the feeding process.

Got Milk?

As the days went on it became clear that my lower half wasn’t healing correctly, so I went back to my doctor and he examined the whole unholy mess and discovered one of the stitches was actually pulling further at the tear rather than mending it. Once he fixed it I immediately felt a little better. Not, “Hey, let’s go on a bike ride!” better, but at least I didn’t require assistance to walk back to the car. 

I continued to have significant problems in my pelvic region and months later ended up having to go to physical therapy, but I’ll save that part of the story for the next and final post of the blog.  

Suffice to say for now that my physical injuries, along with my fragile emotional state, left me completely shattered. I felt unfit to be a mother, and that conviction, more than all the physical pain, was what really killed me.

Baby blues

People often refer to PPD as "the baby blues.” I don’t know why, maybe it’s an effort to take away the monster’s teeth. Because to me PPD felt much more black than blue. I can only describe it as hopelessness. And hopelessness feels like being dead inside. It is the death of your spirit, rather than your body. I tried fighting the despair, but it was like I was mired in a swamp and couldn’t untangle myself. I was desperately struggling to tread water, to keep my head above the surface, but every day the weights shackled around my ankles grew heavier.  

I was drowning. 

Not only did I feel disconnected from Caleb, but I felt he was disconnected from me. I had always heard about babies only wanting their moms in the beginning but it seemed like he was content as long as he was being held and fed by someone. It didn't matter who. If he even recognized I was his mother, I felt like he didn't care. There was one exception to that, though, and I will never forget it. One time he was crying and crying and neither John nor my mom could settle him down, so I climbed out of bed and went into his room and sat in the rocking chair and the second my mom handed him to me, he immediately quieted down and relaxed in my arms. It was the best feeling in the world to think that he wanted, that he needed, me. I could scarcely believe it, but I desperately wanted to. Yet the moment passed as quickly as it came, and the doubt rushed back in to take its place.

The crazy thing was, even though I felt disconnected from Caleb, I KNEW I loved him. It’s hard to describe but it’s like my heart is a violin and each person I love has a string. I knew Caleb had a string because I had felt it vibrating so strongly during the pregnancy. But the second he was born, the music stopped, and I didn’t know how to start it up again. In the blink of an eye I went from feeling inseparable, both physically and emotionally, from my baby, to feeling like someone had placed him in a rocket ship and sent him a million miles away. 

Sometimes I thought I could hear a couple of notes playing, though. Hearing Caleb’s cries twisted something inside me I didn’t know existed. I felt his pain. And when he’d push his feet against my stomach while I was holding him, I recognized the movement. They were the kicks I had cherished during the pregnancy, the signs that my baby was alive and well. And when I sang “You Are My Sunshine,” to him, the song he always kicked to in the womb, he would stop whatever he was doing and look right at me, and I could swear he recognized it. So I was grateful for these pinpoints of light that would occasionally pierce the dark, but the darkness remained. 

A moment of light in the darkness

I prayed and prayed to God, pleading with Him to bring back my feelings for my baby and to make nursing work for us. I had gotten used to Him answering "yes" to our prayers during the pregnancy so I thought He’d answer "yes" to this one too. But as day after day went on with no answer, I fell deeper into despair. God was nowhere to be found.

Have you ever hit rock bottom, only to find, to your horror, that the bottom is giving way?

Everyone kept telling me to hang in there, that it gets better in a few months. But I didn't have a few months. I didn't have a few days. I was hanging on by a thread, and the thread was unraveling. 

Missing person 

In addition to feeling disconnected from Caleb, I felt disconnected from myself. A couple weeks after Caleb was born, I remember looking in the mirror for the first time in days and not recognizing the person staring back. Her hair was dirty, her eyes were dull, her once athletic body transformed into a blob of fat and stretched out skin.  

I didn’t know where Emily had gone. Truthfully until that moment I didn’t realize she had left. Life had become one unending Groundhog Day…feed, burp, change diaper, freak out about something, do laundry, repeat. Pregnant Chicken put it best when she described motherhood as “perpetual motion with a generous layer of guilt and self-doubt spread on top.” I don’t know what exactly I thought taking care of a newborn would be like, but it wasn’t this. I mean I knew it would be hard, but it was so. much. harder. Maybe part of the problem was that during the pregnancy I fought to stay positive by focusing on all the good things to come, the precious moments cuddling with my baby and seeing him smile and hearing him coo (which turns out doesn’t happen for a couple months, who knew?).

But really, I don’t think anyone can prepare you for how exhausted you will feel taking care of a baby. Actually, exhausted is an understatement. And since I thought that being a good mom meant totally neglecting my own needs all the time, my tank remained completely empty. But a car can’t run on empty for long without breaking down. 

And I was broken. 

I’m someone who derives a lot of my identity from what I do. I like to set goals and cross them off the list, map out strategies and see them through, and receive a pat on the back for a job well done. But taking care of a baby is more like running on a hamster wheel than in a marathon, and figuring him out is more like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube in the dark than follow directions on a map. And he certainly won’t pat you on the back for a diaper well changed. So I felt like a duck out of water, which took me by surprise because I thought I would take to motherhood like a duck to water. 

This “out of my element” feeling, along with the nursing problems, left me with zero confidence in my ability as a mother. I was failing at the one thing I wanted most.  

And I hated myself for it.

Snooki envy

The cruelest part of it all was it wasn’t like I was a teenager or a party girl who wasn’t ready to settle down. I've had many dreams for my life, but being a mom has always been the biggest. On top of that, I had prayed so hard for months for Caleb to be okay. I knew darn well there were people who would kill to be in my shoes, who were dealing with fertility issues and adoption hang-ups and sick or disabled kids. And here I was holding the answer to my most fervent prayers, this sweet, beautiful, perfectly healthy baby, who just wanted to be held and whose cries were soft like a kitten’s meow. (Thank God he didn’t have colic, otherwise, I think I really would have had to punch my one-way ticket to the funny farm.) So seriously, what the heck was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I shake this overwhelming sadness? 

To make matters worse, I kept comparing myself to all the other moms I knew and all the ones I didn’t. I’ve always used a hundred different yardsticks to measure myself against others. Turns out motherhood is the biggest stick of them all. And by my estimation, I was never going to measure up. 

I looked at my friends, my Facebook feed, the other women in the doctor’s office, and all I saw were moms who seemed like they had it all together and were just so “goo-goo gah-gah” obsessed with their babies. Heck, even Snookie, who had a baby right around the time I did, was gunning for “Mother of the Year.” One early morning as I sat pumping at the kitchen table after another failed nursing attempt I read a magazine article in which she talked about how she had totally changed and loved being a mom and wanted a million more kids and oh by the way had lost all her baby weight already.  

Now I know very well Snooki could have been lying her tanning bed butt off. She could have merely traded her Cosmo at the club for a flask in her diaper bag. But regardless, in my fragile state at the time, as she waxed eloquent about the joys of breastfeeding and her newfound domestic bliss while I sat crying in the dark attached to a cold, unfeeling breast pump, she might as well have poured a bucket of salt from her old margarita glasses directly into my open, gaping wounds.

Jersey Shore no more?

A word to the husbands 

Fortunately the PPD never got to the point where I was in danger of hurting Caleb or myself. Nonetheless I honestly believed John and Caleb would be better off without me. Someone, anyone, could take better care of them than I could, and I felt so badly they were stuck with me as their wife and mother. Looking back I know that sounds crazy, but I was absolutely convinced of it at the time. And yet I knew I wasn’t going to do anything to remedy the situation. I wasn’t going to “end it all” or run away and abandon my family. So I felt hopeless, because in my mind there was no solution to the problem. 

I was the problem. 

A few months after Caleb was born I read this post by a woman who talked about her journey through PPD in her blog, Hysterically Ever After. The post really spoke to me, especially the part where she talked about the effects of PPD on her marriage. Like her, I’m grateful to be married to someone who is committed to giving me all the support I need, as I am to him. During all this turmoil, I desperately wanted to be the woman John fell in love with…the girl who was smart and engaging and warm. But I didn’t know where she went or how to find her, and to be honest I didn’t have to energy to look.  

So if you’re reading this as the husband of a woman suffering with PPD, I would just encourage you to be there for her. I know that’s probably a confusing statement; whenever I say that to John he responds, “Okay, but what does that mean?” For me at that time, it just meant being patient, being available to listen, being willing to do what it took to help me find my way back. Like she says in her post: 

“You can’t be the solution, but you can help her find it…Let her know that whatever she is going through is okay. Remind her that you will be there, that you are her rock. Even if she pushes you away, just be there. She needs you…While she is struggling to find the woman you fell in love with, you need to be the man she fell in love with.”

Panic at the disco

In addition to depression, I was also battling intense anxiety and something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder. All the fears and panic that somehow were held at bay during the pregnancy came out after Caleb was born. I guess when you suffer trauma you have to pay your psyche’s piper at some point. There would be moments I would be holding Caleb and all of a sudden a flashback from the pregnancy would hit me and I had a hard time calming down and coming back to the present. Or I would climb into the tub for a sitz bath to soak my mangled lady parts and would suddenly panic, remembering those nights when I sat in that same tub and begged God to take away the contractions. 

The PTSD was a result of my bed rest experience, but the postpartum anxiety, I discovered, was closely linked with the PPD. While you don’t hear much about PPD, you hear next to nothing about PPA. Yet if me and the women I’ve talked to are any indication, it can be more common than the depression. 

I’ve never really dealt with full-scale anxiety before; I’d had maybe one instance where I had what could be considered a mild panic attack. But after I had Caleb, I started having panic attacks nearly daily, especially at night. They weren’t as bad as I’ve heard they can be. I didn’t think I was having a heart attack. But I felt like I was constantly being squeezed in a vice, and when the attacks came my body tensed up, my heart raced, I couldn't breathe, and my mind started obsessing over irrational fears about Caleb. 

Sleeping peacefully next to me the day before my first major panic attack

The first bad attack was the night before John left to go out of town for the first time since Caleb was born. Since he had to stay off the road the last month of the pregnancy, he had to get back to work the week after Caleb’s birth. Fortunately my mom was here and my dad was on his way, but the night before John left, as we were laying in bed while Caleb slept noisily in the bassinet next to me, I started freaking out big time. How was I going to take care of him without John there? How was I going to be able to try to nurse without him helping me? What if something happened to Caleb? What if he stopped breathing? What if I went somewhere and accidentally left him at the house? 

I don’t know why, maybe it was the result of how scared I was to be alone during the pregnancy, magnified by my physical disabilities and the nursing problems that left me feeling unable to feed my own baby, but the thought of taking Caleb by myself overwhelmed me. I felt it was too great a responsibility to bear on my own. 

John tried to assure me that things would be fine, that he hadn’t been much help anyway and I could handle things without him. But I couldn’t calm down. So I just kept quietly sobbing there in bed, gripped by anxiety and despair. 

I was terrified. 

The next bad attack came the following week, when John’s sister and her husband were in town and helping me with Caleb while John was gone again. I was pumping in Caleb’s room that evening when I suddenly had to go to the bathroom. I didn’t make it there in time. My sister-in-law took Caleb so I could get cleaned up and then try to take a nap. But when I climbed in bed I felt the panic rising again. I finally called out to her and she came in and sat on the bed, holding Caleb while trying to talk me down from the ledge. She’s a social worker so she’s familiar with this kind of thing, and after she helped me calm down she suggested that maybe I call my doctor and tell him what was going on. I didn’t want to reveal to anyone what I was going through, but I also knew that if I didn’t get help I was going to end up in the hospital. I couldn’t keep going on like this. 

The next day I picked up the phone and called my doctor’s office. They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. For me it was more like a crawl. But I was on my way, and although the tunnel turned out to be very long indeed, I would eventually find my way back to the light.

Brighter days ahead

And that’s where I will leave things for now (sorry this was such a depresso post; I promise things get better). In my next and final post of "Caleb's Story," I’ll share my recovery process and then bring you up to speed with where we are today. 

In the mean time and as usual, here are a couple songs. The first, “New Song,” by Audrey Assad, was one I listened to a lot during this period of my life. The second, “Need You Now,” by Plumb, was one I only heard a few months ago, but I wish I had known about it back then because it so perfectly describes how I felt at the time.

       

Postpartum Part Two

Or, my nursing nightmare

 
I decided to do a separate post devoted entirely to our nursing struggles because combining it with the PPD piece would have made that post insanely long. Also, I know that a post about nursing issues will probably only appeal to a small segment of readers. I'll let you know up front that I go into a lot of specifics in this post (don’t worry, not in a graphic way, although, you know, it is me, so maybe take that into consideration). It has taken me a long time to write in such detail but I did it because in talking with other women who have had troubles with nursing I've found that we all have appreciated knowing the specifics, since there are so many factors involved in breastfeeding (despite the fact that we're all told it's so NATURAL). 

I want to say up front, too, that in doing this post I'm not intending to start another breast vs. bottle battle in the endless mommy wars. We are all on the same team, seeking to do what’s best for our families. I'm mainly doing this to contribute my own story to the worldwide book of breastfeeding and to help people understand what can go wrong and why, so that maybe they will be more sensitive and less judgmental toward women who desperately want to nurse their children but who, like me, simply can’t make it work. When I was going through it I would talk to friends, all of whom were well meaning but many of whom simply couldn't relate, either because they chose to formula feed or because they were able to breastfeed.  

And if I'm being honest, I'm also writing this to help me process my own thoughts and emotions and to somehow justify to the world why I failed, even though I now know that no such justification is needed. 

Okay, then, here we go. Once we got back home after Caleb was born, the nursing situation I discussed in my other postpartum post did not improve. My milk finally came in around the fifth day, but Caleb still wasn't latching, and the rare times he did, he didn't stay with it for very long before he fell asleep or gave up. Meanwhile it was extremely difficult for me to sit up for the hours it took to try to make the nursing work, since the tear was still hurting so badly. 

We tried giving him some formula through a syringe while he nursed to help encourage him, as the lactation nurse at the hospital had instructed us, but that usually ended up getting milk everywhere but in his mouth and he didn’t find it to be a good enough incentive to keep nursing. 

Hmm, what's in there?

So we made an appointment with a lactation consultant downtown who is basically considered our city’s Grand Poobah of breastfeeding. The minute she saw me in the waiting room struggling to get up from the chair to head to her office, she sympathetically gave me an arm and said, "Oh honey, I've been where you're at. I had the same tear with both my babies. And I'm so sorry." That's all it took for me to burst into tears right there in the lobby. (Admittedly, it didn't take much in those days). 

Once in the exam room, I took off my shirt (trying to nurse in those early days pretty much involved me disrobing entirely), she took one look at me, gave a low whistle and said, “Well those look like they’ve been dragged over the freeway behind a semi-truck, don’t they?” She advised me to get some bacitracin at the drugstore as a baby-safe way to prevent infection and gave me some Medela hydro gel pads to put on my hoo-haws to help them heal. Then she evaluated the situation with Caleb's latch, finally was able to get him latched on after several tries, and then watched as he nursed. She said everything looked normal. But then when she re-weighed him after he nursed, we saw that he had only gained half an ounce. Not good. 

She looked in his mouth and inspected his tongue and said there was a possibility he might be tongue tied but that she liked to give babies a chance to prove themselves before sending them to an ENT for an evaluation. She also said that babies who are born early sometimes have difficulty nursing in the beginning because those last few weeks in the womb are when they perfect the sucking reflex. She then laid out a plan for me that involved taking three capsules each of fenugreek and blessed thistle three times a day, and pumping after every nursing session, for a total of 7-9 pumping sessions a day. She told me to buy a better nursing pillow (called, no joke, My Breast Friend, which is a silly name but I actually did find it much more helpful than the ever-popular Boppy, which ended up serving as a great butt pillow instead!). She also gave me the tip of sitting on a rolled up towel in a warm sitz bath to help make my tear feel better.  

And then, right before we left, she delivered the gut punch. 

"It all comes down to the determination of the mother," she said. "If you really want it, it will be there for you." 

That really hit me where it hurt. The determination of the mother? You won't find many mothers more determined than me. I had lain still for three months to keep this baby safe inside me, and I'd be damned if I didn't make this nursing thing work for us. There are plenty of qualities I lack, but self-discipline and determination aren't among them. I'm no quitter.

So right here would be a good time to take a brief break from the story to talk about one of the things I learned through this experience. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that I'm more often tested in areas where I think I'm strong than those in which I know I'm weak. I think that's because I take pride in my strengths, not my weaknesses. And as the saying goes, “Pride comes before the fall.” You see, I always prided myself in my determination and I thought that my willpower made all the difference for me in life. But through this nursing experience God taught me that sometimes, no amount of my effort or resolve can make things work. Sometimes I'm going to fail, no matter how hard or long I try to achieve something. I've had other failures in life of course, but this one has been the hardest for me to get over. And the most humbling.
 

How about I just stick my hand in there instead?

Post labor Labor Day 

Anyway, back to the story. I went home after that appointment with the Wonderful Wizard of Boobs with renewed determination. On the way back home we stopped at Babies R Us and bought the My Breast Friend, some nursing tops, and the Avent Naturals bottles she had recommended as good bottles to use when trying to breastfeed. When we got home I immediately hooked myself up to the pump (she also gave me a few tips on how to pump more effectively, which turned out to be really helpful...they should really give courses on these kinds of things to new mothers in the hospital!). Then I did the hand pumping she taught me, which she said I needed to do after the pumping because it would get more milk out and stimulate my body to produce more. 

The next time I tried to nurse Caleb, I got everything into place, and with a brain half-functioning from lack of sleep, I tried to remember everything she had showed me. But after many tries, Caleb still wasn't able to latch. It just. wasn't. working. The Wizard had told us that if he didn't nurse, we would have to give him a bottle because the cardinal rule is, "Feed the Baby," by whatever means necessary. So John gave Caleb a bottle while I, feeling defeated, once again started pumping. 

I don't think the nursing troubles were totally to blame for the postpartum depression and anxiety I experienced but they definitely played a role. The rare times that Caleb would nurse, I felt so much more bonded with him. I would look down at his face and stroke his head and think, "This is the way it's meant to be." Me feeding my son from my own body, with food made just for him. 

But most of the time, instead of being a bonding experience, nursing drove Caleb and me further apart. I would spend an hour at a time trying to get him to do it, and when it didn't work, it felt like he wasn't just rejecting the nursing, he was rejecting me. His own mother. I wasn't able to do the one thing for him that I biologically was programmed to do. Meanwhile lactation consultants and doctors and nurses and news articles and smug, judgy moms and friends posting breastfeeding facts on Facebook all seemed to be screaming at me that EVERY woman can and should do this. But I didn't need convincing that “Breast is Best.” I was already convinced. So their input only served to make me feel even more guilty, more defective. 

Instead of me being able to feed Caleb, John or my mom would give him the bottle, half full of formula and half full of milk that I had pumped, since I still wasn't producing enough. And there I would sit in the rocking chair in Caleb's room, hooked up to the pump like a Dairy Gold cow, sobbing as other people fed my milk to my baby.

When I wasn’t pumping, I was laying in bed crying (of course) and not sleeping because I was too busy searching the Internet for solutions (KellyMom became my breastfeeding Bible). Or I was eating (seriously I think all those celebrities who credit breastfeeding for their dramatic weight losses are full of crap. Not that I really cared anyway at the time since I was so obsessed with making nursing work, but I lost exactly zero pounds breastfeeding. I was hungry all the time, and I ate a ton to try to keep my production from waning any further). When I wasn’t doing any of the above, I was guzzling gallons of Mother’s Milk tea and stuffing my face full of milk-boosting supplements.  

Oh yeah, and crying. 

Meanwhile, the more Caleb got the bottle, the more he preferred it. We started getting really frustrated with the situation. The lactation nurse had given me the name of her assistant, who makes house calls, in case we needed help over the holiday weekend. I called her but she wasn't available, so then I happened to talk to a friend who had just given birth and was having nursing troubles too and she gave me the name of another lactation educator who works exclusively in people’s homes. So I called her and she came right over. 

She evaluated the situation and what do you know? She had another opinion. She said that Caleb was getting too used to the bottle and that we should just try quitting it cold turkey and nursing him around the clock and that he would get the hang of it when he was hungry enough. Sink or swim. She showed me a new trick, nursing while laying down, since it was hurting me so badly to sit in a chair, and although it worked once while she was there, it ended up being just as unsuccessful as any of the other positions she tried.  

Caleb was a little over a week old at this point, and John was preparing to go back on the road since he had taken so much time off before Caleb was born. Fortunately my mom was still there but I was distraught at the idea of him leaving so soon, when everything still was so new and overwhelming, especially with the nursing situation. The night before he left I cried and cried in bed, saying, "I can't do this without you," over and over, while he kept saying, "Yes, you can. Yes, you can." 

My dad came the next day and I felt better having both my parents here to help, but still overwhelmed because the nursing was all on me. Nobody could take that burden away. Both nights John was gone, my mom and I stayed up all night, me trying to nurse Caleb and her sitting across from us, while we tried everything we could to keep him awake while he nursed, wet rags on the neck, fans blowing in our faces, you name it. His jaundice wasn't getting better even though we were holding him in the sunlight a lot, so I called the pediatrician and she told me I needed to come in. I also called my doctor because it seemed like my tear was getting worse instead of better. Fortunately the two doctors are in the same building so I scheduled back-to-back appointments. 

At my doctor appointment we discovered that one of the stitches was actually pulling at the tear instead of helping bring it back together, so he fixed that and I immediately felt a little better. He asked me if I was breast feeding and in defeated tones I told him about the nursing problems. Then he looked me in the eye and said, “Emily, the thing you need to remember is just how far you and Caleb have come. Not too long ago we thought he'd be spending his first few months in the NICU! So either way, whether nursing works out or not, he’s going to get the nutrition he needs. Either way, you WIN.” Unfortunately, these were wise words that were wasted on me at the time. I was fighting the battle to breastfeed, and anything short of that was losing. 

After my appointment we took Caleb to his appointment. The pediatrician looked at Caleb and then at the meticulous charts my mom, John and I had been keeping to document all his wet and dirty diapers, and then she weighed him. He was painfully thin. She said, "Caleb is surviving but he's not thriving. You're going to need to start giving him bottles until the nursing improves because while most babies lose weight for a few days after birth, it's been too long now and he's not bouncing back."  

I burst into tears. (Yeah, that happened at pretty much every appointment for a while). What kind of a mother was I, starving my baby? Then we had to go get his heel pricked once again so his billirubin levels could be re-tested. After it was done he was wailing and the nurse said, "You can nurse him now, that usually helps them feel better." I felt about two inches tall. Yes, nursing was supposed to be comforting for my baby. But I wasn't able to comfort him that way. 

John got home from his trip that night and he was shocked at how emaciated Caleb looked. We started giving him bottles again, and I felt so defeated. But I wasn't giving up. Not me. I was NOT in the 90 percent of women who give up on breastfeeding. I wanted the best, healthiest food for my son and I was going to get him the best if it killed me. 

Holding him in the sunlight to try to make the jaundice go away

Nursing nazi 

So next I called the local La Leche League leader. Of all the lactation consultants I talked to, she made me feel the worst. She said I should have been pumping 10 times a day the whole time and that I needed to do so immediately if I was going to reach my goal of exclusively breastfeeding for the first year. I told her what all was going on and she said, "I know it's hard, I know, but you need to get those pumping sessions in," in a patronizing tone that told me she actually had no idea how hard it was. She also said I needed to start taking Reglan to boost my milk production. That's when she really pissed me off.

This woman was an example of why lactation consultants are sometimes known as nursing nazis. She was militant in her approach and cold in her delivery. What's more, in her zeal to have me breastfeed she was recommending a drug that is known for its terrible side effects. Fortunately I knew about Reglan (here's when some of this story comes full circle) because it originally was used to aid digestion in gastroparesis patients. Some GI doctors still prescribe it, but mine doesn't because he believes the side effects can be too detrimental. And after researching it, I agree with him. That's why back when I was trying to fix my gastroparesis I ended up ordering the domperidone from Canada, because even though it's not FDA approved it actually has proven to be a safer drug than Reglan in treating gastroparesis. 

When I told the La Leche leader that there was no way I would take Reglan and listed some of the reasons why, she had no idea what I was talking about. So in effect, she was recommending a drug to me, and probably countless other women, without knowing what it actually did other than boost milk production. However well meaning, she was just plain being reckless, in my opinion.

I got off the phone with her and felt worse than I did before. I was angry that she was so set on the importance of breast milk that she was willing to compromise my health, but I also felt even more guilty because I felt I wasn't doing all I could to make this work. So for a few days I tried to keep up the 10-times-a-day pumping schedule, and ran myself further into the ground. 

John was becoming increasingly worried about me but he was incredibly supportive about my desire to breastfeed and was willing to do whatever I wanted to try to make it work. So after a few days of me pumping nonstop and still not getting anywhere, he said if I wanted to try calling the other at-home lactation consultant that the Grand Poobah had suggested, we could pay to have her come out and evaluate the situation. 

Light bulb moment 

This proved to be the turning point in our understanding of what was going on with Caleb and me. The woman came out and, as her predecessors had done before, tried countless techniques to get Caleb to latch and keep nursing, and after many unsuccessful attempts, she said something that I had suspected all along but hadn't felt confident enough as a mother to trust my instincts. She said that it looked like Caleb was in pain, particularly when he nursed on the left side, and that it looked like he was trying to nurse but wasn't able to do it. After hearing about his difficult delivery, she wondered if his head being stuck sideways for so long in the birth canal had injured his neck. 

She said that if we were open to it, she would schedule an appointment for us with a friend of hers who does something called cranial sacral massage. She said it's still considered a bit of a "fringe" treatment, but she had seen firsthand the positive effects it can have on babies. I was concerned about doing anything to Caleb that might do more harm than good, especially an alternative treatment that many medical professionals still dismiss as "hocus pocus." But after researching it for myself and remembering how another "hocus pocus" treatment had helped my stomach, I decided we should give it a shot. So I called her and made the appointment.  

A couple days later we found ourselves in yet another strange room, trying once again to nurse in front of an "expert" who we hoped would have the magic bullet for us. The massage therapist said it definitely looked like Caleb had tension in his head and neck. Reluctantly I handed my baby to her and watched as she gently touched him. Her touch was feather light and I wondered how it could do anything to relieve the tension. But when she handed him back to me and we tried nursing again, the difference in his ability to latch was like night and day. He no longer flinched or twisted his body and he was able to open his mouth bigger than I had ever since before.

Safe to say, in the basement of that women's home that afternoon, I became a convert to cranial sacral therapy.

Cranial sacral therapy. What I would give to feel this relaxed!  (This baby isn't Caleb, by the way.)

Yet while Caleb’s latch had improved, he clearly was still struggling to nurse. The therapist then examined his mouth and sucking reflex and tried to get him to stick out his tongue, but it barely moved. She said it looked like he was tongue tied (something I had also suspected) and she recommended we meet with an ENT doc in town who is known for specializing in fixing tongue ties and for his conservative approach in only snipping the tongues that really needed it. 

Tongue tied 

“Great,” we thought. Yet another appointment we have to make and expert we have to pay to see. But we were encouraged by the massage's effect on Caleb's latch and wanted to make every effort to make this work. So a few days later we took him to yet another specialist. After the ENT doctor examined him, he said Caleb definitely had a tongue tie and that releasing it would not only help his nursing but his long term speech and eating/drinking abilities. 

It killed me to sit in that room as I watched a nurse hold my squealing baby down on the table while the doctor injected his mouth with a local anesthetic and then took a tiny pair of scissors to his tongue. But as I sat there crying and feeling like a terrible mom, I told myself that this was for his long term good. 

The doctor handed him back to me and told me to start nursing immediately. He said that many babies show an immediate difference in their sucking ability. But he cautioned that the most ideal window to get it done was within the first two weeks of life and that after that the rates of nursing success started to drop off because babies have a hard time learning how to suck differently and unlearning bad habits they've developed. Caleb was at three weeks, but I was confident that we had gotten all his issues resolved and that it would be smooth sailing from here.

But as he struggled to nurse in that room and we tried for over an hour, the hope that had surged so strongly a few hours before began to falter. We headed home (stopping at Jack in the Box so I could drown my sorrows in curly fries and a chocolate shake) and I once again fought feelings of depression and defeat. 

This isn't Caleb's tongue, but it gives you an idea what it looked like.

(By the way, I recently read this article "Twenty Things You Don't Know About Tongue Tie" and it totally confirmed my experience with tongue ties, massage, the whole nine yards.) Also, I now know several mothers who have had tongue tied babies and resulting nursing troubles, which leads me to wonder why in the world they don’t check for that first thing in the hospital after the baby is born? If the medical community is so intent on getting more women to breast feed, why aren’t they instituting this relatively simple inspection into their post-birth protocols?! 

Last ditch effort

After a few days of Caleb still refusing to nurse we decided to go back to the Grand Poobah, even though we weren't sure if our insurance would cover the visit and at this point we had already spilled a lot of blood and treasure to try to make nursing work.

She once again struggled to get him to latch and finally decided to try this contraction called a Supplemental Nursing System (SSN) which is basically tubing attached to a container of milk. The tubing dribbles milk into the baby's mouth while he nurses, giving him incentive to keep nursing. It's supposed to be helpful for mothers who have a slow let down or not enough milk. The problem with us was that it was difficult to get the whole thing hooked up alongside the nipple shield we still had to use. Plus despite the extra help from the supplemental milk, which was dribbling everywhere, Caleb still refused to latch on. 

Me, John and the Grand Wizard finally got it to work, but I was thinking, "How in the world am I going to be able to do this on my own when John's not around?" And yet she still remained convinced that eventually Caleb would get the hang of it, so I tried to believe it would too. She said that she normally didn't do this but that if we were still having difficulty in a few days she would make a house call over the weekend to come help me in my own home environment.

"I can tell how important this is to you and I want to do everything we can to make this work," she said. 

She also evaluated how much milk he was getting out of me by doing the weighing before and after and measuring it against how much milk he had drained from the SSN. He wasn't getting much. She asked if I was pumping after every nursing session and I told her I was. Plus I was taking all those herbs. She said the next step would be to take a prescription medicine like Reglan but that she knew that not all mothers were comfortable with that option. I told her I wouldn't take Reglan but that I did have domperidone at home. She looked surprised and said, "How in the world did you get your hands on that?" I said, "Well funny story..." and told her the whole gastroparesis situation. She said, “How the hell did you even get pregnant?!” I had to smile at that one. For a brief moment, it brought my head out of the fog and reminded me how lucky I was to even be here holding this miracle baby and to be dealing with issues like how best to feed him, rather than how to keep him alive. 

She told me that domperidone works even better than Reglan for breastmilk production and suggested I start taking it again. I was wary of doing that, since my stomach had been working so well ever since I got pregnant and I was worried if I took something that would mess with my digestion it would start acting up again. 

I went home and decided to call my GI doc to see what he thought. He said he didn't think it would harm my stomach to take the domperidone again, so I decided to start taking it. After a couple days I definitely noticed my production going up and my stomach seemed to be doing fine, so I felt very relieved and thanked God that he had somehow sewn a silver lining into all the digestion issues I had faced in the year prior. I never would have expected that this drug I had bought from Canada for my stomach would eventually be used to help me breastfeed. Life is funny like that sometimes. 

We took Caleb to the cranial sacral massage therapist once more to see if that would help again, and she said there was still some tension in his neck but that it felt much better than it did before. She did one more treatment and it appeared to help again, for that day at least. But the SSN was a nightmare at home and after many messy, frustrating attempts we decided to ask the Grand Wizard to come to our house. She did and saw firsthand what we were up against. She finally was able to get it working, but she could see the desperation and the hopelessness written on our faces. She said, "The issue here, along with all the other things you've dealt with, is that you've got a smart, stubborn kid on your hands. He knows the bottle is easier and he's not willing to be patient enough to nurse. And really, would you rather have a dumb bunny?" No, we just wished our smart bunny would nurse!

The boy and his bottle

As she was leaving our house, she tried to encourage me by saying, "You're smart, you've done your research, and you've done everything you can to get your baby breast milk. If you want it, you can make it work. It just comes down to how determined you are to get it." 

I know she was trying to help, but her repeated comments, which were echoed by all the other LC's I saw, about how breastfeeding success or failure always comes down to the mother was complete B.S. and did more harm than good. I understand that they probably deal more often with mothers who don't care as much as I do about breastfeeding, but I think they're doing a disservice to the mothers who do care a lot about it by placing the burden all on their shoulders. It has taken me a long time to come to terms with this, but sometimes there are factors beyond a woman’s control in breastfeeding (as with many other things in parenting), that make it ultimately unsuccessful no matter how hard she tries or how badly she wants it. 

My beef with the breastfeeding “experts” 

And while I'm at it, here's another beef I have about our society's approach to breastfeeding. I don't know why I wasn't making enough milk. Maybe it was something I was born with, or maybe it was the result of Caleb's poor sucking ability that didn't stimulate my body to produce enough.

Regardless, LC's often tell women that everyone produces enough breast milk and that only like 1 percent of women don't make enough for their babies. I understand that there are instances when pediatricians probably wrongly tell mothers that their babies aren't gaining weight fast enough and give them bad advice to start using the bottle. In fact, I am positive that some of you reading this have already thought, “If only she trusted her abilities more and listened to the doctors less when they told her Caleb wasn’t gaining enough weight, it would have worked out.” I know this because I have talked to women who have said their doctors told them the same thing but that they persevered and that their kids turned out fine. I’m glad it worked for them and their kids ended up being okay. But each situation is different and with all that we had going wrong with the nursing, I know without a shadow of a doubt that we would have had to resort to supplementing at some point and I’m so glad I didn’t let my stubbornness negatively affect Caleb’s health and well being, especially after all we went through during the pregnancy to even get him to this point. 

And regarding the issue of milk production, women not making enough breast milk is not something that has just appeared out of nowhere in the last 20 years. Back in the day, before we had formula, there were these people called wet nurses who nursed other women's babies when they couldn't make enough milk. And if mothers didn't have access to wet nurses, or if their babies couldn't nurse due to tongue ties or other problems, they either fed their babies cow's milk (which sometimes killed them) or their babies starved to death. It was as simple as that. So to tell women struggling with production that it's all in their heads and that they actually should be making plenty of milk for their babies is not only cruel, it's historically and scientifically inaccurate.  

For the record, I haven't read this. I'm guessing it wasn't a bestseller.

What’s more, women are told that breastfeeding should work for them because their bodies are designed to do it, but there are plenty of other instances in which our bodies don't function as they should. Yet you don't ever hear of someone telling a person with a leaky heart valve, "Well, this is how your heart should be functioning, so if you think it's not functioning right, it's all in your head." So why do we do that with women and their bodies' ability to produce breast milk?  

And while I also understand that we primarily live in a bottle culture and women over the past 50 years haven't been encouraged enough to breastfeed, I think in their zeal to bring back the boobs, LC's and medical professionals have mainly served to just put a lot of guilt on mothers without providing them the necessary support to actually be successful in breastfeeding. Doctors tell women that "breast is best" for their babies, but the only support a woman receives in the hospital after giving birth is a few lessons from various nurses who all give her contradictory advice, maybe a visit from a lactation consultant if she's lucky, and then a pat on the back and a "Good luck!” on the way out the door. 

Meanwhile, most doctors are actually clueless about how breastfeeding works and what's involved because they receive next to no training on it during medical school. So they know that breast milk is important but have no idea how to support their patients in breastfeeding. Then you have lactation consultants who are often very expensive and not covered by insurance (although I think the rules just changed on that) but who also could often use some work in terms of their own education and their bedside manner.

If we really want to get back to the olden days and reclaim a woman's God-given ability to feed her baby, let's look at everything that went into breastfeeding cultures back then. Breastfeeding may be natural, but for many mothers, and babies, it doesn't come naturally. Back in the day, women often lived in communities with other women who could help them learn how to breastfeed and support them if it wasn't working. They also had the aforementioned wet nurses. And let's not even get into all the environmental, economical and nutritional factors these days that might be inhibiting a woman's ability to nurse. 

All that to say, I think as a culture we still have a ways to go in terms of our breastfeeding support and understanding. This isn't a “Waah, nobody is helping me” type of complaint. I’m a huge believer in self-motivation and personal responsibility. It's more of a logical argument that if the medical community is going to advise women to breastfeed their babies then they need to be educating their doctors about how breastfeeding works and how to identify things like tongue ties, as well as encourage them to work in conjunction with, rather than separate from, lactation consultants. And apparently I’m not alone in this opinion, as this article on CNN.com can attest.  

But please also hear me when I say that this little rant isn't to say that women should or should not do everything they can to make it work. Breast milk and breastfeeding was really important to me, both because of its health benefits for Caleb and me (it lowers breast cancer risk, which runs in my family) and because of the bonding element in nursing, so I made it a priority. I absolutely believe in breastfeeding as the best option. But I also believe we can be doing a better job at supporting mothers in their efforts to make it work and in offering understanding and encouragement rather than shaming them if it doesn't.   

Admitting defeat 

Okay, time to climb down from that soapbox. After that home visit we tried a few more days to make the SSN work, but John was heading out of town again and it was clear that it wasn't working. So I decided to keep pumping and just try to nurse a couple times a day, mainly for the bonding aspect. It was just too much to continue trying to nurse for an hour at each feed, usually unsuccessfully, and then feed him a bottle, burp him, change him, eventually put him down for a nap and then pump for 20 minutes before he woke up again, when we would repeat the whole cycle.  

It killed me to give up on full-time nursing. I was completely devastated. And to be honest, I still get jealous when I see women breastfeeding their babies. But I had to make the best decision for my family. The unsustainable schedule I was keeping was bringing me very close to a complete nervous breakdown. Caleb needed breast milk, but he needed his mom more. So I decided that I would still pump as often as I could for as long as I could. 

HAHAHA! What drugs is this lady on? Because I'll have whatever she's having!

I ended up pumping for seven months. For the first five months I pumped for every single feed, usually about seven times a day. I'd pump for about 20 minutes, followed by 5-10 minutes of hand pumping. Since that whole process typically only produced four ounces of milk at most, I would feed him a bottle which was filled with part breast milk and part formula. Then I would play with him for awhile and once I put him down for a nap I would frantically try to get a pumping session in and pray that he stayed asleep long enough for me to do it. He was a baby who wanted to be held constantly so I couldn't even set him down for a few minutes if he was awake, which is why I had to wait for the naps. It made for a very stressful schedule and meant that I basically couldn't leave the house because I was tied to the pump.

Plus I couldn't take advantage of him being on the bottle, because even when John would take a night shift or a friend would come over during the day and help feed Caleb, I would still get up to pump. I never made enough to get a good backlog of milk going to freeze for later so we just kept the bottles stored in the fridge and tried to use a consistent milk-to-formula ratio each time to keep Caleb's tummy from getting distressed. 

Every time I mixed formula, I felt like I was preparing rat poison for my baby. I know that sounds crazy, but it's how I felt. I HATED using formula. In fact to this day I still feel guilty when I'm making Caleb's bottles, even though I know that it's fine. In direct contrast, I always felt so good when I could pour breast milk into his bottles. It truly was like liquid gold, and there were a couple times when I accidentally spilled some, and boy, let me tell you, sometimes you do cry over spilled milk.

My own personal stash of liquid gold

Even when we went out, I brought the pump with me and pumped in the car or in the Nordstrom women's lounge or wherever I could find a private spot. And I always felt "less than" when I saw a women next to me nursing her baby, and here I was hooked up to a mechanical pump while my husband fed a bottle to my baby. One time when Caleb was only a couple weeks old we were at Starbucks and a woman saw me holding Caleb and said, "So are you nursing?" She might have just as well asked, “Do you want some more salt in those wounds?” I mean seriously, who the heck asks that to a complete stranger anyway? I should have just said yes, but I was so shocked I told her the truth, that I was trying to make it work but that I was mainly pumping. She gave me a weird look and then walked away. 

Once Caleb hit three months I decided to try to start weaning off the pump because with him being awake more it was getting harder to get the pumping sessions in and I knew that the first three months were the most important in terms of a baby getting breast milk. By the grace of God, I had never missed a feed. But I was desperate to start dropping at least one or two pumping sessions, particularly the middle of the night and early morning ones because it sucked to get up and feed him and change his diaper then settle him back to bed and not be able to go back to bed myself until after I pumped while watching early morning infomercials, then pray that he slept a couple more hours until I got up and did the whole thing again.

I was more than ready to start dropping pumping sessions, and then I found out that there was a specific way I should wean so that I didn't get plugged ducts. I had to remove one pill at a time, every three days, before I could even start removing pumping sessions. At this point I was taking nine pills a day each of Fenugreek and Blessed Thistle and three pills a day of the domperidone, so it took quite a while. Then I started weaning off the pumping sessions, dropping one session a week. Once I got down to two sessions a day, I stayed there for about two months (pumping like 30 minutes because it took longer at that point to get the same amount of milk as before) because at that point I was like, heck, I might as well try to get him to six months. Then after he hit six months it took me a while longer to drop the remaining two because I was so careful about not getting mastitis.

So before I knew it, Caleb was seven months when I finally stopped pumping completely. I'm glad I did it slowly because I really think that was the best for both my body and his. Did it contribute to my postpartum depression to be pumping that much and be so stressed out and tied down by it? Probably. But when all is said and done, I don't regret it. As insane and difficult as it was to keep pumping, it was what I needed to do to feel okay about things.

While I’m slowly making my peace with the situation, I don’t know that I will ever fully get over it. And yet as Caleb gets older and we enter new and different stages in parenting, I’m already gaining a larger perspective on what it means to be a mother and to care for all aspects of a child. Sure, breast is best, but Caleb needs so much more from me than my boobs.  

Back when I was in the thick of the nursing nightmare, a friend of mine who also struggled with breastfeeding her children sent me this blog post she had read. I was still beyond solace at that point, but the writer's final words stuck with me. So to end this chapter, I will adapt her conclusion for my own.

It has taken me a while to grieve the loss of nursing my baby. But it was only when I started to let go of our nursing failure that I could finally let in the light shining from Caleb’s sweet face, from those gummy grins that told me we were going to be just fine.

My boobs (heck, most of my body) might not work right. But my heart does. And it will always belong to him and his Daddy.