One of the first challenges I faced as a new mother was breastfeeding. Of course I knew it would be painful, I'd read "What to Expect When you are Expecting" and various other books, but I wasn't prepared for how painful, particularly the first several weeks. Every time the baby latches on you feel like you want to scream from pain, I had to take deep calming breathes just to endure (thank goodness for the Lamaze classes that never worked for me). I didn't know that part of your nipple could literally be sucked off and bleed. I saw a lactation consultant in the hospital who helped, a little, but between Adley having a hard time latching on, my low first-time-mother milk supply, and my own inexperience, it was rough.
A week after Adley was born we arrived in beautiful South Pasadena, I was painfully trying to nurse Adley every three hours only to have him start crying and screaming after about 5 minutes. Of course I had read all the information about how "breast is best" and had been indoctrinated into the idea that formula was some kind of poison wussy moms feed their babies, so "e.b.f." or exclusively breast-feeding was what I was determined to do. Three days after arriving in our beautiful new city, dad left for work and I was alone with the baby. He cried ALL DAY LONG! I couldn't console him, I walked with him in the Bjorn, bounced, tried feeding him, only to have him start screaming after about 5 minutes, finally, after hours of work he would nod off for a moment only to wake suddenly if I tried to put him down or lay down beside him. The same thing continued throughout the night. I was a wreck, it went on for a week or two and I thought I was living in hell. Because your dad had started a new job, we had to wait until our new insurance kicked in order to see the pediatrician, in the interim, I googled everything I could to try and figure out what was wrong with me and my kid. After a week or so, I called Gram in a panic, crying I'm sure, telling her that I was suppose to be finishing my Master's thesis and I couldn't even make it to the bathroom, let alone think! I begged her to drive down from the Bay area and help me out, she agreed, because your Gram, as you know, is a Saint!
In the bleary days before she arrived, I was blessed with the tender mercy of another divine intervention. Aunt Pargie's sister Sarah, who lived in the same town, had kindly arranged for people from church to bring us meals for a couple of weeks because of the new baby. On one particularly harrowing day, after a couple of sleepless, miserable weeks, a bubbly, friendly, lady named Rachel showed up at the door with dinner. After apologizing for some mishap in the cooking of the meal she must have noticed my fake smile and felt impressed to ask how things were going. Her voice was filled with pure openness and understanding, and I completely melted my facade and started crying, "He won't sleep.....At ALL!!" I was in tears and only semi-cared whether or not she thought I was a pyscho or not. She immediately came in and told me her oldest daughter had been "colicky" and she knew just what to do. (I didn't realize there was a name for it). She told me to go get the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child" by Marc Weissbluth, read it and follow it. After another couple of tips I'm sure I later mastered, but have forgotten since, I thanked her profusely, and sent her off. What a tender mercy and reminder that God was aware of me, all alone in a new town, with a screaming baby, and now I had the hope that this problem could be solved! As soon as your dad got home from work we headed to Barnes and Noble and bought the book, I read furiously while he manned the baby. It gave us hope and would shape our lives as parents.
The next week we were finally able to go to the doctor. Adley was still crying incessantly (we learned from Dr. Weissbluth that colic doesn't start to improve until about 6-7 weeks, so we were feeling a little better having the hope of a timeline), but with our new knowledge we weren't as concerned about what was ailing him. That all changed with his one month check-up. We learned that he had barely regained his birthweight and the pediatrician was concerned I probably had a very low milk supply and needed to start supplementing immediately. I was aghast. I felt terrible, I had been starving my child! I felt inadequate and guilty. I also felt very apprehensive about giving him formula (the La Leche League and "breast is best" campaign were very dogmatic and forceful in California and the country as a whole at this time. As everything does, the pendulum has started to swing back, and I'm sure it will go the other way before it comes back again). My doctor, a women, was great, she told me the entire Baby Boomer generation barely had any breast milk and they turned out ok, and that she hadn't had a drop and has done pretty well for herself. I knew rationally she was right. But emotionally it was tough. As I analyzed my feelings in the coming months and years, I honestly got really angry about it. I don't like extremes by nature, and there is no place for it in motherhood, particularly the parenting community. I resented the fact that I was feeling guilty for feeding my child food that had been tested, and retested and proven to be healthy food for babies.
For the next 5 months I would feed Adley on each side until he started screaming, then give him a bottle of formula. I would never do it in public, there was too much screaming and moving around, drama, then mixing the bottle, etc. I also felt very self-conscious in the early months to give him a bottle in public, like people were looking at me and wondering why I wasn't "e.b.f." I shouldn't have cared, but I did, part of the inexperience of being a first time mom, you don't have wisdom of being convicted enough in your parenting practices to not care what others think yet. It was exhausting, but he was my only kid, and we weren't getting out much anyway.
Adley thrived with the supplementing. By his 3 month check-up he was up to the 90th+ percentile for height and weight where he stayed until around age 4 when he started to thin out. Around 6 months when I was taking about 20 minutes to breastfeed and then giving him a 6 ounce bottle I decided it was time to quit, he was barely getting anything anyway and the most crucial period was up. When you were born I was very paranoid that the same thing would happen to you, we introduced a bottle early, which turned into 1/day, and you easily adapted into both breastfeeding and having your bottle a day, which gave me more sleep in the first few months when dad gave it to you at night, and transitioned into allowed us to be more on the go when you were sleeping through the night and I could use that bottle during the day when we were out. It was a good balance, you were the cutest fattest baby ever and I was so relieved.
Of course, than baby #3 came along and couldn't figure out how to latch. After having no luck after several requests in the hospital for a lactation consultant's help, we were discharged and I went home to figure it out. With your third child everyone expects you to have it all figured out and you have no extra time at all to do so. I ended up sending dad out to buy a nice breast pump in hopes of getting my milk supply up (he was screaming again after every latch attempt, and then continuing to scream most of the night). By the end of the first month or 6 weeks with no latching luck, I ended up just pumping and feeding him the bottle (you and Adley loved helping with this as well). It turned out that my milk supply was fine, Sam just wasn't patient enough to figure out the latch (some character traits never change :). This lasted three months until I was completely running ragged trying to pump and feed around the clock, we then switched to straight formula. Receiving the least amount of breast milk of all you kids, Sam was the most advanced by age two as far as verbal/gross motor skills, knew all letters and sounds, etc. A coincidence I'm sure, but just to put your mind at ease that if breastfeeding doesn't work, your kids will be just fine and thrive with formula.
Motherhood and parenting is all about balance, when you get out of whack, or you find yourself obsessing about a particular thing, take a step back and reevaluate. For the most part, there isn't any one thing that is worth wrecking your mental and emotional state over.
A week after Adley was born we arrived in beautiful South Pasadena, I was painfully trying to nurse Adley every three hours only to have him start crying and screaming after about 5 minutes. Of course I had read all the information about how "breast is best" and had been indoctrinated into the idea that formula was some kind of poison wussy moms feed their babies, so "e.b.f." or exclusively breast-feeding was what I was determined to do. Three days after arriving in our beautiful new city, dad left for work and I was alone with the baby. He cried ALL DAY LONG! I couldn't console him, I walked with him in the Bjorn, bounced, tried feeding him, only to have him start screaming after about 5 minutes, finally, after hours of work he would nod off for a moment only to wake suddenly if I tried to put him down or lay down beside him. The same thing continued throughout the night. I was a wreck, it went on for a week or two and I thought I was living in hell. Because your dad had started a new job, we had to wait until our new insurance kicked in order to see the pediatrician, in the interim, I googled everything I could to try and figure out what was wrong with me and my kid. After a week or so, I called Gram in a panic, crying I'm sure, telling her that I was suppose to be finishing my Master's thesis and I couldn't even make it to the bathroom, let alone think! I begged her to drive down from the Bay area and help me out, she agreed, because your Gram, as you know, is a Saint!
In the bleary days before she arrived, I was blessed with the tender mercy of another divine intervention. Aunt Pargie's sister Sarah, who lived in the same town, had kindly arranged for people from church to bring us meals for a couple of weeks because of the new baby. On one particularly harrowing day, after a couple of sleepless, miserable weeks, a bubbly, friendly, lady named Rachel showed up at the door with dinner. After apologizing for some mishap in the cooking of the meal she must have noticed my fake smile and felt impressed to ask how things were going. Her voice was filled with pure openness and understanding, and I completely melted my facade and started crying, "He won't sleep.....At ALL!!" I was in tears and only semi-cared whether or not she thought I was a pyscho or not. She immediately came in and told me her oldest daughter had been "colicky" and she knew just what to do. (I didn't realize there was a name for it). She told me to go get the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child" by Marc Weissbluth, read it and follow it. After another couple of tips I'm sure I later mastered, but have forgotten since, I thanked her profusely, and sent her off. What a tender mercy and reminder that God was aware of me, all alone in a new town, with a screaming baby, and now I had the hope that this problem could be solved! As soon as your dad got home from work we headed to Barnes and Noble and bought the book, I read furiously while he manned the baby. It gave us hope and would shape our lives as parents.
The next week we were finally able to go to the doctor. Adley was still crying incessantly (we learned from Dr. Weissbluth that colic doesn't start to improve until about 6-7 weeks, so we were feeling a little better having the hope of a timeline), but with our new knowledge we weren't as concerned about what was ailing him. That all changed with his one month check-up. We learned that he had barely regained his birthweight and the pediatrician was concerned I probably had a very low milk supply and needed to start supplementing immediately. I was aghast. I felt terrible, I had been starving my child! I felt inadequate and guilty. I also felt very apprehensive about giving him formula (the La Leche League and "breast is best" campaign were very dogmatic and forceful in California and the country as a whole at this time. As everything does, the pendulum has started to swing back, and I'm sure it will go the other way before it comes back again). My doctor, a women, was great, she told me the entire Baby Boomer generation barely had any breast milk and they turned out ok, and that she hadn't had a drop and has done pretty well for herself. I knew rationally she was right. But emotionally it was tough. As I analyzed my feelings in the coming months and years, I honestly got really angry about it. I don't like extremes by nature, and there is no place for it in motherhood, particularly the parenting community. I resented the fact that I was feeling guilty for feeding my child food that had been tested, and retested and proven to be healthy food for babies.
For the next 5 months I would feed Adley on each side until he started screaming, then give him a bottle of formula. I would never do it in public, there was too much screaming and moving around, drama, then mixing the bottle, etc. I also felt very self-conscious in the early months to give him a bottle in public, like people were looking at me and wondering why I wasn't "e.b.f." I shouldn't have cared, but I did, part of the inexperience of being a first time mom, you don't have wisdom of being convicted enough in your parenting practices to not care what others think yet. It was exhausting, but he was my only kid, and we weren't getting out much anyway.
Adley thrived with the supplementing. By his 3 month check-up he was up to the 90th+ percentile for height and weight where he stayed until around age 4 when he started to thin out. Around 6 months when I was taking about 20 minutes to breastfeed and then giving him a 6 ounce bottle I decided it was time to quit, he was barely getting anything anyway and the most crucial period was up. When you were born I was very paranoid that the same thing would happen to you, we introduced a bottle early, which turned into 1/day, and you easily adapted into both breastfeeding and having your bottle a day, which gave me more sleep in the first few months when dad gave it to you at night, and transitioned into allowed us to be more on the go when you were sleeping through the night and I could use that bottle during the day when we were out. It was a good balance, you were the cutest fattest baby ever and I was so relieved.
Of course, than baby #3 came along and couldn't figure out how to latch. After having no luck after several requests in the hospital for a lactation consultant's help, we were discharged and I went home to figure it out. With your third child everyone expects you to have it all figured out and you have no extra time at all to do so. I ended up sending dad out to buy a nice breast pump in hopes of getting my milk supply up (he was screaming again after every latch attempt, and then continuing to scream most of the night). By the end of the first month or 6 weeks with no latching luck, I ended up just pumping and feeding him the bottle (you and Adley loved helping with this as well). It turned out that my milk supply was fine, Sam just wasn't patient enough to figure out the latch (some character traits never change :). This lasted three months until I was completely running ragged trying to pump and feed around the clock, we then switched to straight formula. Receiving the least amount of breast milk of all you kids, Sam was the most advanced by age two as far as verbal/gross motor skills, knew all letters and sounds, etc. A coincidence I'm sure, but just to put your mind at ease that if breastfeeding doesn't work, your kids will be just fine and thrive with formula.
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| you are 7 months old |
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