Nothing to See Here…

No? Really? And we’ve known each other for how long?

Well, then, it’s time, isn’t it? I want to talk about breastfeeding. And I’ll probably be all serious-like, too (yawn). It’s a controversial one and I’m not just dipping the perverbial toe in the water - I’m jumping in from the high dive. It remains to be seen whether I do a belly-flop or not. Here goes….

I am a breastfeeding advocate.

No, no – I’m not one of THOSE breastfeeding advocates! They won’t even allow me in their club (not that I’d want to associate with them anyway).

I have breastfed all five of my daughters.

The first one only got breast milk for 6 lousy weeks. I had to return to work. It was 1983 and Medela hadn’t yet introduced the Pump in Style. Not that my boss at Payless Shoes would have allowed me to disappear every few hours to pump. Things like that just weren’t DONE back then. Breast pumps resembled bicycle horns and squeezing the horn bulb was meant to create enough suction to draw out the milk. Yeah. Right.

I fared better with my 2nd daughter, and even better again with my 3rd. At that point, I had entered into my corporate dronedom career and was working for a big corporation. One who knew nothing about breastfeeding support in the workplace. I pumped in the women’s bathroom in a toilet stall. There was no electrical outlet, so I used my little pump with batteries. My supply all but disappeared over the next two months. I made it just past the 4 month mark.

The story was similar with my 4th, only I had a better pump and thought it would be the key to success. It was an impressive double-electric that I paid nearly $300.00 for. But a non-supportive workplace was sabotaging me yet again. Ironically, my OLD company had created a pumping room after I lobbied for it. But I was no longer with that employer, I had moved on to a much smaller company doing a temporary contract position. I had no place to pump – even the bathroom wasn’t an option because there were no electrical outlets for me to use. I was a wandering pumper, making use of any empty office I could find. But at times, there wasn’t an empty office to be found. The issues and challenges defeated me and I stopped just after 6 months, my supply having dwindled to almost nothing

No where is the militant call to worship at the alter of the lactating breast more impassioned than on the Internet. The breast feeding zealots do not accept your excuses. To them, there is no reason for not feeding a child from the breast into his toddler years. They consider it his birthright. They tsk-tsk those who do not achieve this. They bask in their superiority in parenting. They are emboldened by the anonymity of the net and don’t hold back their hurtful, biting words.

I hate these people. I hate them with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns. I hate the way they told me “well, it’s obvious you just didn’t try hard enough.” I hate the way they assume that their rise to breastfeeding success means that anyone should be able to overcome any challenge or obstacle that comes up. You’d think those who struggled hardest would be the most compassionate, but no – they are often the least. I hate when they say “well, if you’re so defensive about it, then you must feel guilty over your choice to give up and switch to formula.”

I seem to have lost my sense of humor on this topic, haven’t I?

With my last child, I made it past the 1 year mark. It’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. My first challenge was when Raena was just a few weeks old. I had to have a cat scan with the radioactive contrast due to a medical problem. I was told not to breastfeed for a period of time, which would have been a major problem for my supply (plus a sudden switch in her diet wouldn’t have been all that good for her, either). I then was put on antibiotics for that infection and this resulted in a bad case of thrush. While I was fighting the thrush, I got plugged ducts in my left breast and even though I got them resolved fairly quickly, my supply on that side dried up almost completely. By this time, I had returned to work and the business travel started almost right away. Me, in New York, with my pump and my frozen ice packs and my insulated bag. I can remember being in a cab and calling my OB/GYN almost crying to beg him to give me something to get rid of the thrush. I wondered what the cabbie was thinking as he overheard all of that.

Over the coming months, I would persevere. I was taking Fenugreek and brewer’s yeast and Domperidone (obtained illegally from a Canadian pharmacy online that didn’t require a prescription). I took these drugs and supplements for months to keep my supply going. I pumped 3 times a day at the office and when I was traveling, I would pump in airplanes and airports and in hotels and office buildings. I would store and carry the little bags of milk through security and answer their dumb questions about it. Each time I would come home to a diminished supply and work to get my one working breast back to full production. My daughter was sustained by the right breast alone (not that there is any such thing as a WRONG breast, but you know what I mean – the left one was a dud).

As the one year mark approached, I reduced my pumping sessions to 2 times a day and then eventually to 1 time a day. And as I got close to her birthday, I stopped taking the drugs. Slowly, reducing the dose and then eliminating it altogether. It felt like I was taking the training wheels off – I wondered if I’d be able to ride without them. I hoped I could. What I would have loved to do is continue the morning/evening/night nursing while no longer pumping supplements and drugs in and no longer pumping milk out.

It ends up I couldn’t pull that plan off. My supply dropped and the baby refused to nurse. She’d latch on for a minute or two, but when it wasn’t coming at a quick enough clip, she checked out. It’s the catch 22 of a nursing relationship, eh? I needed her to nurse to stimulate my supply and she needed the supply to stay interested in nursing. As she was taking less and less from my breast, I felt compelled to increase her other milk intake via sippy cups. And, of course, the more she got from the sippy the less she needed from me.

So it was a couple of weeks after her first birthday that we nursed for the last time. I’d like to say it was this sweet, poignant mother-baby moment, her all warm and cuddly in my arms, seeking the comfort only a mother could provide. But to be honest, we weren’t having many of those by then. She would come up, latch for 30 seconds, lose interest, and then go to hit the dog or dump out the bucket of blocks. She just wasn’t interested in ME anymore, at least from a sustenance and comfort-at-the-breast standpoint.

But, dammit, I made it past a year. I DID that. In spite of all the challenges. And I’m fucking proud of having done it, too.

And if you’re one of those nipple Nazis who berates women for not having achieved to some standard you have set for yourself? I have a question for you — Can I buy you a “U”????

PS: if you’re not one of these women I describe, then this is obviously not about you.

PSS: if this IS about you and you want to be a breastfeeding advocate, I think you’d do better to be compassionate and understanding and get off your fucking high horse.