Breastfeeding

First off, I’d just like to say that breastfeeding feels good.  Secondly, let’s note that I’m writing this in October, which means that Milo’s been home for more than five months and we’ve had ample time to learn how to do it.   The beginning was actually pretty awful.

As you know by now, Milo was born more than two months early.  We weren’t expecting to have a preemie, so at the seven-month point, breastfeeding was something I was ‘going to do, of course,’ but I hadn’t really given much thought to the actual act of breastfeeding.

When Milo was born, he was too small to nurse, so I immediately started using a breast pump.  It was annoying and made me feel like a cow, but I was very at ease pumping.  I still didn’t really give much thought to the actual act –baby-puts-mouth-on-breast-and-sucks- of breastfeeding.

Since Milo was so small, there was this feeling that he would never be big enough to nurse, never be big enough to come home, never be big enough to do anything except lay in an isolette.  When one of the nurses told me (about six weeks after his birth) that Milo was coming along so well and that we should be able to start nursing within the next day or two, I really panicked.  It dawned on me that I was totally UN-comfortable with the idea of breastfeeding.

Our whole lives, women are taught that our breasts are sexual.  During adolescence, the first thing boys noticed were breasts.  They snapped our bras, and ‘who had the biggest ones’ were major topics of conversation.  Later, ‘Making out’ with boys rarely only involved the lips.  Now, I can’t speak for all of womankind here, but I-for-one totally bought into the whole frat boy based ideal of feminine beauty.  Actually, pretty much everything I did from age twelve to twenty-two was designed to get men’s attention, but that’s a different story all together – one that’s both embarrassing and poignantly pathetic.  Anyway, from my experience, breasts were sexual.  My breasts were sexual.  And the act of breastfeeding, when I got right down to it, seemed so inappropriate that it actually seemed abusive.

In a panicked discussion with Curtis, I tried to explain my feelings, and in an attempt to make him understand, I suggested the idea of ‘penis feeding.’  He got such a horrified look on his face, that I knew that A) I’d crossed over the line of decency, and B) he got the message.   I was also terrified that breastfeeding might feel sexual to me.  Now, Curtis is a good, patient man, and he sat there and listened to me go on, and he did his best to make me understand that I needed to get past these weird feelings and that there wouldn’t be anything criminal even if breastfeeding did feel sexy.  I needn’t have worried. 

I was terrified to breastfeed the baby, but the day came when he was big enough to try, and it would have been strange if I had made an excuse.  So we tried.  We tried every day that Milo was in the NICU.  And it worked once.  Every other time, Milo fell asleep, or cried, or couldn’t stay latched on, or had a bradycardia (heart slows way down), or whatever else.  And at the end of every single breastfeeding session (even the one that went well), Milo enjoyed a full bottle.  I was crushed.  I felt totally inadequate and so exposed (there were only curtains separating me from everyone else in the NICU – they couldn’t see us struggle, but they heard every little sound, from him crying to me crying).  I kept trying to get it right, and every nurse decided it was her duty to bring in a lactation consultant.  I bet I talked to 20 different ‘experts’ with 20 different ‘expert opinions.’  They had me holding him in all these different ways and holding my breasts in different ways and tickling his cheeks, his feet, undressing him to keep him awake, singing to him to calm him down, you name it.  One nurse, thinking that my ‘let down’ was the problem, brought out a little dropper filled with my milk.  She stood behind me and dripped milk down over my breast and into his mouth.  Anyone who doesn’t believe that babies can see well need only have watched my son move his head away from my breast, look directly at the dropper, and open his mouth.  He saw the dropper.  And he understood that he could eat from the dropper.  There were a few times when I would have done anything to escape from all of them.  Milo included.

When I think back, it’s pretty clear that the main reason that poor child couldn’t breastfeed is because his whole body wasn’t as big as even one of my breasts.  I have quite large breasts.  When we started, he weighed about four pounds.  His latch was a problem because his mouth wasn’t big enough to take the nipple in and his suck wasn’t strong enough to bring any milk down.   But I didn’t understand that.  And I think that maybe the nurses didn’t say anything because they didn’t want to hurt my already-raw feelings by bringing up my weight.  It was a disaster.  The one ray of hope was that the nurses insisted that everything would be different when Milo came home.  They were right.

When Milo came home, it took a while for us to find the most comfortable spot in the house to nurse.  We tried the couch, the bed, the rocker, and almost every different pillow with each of them.  It took a few days, maybe even a week, but I finally settled on the softest pillow in the recliner chair with a little stool for my feet. 

Nursing him at home was better than nursing him at the NICU.  I wasn’t nearly as self-conscious at home, I was in a more comfortable chair, and my main goal at home was ‘get him to eat’ and not ‘keep him from crying.’  At the NICU, when he cried, invariably, a well-meaning nurse would come running and bring along another lactation consultant.  It got so, as long as he was quiet, I didn’t really care what he was doing. 

Also, at home, I didn’t bother with that stupid ‘ten minutes on each side’ crap.  I’d have loved it if Milo only nursed that long.  But the fact is, he never did, and he still usually doesn’t.  I didn’t care if Milo wanted to nurse for hours at a time.  Together, we dozed and nursed pretty much all day every day.  It’s how we learned how to do it.  He gained enough weight to please his pediatrician, and eventually, we found a rhythm for feeding. 

My nipples never bled like some women’s, but they always hurt, and I often got hard, painful lumps under the skin from Milo not drinking enough.  Curtis gave Milo a bottle of milk every morning before work and let me get a few hours of sleep.  Milo always drank more from a bottle than he ever did from me.  He drank quickly from a bottle.  With me, he takes his time, and I’m quite certain that he uses the breast much more for comfort than for nourishment.

Milo had been home for about four weeks, and Curtis was growing accustomed to my Friday-fall-aparts.  I was okay all week, until Friday, when the stress (and lack of sleep) of the week finally got to me, and without fail, Curtis would walk in from work, and I would dissolve in tears.  Breastfeeding was going well, but it was a constant, no breaks kind of job (I’ll talk about how little Milo sleeps in other sections), and I remember telling Curtis during one of my crying jags that every negative feeling I had regarding motherhood was centered around breastfeeding.   It felt so good to say it.  And I suppose, what I was hoping he would say was “Well, if you hate it so much, why don’t you quit?”  I really wanted someone to tell me that it was okay.  That I had tried and it didn’t work, so go ahead and put your shirt back on.  But, instead, Curtis said, very insistently, that it was time for me to get some support.  He told me to call La Leche League, talk to someone, find a meeting, and go. 

I couldn’t go to a meeting because Milo wasn’t big enough to go in public or have a sitter, but instead, I went online and found their website.  There was TONS of information, and there were so many women whose babies nursed constantly!  It didn’t make constant nursing any easier, but I was so comforted knowing that I wasn’t the only one.  And the mothers who posted were often very confident that constant nursing was fine.  On the LLL site, I learned that I wasn’t failing at breastfeeding.  I learned that my baby just did things a little differently than most other babies.  I also went to the bookstore and found a book called The Reality of Breastfeeding.  I’ve mentioned this book in other sections, but I just can’t stress enough how much this book helped me.  The book is broken into three sections:  Part 1.  Latching On: Narratives about Early Nursing Experiences, Part 2.  Hanging On: Narratives about Special Problems and Situations (I was particularly helped by “Nursing (and Nursing and Nursing) a High-Need Baby,” By L. Alison Wisner), and Part 3.  Moving On: Family, Work, and Political Issues.  This book has about 50 different essays, all by different women with a different breastfeeding experience to share.  It was wonderful to read these essays and relate to so many of them.

After those first four or five weeks, everything changed.  For one thing, Milo grew.  We were able to get rid of the “football hold,” and move to the cradle hold, which felt more comfortable for us both.  Latching on was no problem, and I realized that I really enjoyed our days in the rocker.  The rocker has a comforting, cricket-like squeak, and we moved the furniture around so that the rocker is next to the living room window, where I could daydream and watch the cars go by.  I was gaining confidence.

But then after six weeks, something else changed:  Milo could go in public.  Which meant that I had to decide my feelings about feeding him in public and in front of family members.  My husband, mother and mother-in-law had all seen me feed him, and after the initial weirdness of it, it seemed perfectly normal taking out a boob to feed the baby with.  I’ve mentioned before that I have ridiculously large breasts, and a sadly small baby, so discretion simply didn’t happen for a while (– like, we’re just starting to learn it now, and the poor boy is almost eight months old).  I unbuttoned my shirt, exposed my breast, held my breast in one hand and helped the baby on with the other.  There was no other option.  So anyway, when I took Milo places where there were men around, nursing became so stressful for me, because no matter how badly I wanted to be discreet, I wasn’t, and no matter how badly I wanted to feel normal and unashamed, I didn’t.  I was horribly embarrassed and went crying again to my poor husband.  Who, again, was the rational thinker.  He suggested that when I’m going to be around people that I don’t feel comfortable exposing myself to, that I should have a bottle with me.  It can even be a bottle of formula.  We all know that Milo is a breast-fed baby, but when the environment isn’t good for nursing a baby (or when Mom is just plain uncomfortable with the idea – let’s face it, we’ve all got a body issue or two), then go ahead and give that baby a bottle.  He’s happy and Mom’s happy. 

I think a definite deterrent to breastfeeding is this idea that you have to do it often and proudly in public.  There are still a few of us sad, repressed (feminist!) girls out here who don’t want to be leading the march for breast feeder’s rights.  You know what?  We’ll leave that to the women who have breasts that the public wants to get a look at.  We’ll just quietly feed our babies in the shadows of our living rooms because, regardless of the attractiveness of our breasts, or how body conscious we are, we still make the best food in the world for our babies.  It would be a horrible shame if women decided not to breastfeed their babies because they didn’t want to do it in front of other people, but felt pressured to do it anyway, because of how natural everybody says it is.

Anyway, back to my experience:  Present day musings about breastfeeding:  Breastfeeding feels good.  I don’t think of sex or feel sexy when I nurse the baby, but I am always conscious of how good it feels.  It’s kind of like getting a back rub – It always feels good, but it only feels sexy when you’re already attracted to the person doing the rubbing. 

Since Milo has started solids, he’s become a lot better about having actual feedings that are finished in a half hour or so.  But in the evenings, we always dedicate an hour or two to a feeding, and that’s just the way it is.  We still have the same set up for nursing: the recliner is next to the window, I put the softest pillow in my lap, lay Milo on it, put my feet on our little stool, and nurse away.  Milo’s big enough now to lay in bed with me and nurse, and that feels wonderful, and allows for a few extra hours of sleep for us both in the mornings – something we both very much need.  The problem is that now it’s almost impossible to get him to sleep in his crib at nighttime, and I’m in the process of reading some sleep books to see what to do.  I have a sad feeling that if I don’t want to be a family-bedder all of the time, I can’t be one any of the time. 

I have no idea how long Milo and I will nurse.  Definitely through the New Year.  Just incase Y2K is for real; I want to be sure that I can safely feed my baby!  After that, we’ll see how teething goes, and if that’s no problem, then I see no reason to stop nursing until he’s ready to stop.  It always amazes me, when I think back to the first weeks of nursing, how much I hated it.  And then to see me now, how much I love it.

I think breastfeeding is a skill.  You learn it.  No matter what the propagandists say, it only comes easily for a few lucky people.  The rest of us have to grit our teeth, go through some really tough and often heartbreaking times, and learn the skill.  But it’s such a nice skill.  The intimacy and love that passes between Milo and me during nursing fills us both with peace and sleepy, happy fulfillment.  All breastfeeding mothers should be envied.  I know I’ll ache for this feeling long after Milo stops needing me this way.  And I bet I’ll cry every time he cringes at the thought of drinking from his Mama.

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Last updated 10/6/99