Breast is best!
I talked to a lot of women about breastfeeding while I was pregnant, and the one thing that really stuck was the woman who decided to forego it. Why? I just wanted my body back. That phrase stuck in my head and wouldn't let go.
Last February, my inner ear condition started acting up, lashing out with random vertigo attacks, one of which was so bad, Logan had to help me up from a puddle of my own vomit and urine onto an ambulance stretcher. ("Could you be pregnant?" the ENTs kept asking, as if this was standard behavior for pregnant women, and I made a mental note to never let that happen to me.) After my ER stay, I continued to have problems with the condition, which can only be managed by balancing your fluid levels. For me, this meant a water pill, a potassium supplement, and a diet so low in sodium things like soy sauce and olives were off the table forever. It's a chronic illness with fun symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, and increased headaches, so in hindsight it makes perfect sense that I didn't realize I was pregnant until my uterus was the size of a cantaloupe.
I thought about breastfeeding a lot while I was pregnant, always with a growing level of dread. After finding a website that told you all the great things you were doing by breastfeeding week by week, I told myself I would do it while I was home on maternity leave, then stop. Six weeks was enough to ease his transition through the most vulnerable part of his infancy. But then I started reading up on the science of breastfeeding, and I had questions. A lot of them. Like, for example, why was six weeks the most vulnerable stage of infancy? Vulnerable how? What metric are we using here? Are we interviewing the infants? Where's the hard data?
I gave birth in a baby-friendly hospital, which I loved because the baby was with us from the moment he was born until the moment we left. But it also meant that the Ten Commandments of Breastfeeding were posted everywhere. When I went to the bathroom, I sat down next to a photocopy of them taped to the cold tile wall. When I signed consent forms for my insurance, there they were, poster-sized and framed in the business office.
When I asked at the hospital's birth class if there was formula available should I choose not to breastfeed, the nurse leading the class looked taken aback and told me, in front of a room of fifteen couples, that she couldn't answer that and would have to speak with me privately afterwards.
The nurse who put in my IV before my c-section asked how I planned to feed my baby. Once she heard the word formula, she offered up a long-winded speech, something along the lines of, "Well, I'm a breastfeeding Nazi. I work all day with mothers who want to breastfeed but have problems and struggles. I'll stay after my shift to help them. I'll do anything for them. So thank you for being honest with me and not wasting my time."
One of the hospital's lactation consultants visited me in the recovery room after my c-section. She asked if I was breastfeeding, and when I said no, still numb from my bra line to my toes, she asked why. Logan, who always has my back, said that I was at very high risk for postpartum depression and he wanted me to be healthy. I told her about the inner ear condition, that I was concerned about what might happen with my fluid balance. Thirty minutes earlier, three medical professionals had pressed down on my abdomen while one pulled a baby out of a six-inch incision. I was tired. I didn't so much take a stand as lay in the road, hoping she wouldn't run me over. Mercifully, she handed me a brochure on lactation suppression—clearly meant for bereaved mothers, with its butterfly border and call to give the gift of milk to a local milk bank—and left me alone.
It was half an hour before they brought us a bottle, during which time the baby tried to latch onto me. I was so scared, so tired, and felt so guilty that I almost gave in. "This is absolutely a stalling tactic," Logan said, before I said one word. Finally, a bottle arrived. The baby took it and started sucking hungrily. Once we were in our room, they brought us as many as he needed.
Three days later, as they wheeled me out, clutching the baby in my arms, thinking they were going way too fast and I was definitely going to drop him, I caught a glimpse of where they stored it all, right down the hall from the recovery rooms, rows and rows of bottles, from floor to ceiling, shining like jewels under the cabinet's fluorescent light.
Recommended Reading:
Everybody Calm Down About Breastfeeding
Best Is Best
New Study Suggests Pregnant Woman Silently Yearns for Your Opinion