EBF, TTFN to the stash, STFU, etc.

Sometimes breastfeeding feels like a cult, especially today.

Ian is eating food. Real food like sweet potatoes and oatmeal. He loves it. He grunts and twirls his hands and feet as I spoon the mush into his face and he wants more, more. I guess some kids take a few weeks to catch on to this solid sustenance thing, but Ian’s been waiting. For a month, he’s been watching us intently at dinner, following my fork as it goes from plate, to mouth. When? his big brown eyes asked me. When.

Now, baby. Now.

But back to the breastfeeding cult and how easy it is to get kicked out.

Until last week when those sweet potatoes rocked his world, Ian had been exclusively breastfed. I nursed him when we were together, pumped when we were apart and not a drop of anything else (well, minus the bathwater he sucks out of the washcloth, and lint from his toes) had passed his lips. I didn’t set out to be religious about it. Because I know that breastfeeding doesn’t work for everyone, so when I was pregnant and people asked if I planned to breastfeed (and yes, lots of people thought that was their business), I said I was going to try.

It turns out, we were very lucky and I have had an easy go of it. Breastfeeding has been, like most things in parenthood, beautiful and tough and tender. An ode to that is in order one day. But today, Ian is getting his first bottle of formula and I’m trying to figure out why that makes me feel like shit. I think the short answer is the internet. There is zeal, and then there are breastfeeding support groups on Facebook.

It’s not their fault, really. But I need to quit them.

Because when I was home on maternity leave, I built a small freezer stash of pumped milk, and I thought it was plenty. Maybe 10 bottles worth. The idea is you use it, pump while you’re away and replace it. How hard could it be? I didn’t understand why there were women on these groups who would strap themselves to that machine and pump out hundreds of ounces to stash while they’re on leave. Bless their hearts, I was not motivated to do that. I wanted to snuggle my baby and I hated the pump.

Now that pump and I are besties, but that’s out of necessity, not because we’re soul mates.

And so in the 3 months since I’ve been back to work, my stash has winnowed down to half a bottle. And this just isn’t sustainable. Sometimes I don’t pump enough at work to feed him the next day, or I go out and come back and can’t quite replace what he ate. Or I forget. It seems like failure, staring at that sad little skinny frozen bag, alone in our deep freeze with some forgotten casseroles and ice cream I can’t eat (more on that later). 

But I need to suck it up. Because my obsession with EBF, the quest to have an exclusively breastfed baby, is getting selfish. What if I get stuck at work or on the highway or at a bar having a very good glass of wine and the baby is hungry? We need to try out a hypoallergenic formula because Ian is also sensitive to cow’s milk. Which means I have stopped eating cheese. Oh, cheese. I longingly wait for your sweet return to my mouth (and my ass. I’ve lost 5 pounds, which I’m openly telling everyone is because of the cheese. I share this not as a weight loss tip, but as a warning that I will not look like this for long).

Ian loves food. But he still needs milk as his primary nutrition for awhile.

So this afternoon, Mike’s going to give Ian a bottle of some smelly, hypoallergenic formula. Please pray that he drinks it. I don’t want to be a martyr, and I never set out to be zealous about breastfeeding. They don’t talk about formula on these Facebook groups. They just show you their freezer stash, or the 25 ounces they pumped in one day.

This is not what matters.

Some of my sweetest, funniest friends have reminded me that they were formula fed, as if those things were linked. And I just did the math, and my boobs have easily fed my baby more than 1,500 times in his young life. Imagine that in a freezer. A few bottles of formula to replenish the stash and give everyone a break? Well. No one should feed bad about that.