Nourishing Wounds: My 5 month Journey with Breastfeeding (and Continued Recovery)

I’d contemplated writing about breastfeeding, but like many of my prompts – I didn’t want to be seen as another mom complaining – or worse, a martyr.

But my friend Aja, someone I’ve known since elementary school, told me I should write about it.

I was telling her in an Instagram DM randomly one day about how I couldn’t eat certain foods because it stimulated production and my left boob stopped producing so I looked like a boob job gone wrong.

“Girl, people need to know this shit. The real shit!” So if you hate this post, you can take it up with her.

To Breastfeed or Not to Breastfeed – That is the (#1) Question

Announcing you’re pregnant brings up a lot of questions and usually the first one is “Are you going to breastfeed?” My answer was ‘yes, I’m planning to but if it doesn’t work out, I’m not going to stress about it’.

I’d heard many women struggle to produce or their baby struggles to latch. My targeted Pinterest feed was full of lactation stimulants and 10 Things You MUST Eat in Order to Produce Enough Milk. In my mind, the only reasons I wouldn’t be successful at breastfeeding was if:

I didn’t produce enough milk or
if my baby didn’t latch.

I’d stocked up on nursing bras, nursing tank tops, and nipple cream. I registered for bottles because people said I should, even though I didn’t actually know what the bottles would be for if I was breastfeeding.

A couple girlfriends gave me hand-me-down pumping parts and milk containers. One friend even gave me her old pump.

Everything looked like it belonged in a middle school science experiment – flanges (funnel-shaped pieces of plastic), scored beakers with mL measurements, tubing, and freezer bags. I had no idea what any of it was for but they promised “oh, you’ll figure it out quickly.” I said thanks for the stuff and gently placed everything in a corner of the nursery closet.

155/100 is my blood pressure the night I was induced - 155/100 is a very elevated blood pressure (120/80 is considered ‘normal’)

Preterm vs Premature

My blood pressure rose at 32 weeks of pregnancy and the decision was made to induce me at 37 weeks to reduce my risk of complications. 37 weeks is considered full-term so she wouldn’t be a preemie and by all accounts shouldn’t have any issues being born 21 days early.

Our plan was go to the hospital on a Thursday night and have a baby sometime Friday afternoon. But my blood pressure kept rising, so I was admitted a few days earlier and our daughter was born in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. At 36 weeks and 6 days. One day shy of being full-term.

These babies aren’t considered premature, they’re called preterm.

Great, we had an adorable, tiny, preterm baby.

She weighed 5 pounds and 11 ounces when she was born. After 24 hours she’d dropped to an even 5 pounds (perfectly normal for a baby to lose the water weight from living in an aquarium for 9 months).

She was born so quickly our doula didn’t have time to get to the hospital for our birth, but she helped me with that very first latch attempt. Here I was with nearly DDD breasts feeling completely foreign to me, and a newborn on my chest – definitely foreign to me.

She gently took my breast and guided a brand new Aspen to latch. And then I felt a pinch.

“Oh my GOD that hurts!” I whined and silently wished she would pull her away from me. It felt like I’d been bitten by a sleepy snapping turtle.

After a few seconds, Roxy released my breast and Aspen fell away (and fell asleep). Roxy was concerned it felt like a pinch and not just pressure. But she was happy I was willing to try and I was happy she was there.

After that, Aspen went to have a variety of tests in the bassinet next to me – oxygen, APGAR, vitamin K shot and antibiotic ointment placed around her eyelids. We were eventually transported to the Mother/Baby floor upstairs after she was cleaned off and I was stitched up.

My epidural was still wearing off so I required quite a bit of help to the wheelchair, bathroom, and eventually hospital bed.

Sleepy baby

We all slept for a little while (it was around 5AM at this point) and when I woke up we were greeted by our dayshift nurse who asked if I wanted help trying to feed Aspen. I said “sure” and we did our best to position her on my breast but as soon as she got anywhere near me she instantly fell asleep...

I was given IV magnesium for 11 hours prior to her birth and therefore she also had magnesium flowing through her veins. Mag Babies are what the nurse and pediatrician called them (I never imagined all the categories newborns could be put it).

When you have a Mag Baby, they are usually very sleepy since magnesium makes you drowsy. I mostly felt hungover, but I weighed 220 pounds at the time. She weighed less than 6.

Additionally, there is a phenomenon of when a newborn smells their mother – who’s been their home and refuge for 9 months – they feel comforted and often pass the hell out. So combining my Mag Baby with the familiarity of my body resulted in a mostly hibernating Aspen for the first 24 hours.

A Watched Pot (or Boob)

My milk hadn’t come in yet so even if she’d been awake to latch, there was little to be had. The nurse taught me about manual expression – where you massage your breasts with your hands in a motion to mimic the milk ‘let down’. This made my hands tired and didn’t really do much at first.

I wasn’t super concerned because the nurse and OB said it can take a few days for my milk to come in. But then Aspen’s blood sugar started to drop (something that can happen with preterm babies). The pediatrician was watching this closely and every 6 hours they would prick her poor little heel to check her blood sugar. It was approaching a level where they felt something needed to happen – either breastfeed, thaw donor milk, or give her formula.

I didn’t want to try the second two options just yet, so I continued to do hand massage and eat the lactation cookies my friend brought me.

Finally a few drops came out. And by drops, I mean a SINGLE DROP. My nurse took the black plastic spoon from my untouched hospital lunch tray like a trained marksman and let the singular drop of colostrum (hella nutrient dense initial form of breastmilk) fall into the spoon. She then carefully placed the spoon on Aspen’s lips, letting gravity do the work of drawing the drop into her mouth.

“Oh, you don’t need much! This one drop will make a difference!” I thought yeah, right. There’s no way.

But it did work. Her blood sugar started going up and staying up. She probably consumed 5 drops in her first 24 hours. All from disposable hospital meal tray spoons.

Cattle Call

The next day we tried breastfeeding again. She kept pinching down and not making much progress. It was at this time the nurse brought up pumping. Remember the bag of science experiment equipment? Guess we’re going to learn how to use them now.

She brought in a pump as well as packages with sterile bottles, flanges, and tubing. She showed me how the tubing worked and how the flange fits on the tubing and bottles. There were a few internal pieces as well including a valve for suction. She helped me turn it on and start it. And by help, I mean she did everything including putting the flange up to my breast while I watched in straight up confusion.

Talk about a weird sensation. I felt like a cow being milked in this rhythmic pulsing sound and feel. Nothing came out after ten minutes. So we stopped. My nipple looked like it had been sucked through a tube, because I guess it had been...but it was a weird look nonetheless. Pink, purple, and giant.

I tried again an hour later – this time a few drops splashed through the flange and into the bottle.

Each time a few more drops would come out to the point where I was pumping 10ml every couple of hours. For reference – there are 30ml in a shot glass. So ⅓ of a shot was what my body was producing and I was told to be happy about my ‘progress’.

When I wasn’t trying to figure out how to pump and store my precious colostrum, we were figuring out how to feed Aspen.

The nurse mentioned ‘tube-feeding’ which made my heart drop through the bed. I thought she meant ‘feeding-tube’ as in a tube placed inside her nose or mouth to feed her. I was horrified she may need something like this.

In reality, she meant taking a very thin tube attached to a small syringe and dropping milk into her mouth. She said you can place your finger in her mouth to mimic a nipple to get her to start sucking, and then sneak the syringe or tubing in her mouth to drop milk in.

Then we leveled up to expert mode by taping the tube to a finger.

I was still very drowsy from magnesium and recovering from giving birth. My husband was more than eager to help so he took the finger-feed lead.

It was amazing to watch him feed her in those first days. Wrapping her tiny fingers around his finger while he slowly pushed the syringe full of milk into her mouth.

I will always be grateful for the moments Aspen and Ben were able to bond so closely during that time.

Great Pretenders

Our first encounter with the lactation consultants included what can only be described as a poorly prepared pep talk. She informed me most mothers of preterm babies give up breastfeeding. Preterm babies and moms have some of the highest rates of failure when it comes to breastfeeding.

Excuse me?

“Well, what I mean is...it’s really difficult for preterm babies and moms to be successful. They are what we call great pretenders. Preemies need to be supplemented because they’re unable to feed since they’re so small, and full term newborns consume adequate amounts of milk – therefore stimulating milk production effectively.

But with preterm babes – they latch and they feed. But they don’t feed enough, they get tired and quit. So they don’t get enough nutrition and they don’t trigger the supply/demand loop for your supply.”

Ok, now what?

“So you’re going to have to do something called Triple Feeds. You will need to breastfeed, supplement with a bottle of breastmilk, and pump.”

Every. Two. Hours.

Aspen still wasn’t latching so we would:

Pump parts, tubing, valves, containers, syringes laying out to dry between feedings

Briefly attempt breastfeeding
Default to finger feeds which takes about 20-30 minutes
Pump for 15 mins
After pumping, I would put the pumped milk in the tiny fridge in our hospital room
Wash the pump parts (my science experiment equipment) in the sink and lay them out to dry

The entire process took me about an hour.

3am fashionable selfie after pumping and washing pump parts in the sink and laying them out to dry

Which gave me about an hour until I had to do it all over again.

Luckily my milk ‘came in’ (the term used for when your boobs finally get the message that they need to get off their ass and make milk) after 36 hours. Something I didn’t realize was when this finally happens – you get severe menstrual type cramps. After freaking out that something was wrong, we learned that this is totally normal.

Your body is essentially communicating with itself via hormones. The hormones released to stimulate milk production are the same ones telling my uterus its tenant has been evicted and to start shrinking back to the size of an apricot versus staying the size of a basketball...

Day 5 – Going home

All of the above happened within the first 4 days. Did it feel like an eternity reading it? Because if felt like one experiencing it.

Once we got home we decided we would try bottles rather than use the tube to do finger feeds.

This helped a little in reducing what we had to wash. What helped a lot was remembering my friends had left me literal bags full of pumping supplies. Let me tell you the relief in realizing I didn’t have to wash the pumping parts after EVERY FEED!

It felt like a level was unlocked, an achievement was won.

The next 4-6 days consisted of more of the same – attempting to breastfeed for a few minutes, bottle feeding, and then pumping. Thankfully the lactation consultant had created a schedule for us so we knew our goal for each feeding. Slowing going from 10mls in the hospital to 2-3 ounces seemed impossible but Aspen showed us she loves to eat!

Since my milk production was going well and I was producing for a full term baby and not a preterm baby, I was pumping a lot of milk at this point. The recommendations for breastmilk storage seem to change monthly, but what I followed was it can stay in the fridge for a few days and then it needs to be frozen. And since I was producing so much milk, the time to start freezing came after 10 days or so.

More science experiment things to figure out! Freezer bags are great but take some getting used to. Imagine trying to pour a liquid into a Ziploc bag that only has half the opening. And then imagine being terrified of spilling a single drop because you’ve been programmed to NEVER WASTE THE PRECIOUS LIQUID GOLD!

I would lay them flat in a loaf pan so they would freeze flat making it easier to store in the freezer (thanks Pinterest for that pro tip).

After 10-12 days, Aspen finally figured out the latching thing. The lactation consultant said in the hospital she had a tongue-tie and this was contributing to her struggle (and my pain). She recommended discussing with the pediatrician about getting it clipped. My doula recommended the same thing.

The pediatricians we saw in the hospital and in their office had the same collective eye-roll about tongue ties.

“Tongue ties didn’t really exist until lactation consultants decided to make it their hill to die on”.

Umm, cool cool. I was told to ask you about it, but thanks for your unsolicited grudge? Eventually he clipped her tongue tie in the office. Thankfully this is typically painless as there are no nerve endings in that little paper thin tissue underneath your tongue.

Clipping the tongue tie made no obvious change, for her or me. I’m pretty sure she also had a lip tie (the tiny tissue connecting your upper lip to your gum line) because she constantly had ‘milk blisters’ on her upper lip. It looked like she had really chapped lips which occur from aggressive sucking coupled with a lip tie. But since the tongue tie revision didn’t seem to help, I didn’t see the need of putting sharp scissors in her tiny mouth again.

Can we take a moment and appreciate her derpy little expression? And also note the ‘milk blister’ on her upper lip.

We were advised to continue triple feeds until she reached her due date – so roughly 3 weeks. It was draining to continue the cycle while my body attempted to heal itself from childbirth and my emotions tried to heal itself from the enormous hormonal let down.

Thankfully when we reached her due date, she was latching and feeding well. Unfortunately for me, it still hurt like hell to have her latch on. I would have to pep talk myself and not forget to breathe while breastfeeding. I didn’t want to be bothered, touched, or consoled while I endured her feedings.

I marveled at her tiny face and mouth doing this incredible but completely normal evolutionary task. I marveled at my body for being able to provide her sustenance. But beyond that, it was pain with every latch. Pain with every pump. Frustration every time I had to sit there and pump and not hold her. Frustration every time I had to sit there and pump and not go back to sleep.

Same task, different reason

Aspen was gaining weight. She was surpassing the baseline expectations each week at the pediatrician. At this point, the pediatrician said I didn’t need to supplement with bottled breastmilk anymore. Yay!

The lactation consultants were still very weary of me no longer pumping in addition to breastfeeding. Their biggest fear was me reducing my supply/demand loop before my supply was established - which could take up to 4 months. FOUR. MONTHS?!

They were also concerned Aspen was only feeding from one side for each feeding. I was making enough milk that she only needed to feed on one side. This meant one boob got no love every feeding.

“You’ve got to keep pumping the other one!”

So I did.

Sometimes.

I’m human, and I’m tired. So I pumped most of the time. She also preferred the right boob and the right boob preferred her. My left side was lazy and unmotivated – irritating Aspen and irritating me.

And then it happened. The first time I experienced a clogged milk duct. My right boob had a knot the size of a blueberry and then the size of a golf ball. After feeding her, the knot stayed the same. It didn’t go down or become soft like the rest of the surrounding tissue did after ‘emptying’.

It didn’t really hurt, at first, but it was noticeable. I had this mound of breast tissue that didn’t go down when she fed.

I’ll be honest and say I don’t remember the first few weeks of dealing with clogged milk ducts. I’ve either blacked them out as a coping mechanism or my mind isn’t capable of remembering all the events, steps, and tears that followed the first one.

I researched how to treat clogged ducts and prevent them from returning. First step involved taking sunflower lecithin to thin your milk. Lecithin is an oil supplement to help make your milk more slippery and less likely to stick/clog in your milk ducts.

Then hot showers to massage and open up the milk ducts (like blood vessels, milk ducts dilate with warmth). Then I bought battery powered heated massaging pads you put in your bra to heat up and massage the milk ducts. Then I bought a knobby rolling thing that was supposed to break up milk ducts.

I tried different feeding positions. I pumped and started on the right side so she would be vigorous and pull the plugs out. I stuffed cabbage leaves in my bra until I smelled like I worked in a German hofbrauhaus serving braised cabbage. I’d randomly leave a little cabbage patch trail of used leaves around the yard and house...and my eldest pup would systematically come behind and eat them. Welcome to my life.

Ineffective but adorable use of cabbage leaf

I even had my husband try and suck out the clogged duct when I was in tears one afternoon. But when his beard touched my fire hot breast tissue, I knew I wouldn’t be able to withstand it and I knew he wouldn’t be able to power through my tears to try and help.

Thankfully with some breath work on my end and hunger on Aspen’s – she was able to release it later that day.

These interventions worked every time...eventually. I would spend 30-40 minutes in the blistering hot shower massaging and expressing to try and unclog the ducts. I would spend hours each day pumping.

But the thing is – all of the interventions I’ve listed not only help release clogged ducts. They also help stimulate production.

The lactation consultants to this day will not admit I was overproducing. They were so afraid to tell someone to reduce their supply they would never give me the green light to do it. They wanted me to wake up despite my baby sleeping through the night so I could pump – because God forbid my body reduce supply in the 8 hours I tried to sleep.

In hindsight...I 100% would have tried reducing my supply early on. It’s clear I was more than adequately feeding my daughter and I still had breasts full of milk just sitting there waiting...

Here I was with persistent clogged milk ducts due to overproduction and I was doing the every step to increase production in order to release clogged ducts.

I’ll wait while you reread that sentence.

In addition to the above interventions, I drastically altered my diet. The best way to describe it is if keto and carnivore diets had a baby – that’s what I ate.

Thanks to fear from the lactation consultations, I didn’t try to actively reduce my supply. What I did instead was avoid everything that could stimulate lactation. This included:

Oats
Beer
Green leafy veggies
Sweet potatoes
Carrots
Beans
Rice
Pizza
Bread/cookies/crackers/cakes
Wheat/gluten/basically anything made from batter or dough

This left me with meat, corn, and potatoes. I ate bacon and eggs for breakfast. I made a lot of Mexican style meals since I could eat corn and corn tortillas. I discovered pork rinds.

We ordered a Butcher Box subscription to have a constant supply of pork chops, ribs, chicken thighs, and steaks.

At first it wasn’t too bad. I love meat and potatoes, but everything eventually becomes old. I became tired of grease and fat. I avoided tuna due to mercury and I pretty much hate chicken breast – so the majority of the meat I ate was fatty.

I missed spring salads. I missed beer. I missed cookies and pizza. I missed waffles and biscuits.

I lost nearly all the weight I’d gained from pregnancy. My bowels were regular. My belly wasn’t bloated (beyond the slow abdominal wall recovery from childbirth). Silver lining, right?

In addition to foods, heat, and massage – being in a relaxed state can stimulate production. I would try and do breath work in yoga poses or when trying to repair my pelvic floor and I could feel my milk coming in.

Other times my supply was unexpectedly stimulated included:

Sex – the hormones and the excitation stimulates production even in those moments you least want to think about your child
Massages – I tried having a little ‘me’ time and get a trigger point massage which resulted in getting milk all over the massage sheets and table
Nitrous Oxide – I went to have some dental work and the nitrous (laughing gas) caused me to relax so much I felt my breasts engorging while lying there sky high with my mouth open

Busy days and stressful nights

My days were consumed with assessing for a clog or treating a clog. My days were consumed with pain so severe I couldn’t wear a shirt and I couldn’t hold my baby to my chest. I couldn’t work out because there is some evidence upper body exercises can cause clogged ducts and when you have clogged ducts or infection - the first step is to rest.

I sometimes felt like my breast was going to explode.

I honestly wanted it to explode. One night I was so unraveled by the pain I saw a knife in the kitchen and considered cutting my breast open with a knife. Not joking. Not metaphorical. I was very ready to do it. Anything to get relief.

Thankfully I did not.

I went to my six week postpartum follow up and they did my annual exam. She attempted a breast exam and failed due to the extreme pain. I couldn’t let the fabric of my exam gown touch my breast let alone someone pressing on it looking for breast cancer tumors.

She said she didn’t think it was mastitis – an infection that occurs when a clogged duct doesn’t release and bacteria can collect – but gave me a prescription for antibiotics to have just in case I needed it.

I’m glad she did because the next day, I started to notice red streaks on my breast which is a hallmark sign of mastitis. I started the 7-day treatment of taking an antibiotic 4 times a day. The clogged duct and redness resolved in a day or two.

Remember how my left boob was the slacker? Thankfully I didn’t get as many clogged ducts in my left breast because of this. I eventually stopped pumping the left because

a) I wasn’t producing very much and

b) Aspen could get all the milk she needed from the right.

I eventually stopped breastfeeding on the left side too. I figured why have two potential risks for mastitis when I could just have one? So I slowly let my supply disappear in my left boob – lactation consultant worries be damned. Which was fine other than the grossly obvious size discrepancy.

One of the perks of COVID quarantine though...no one was seeing me in person so I didn’t have to worry with wearing a bra on my tender tiddies and didn’t have to worry about looking like an episode of Botched Plastic Surgery.

Saved by the Dole

After two months of painful feedings, my nipples finally stopped hurting so much. Yay! Another achievement unlocked. I could breastfeed without holding my breath and without being as still as a statue.

But I still had 4-6 clogged ducts a week. I’d had 2 episodes of fevers and mastitis requiring antibiotics. Realistically, I was far from pain-free.

I left a message with the lactation consultants saying I needed help weaning. I’d decided enough was enough and I was done breastfeeding. But I knew I couldn’t just stop because rule #1 of clogged duct prevention is make.sure.you.are.feeding/pumping.frequently.

Of course when she called me back she tried to talk me off the ledge of weaning. I get it, that’s their job. A big part of their role is mental damage control from the trauma of breastfeeding. I was in the grocery store when she called and I spent 5 minutes telling her each and every intervention I’d done and she said

“Wow, you’ve really done a lot! But I didn’t hear you mention the supplement bromelain. Have you tried this?”

No, I had not. So I had Ben look in the supplement aisle to try and find it. He could not find it.

Now I’m in tears on the phone and she says “Ok, ok, ok...do you like pineapple?”

*sniffle*yes*sniffle*

“Great! Bromelain is from pineapples, so go grab some pineapple and eat it!”

*sniffle*sob*OK*sniffle*

I brought home two containers of pre-cut pineapple chunks and began systematically eating the whole thing in the next 24 hours.

And it did help. Pineapple and pineapple juice were the one thing that made a huge difference. My episodes of clogged ducts and mastitis reduced by probably 75%.

But I still got them. No matter how many glasses I drank or how many pieces I ate. I never went more than 5 days without a clogged duct.

I even purchased $500 battery powered breast pumps so I’d never get caught in traffic or at a restaurant needing to pump. Those pumps were life and time savers – I can’t recommend them enough – but even my boujee vigilance couldn’t 100% prevent clogged ducts.

Pumping in the parking lot between brewery stops (and pouring out in the gutter)

Pre baby my goal was to exclusively breastfeed for one year.

After she was born, my goal was six months.

After clogged ducts and recurrent mastitis, my goal was four months.

And we made it 4 months. And I’d had enough. I’d pumped and saved enough milk to supplement her while I started weaning for about 4 weeks as well. But I knew I had to start introducing formula slowly in order to transition her smoothly and save what was left of my sanity.

I couldn’t eat things I wanted to eat. I couldn’t exercise because of the pain. At one point I couldn’t do anything for 24 hours because of the fevers and chills. I was done.

Transitions

I did not want to talk to the lactation consultants about weaning again. I knew they would try and convince me otherwise. So I called my OB. Someone who was more focused on me than feeding and more focused on me than on Aspen. My advocate. And she was hugely supportive and reassuring of my decision.

I started dropping one feeding a day (she would eat 6-8 times a day at this point). I went really slow to reduce the risk of clogged milk ducts. I still had 3-4 and one episode of mastitis, but otherwise I felt really good about the process.

It took about 3 weeks to drop down to two feedings a day – one in the morning and one at night. I wanted to try and breastfeed those times if possible for the comfort and closeness it provided us. My OB agreed I had such a large supply (as opposed to the opinions of the lactation consultation), so she felt I could easily maintain only feeding her twice a day for as long as I wanted.

Additional things I did to actively reduce my supply:

Sage/PB bread worked wonders to decrease milk supply

Eat dried sage 3x day. I would take a small piece of bread with peanut butter on it, pour 1tsp of sage on top, wad it up and eat it. Didn’t taste awful. Didn’t taste great, but works really well. (A friend told me later there are tinctures you can take if you don’t want to eat it.)
Avoid hot showers and avoid running hot water on my breasts.
Peppermint apparently reduces supply too so I ate a handful of Altoids throughout the day.
I still avoided anything to stimulate lactation (beer, gluten, oats, greens).
I would gently hand express milk in the shower to try and reduce clogged ducts from forming if I felt one but also avoiding too much stimulation. I only used the Haakaa silicone hand pump if I felt I needed to pump rather than the stronger pumps for the same reason.

The first day we attempted formula was awful. She refused it, cried, and was straight up pissed I was trying to give her anything other than my breastmilk. Thankfully she had no issue with the bottle part since she’d been on a bottle off and on since she was born. But she was having no part of the formula.

I felt like a piece of shit for giving her formula. But the one thing that kept me trying was the fact I don’t remember breastfeeding as a newborn. All of the precious memories I have with my mother and not a one of them have to do with breastfeeding.

I even had to ask my dad if she breastfed me because her and I had never talked about it.

So these thoughts – these fears of abandonment – were my selfish fears. Aspen was happy, healthy, gaining weight, and her and I are thick as thieves. And I knew if we stopped the bonding we may gain during breastfeeding – nothing would change our closeness. In fact, I had hopes it would be improved. I’d have less anxiety and fewer panic attacks. I’d have less pain and no fevers. I’d have more time if I wasn’t in the shower or pumping.

The technique I used to introduce formula was adding 10ml of formula for every 4 ounces of breastmilk and I would feed her that ratio for 1-2 days. And then added a little more formula, a little less milk.

This took about ten days to fully transition to formula. And by the 10th day we’d both forgotten those rough first days. She was happily gulping down formula and I was happy to not breastfeed as often.

A few weeks after starting this routine I had to travel for 5 nights two weeks in a row for my new job. I still pumped twice a day while I was away and returned to breastfeeding when I got home. But Aspen didn’t seem as interested in breastfeeding after exclusively having the bottle for a week. So during the second 5 night trip, I decided to wean completely. My milk had started to really thin out, turn a slight gray color and the benefit of it was questionable (in my opinion).

I dropped one feeding the first night on my trip and by the end of my work training – I was completely done. Aspen was now 5 months old.

I had a feeling in my heart this was probably going to happen while I was home in between trips so I spent extra time, extra intention on that last feeding before I went to the airport. Even though I wasn’t sure it was going to be the last one, in my head I said “this may be it, so enjoy it.”

And I did. For all the pain and heartache, all the panic attacks and fevers, I was so grateful for the experience with her.

Grateful and still traumatized.

Guilt and Grace

I’m so glad I was able to breastfeed her and provide my daughter with the “perfect” nutrition. But I also have regret over the lost time, pain, and emotions. I was so focused on learning to breastfeed, learning to pump, storing milk, washing pump parts, and then dealing with clogged milk ducts that I know I missed so many moments with her.

It was this feeling of always having a project or work looming over my head.

Did she latch? Should I pump? How old is that milk in the fridge? Where’s the soap? Is that a knot? Where is the massager? Who is going to burp her while I pump? Who is going to hold her while I shower? How am I going to pick up my prescription for antibiotics in the middle of a pandemic? Who is going to watch my baby while I lay in bed with a fever?

I know I had my husband there to help. And he helped SO MUCH. But mom guilt is a bitch and doesn’t care about people helping you. Mom guilt doesn’t care if she is burped, held, fed, and cared for by someone.

Mom guilt only cares that you can’t do it.

Maybe I was too weak. Too sensitive, too tender breasted. Too hysterical (intentional use of patriarchal term). Too lazy to get up 2-4 times a night and pump versus sleep.

Maybe I was too stubborn. Too hard-headed to throw in the towel and realize it wasn’t working.

Maybe my weakness made me stubborn.

Maybe my stubbornness made me weak.

All I know is she won’t remember any of this. She’ll only know from stories we tell her or from reading this blog. I know she’s still crazy about me and lights up when she sees my face when I walk in after work. I know we now get to look at each other in the eyes when she drinks her bottles and I know she loves trying apples, squash, and carrots.

I know what I did was good but I don’t know if it was worth it.

I don’t know how long it will take my mental health to recover from it.

I don’t know how long I’ll need to stay on anti-anxiety medication I started because of it.

I don’t know if I would breastfeed my next baby (if there is another opportunity).

If you’ve made it this far – I appreciate you sticking it through the end. Chances are you are someone who reached out with support, advice, jokes, and love while I was struggling with breastfeeding. I thank you for that. I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t have the support I had – even during a pandemic. The late night Instagram messages kept me sane and kept me safe. Having a partner help ground me and support me kept me sane and kept me safe.

Breastfeeding was very hard for me. That doesn’t mean it will be or should be hard for you. It doesn’t mean you should feel guilty for having a great breastfeeding experience. Learning about everyone’s struggles, triumphs, and moments when it comes to feeding their babies continues to show me how incredible women are.

My journey is my own and no one else’s.

I hope this post educates some, supports others, and uplifts a few. So you know you’re not alone. Not alone in struggling. Not alone in hating it. Not alone in feeling like a failure trying to figure this mom thing out.

And maybe give you the courage to tell mom guilt to fuck off. Even if it’s just for the day.

xoxo, Steph