My plan was to breastfeed and pump for at least 9 months-I
was really looking forward to the bonding time with my child and I had seen
many friends breastfeed so I knew firsthand the benefits and the
realities. The day after the C-section a
lactation consultant came by my room with a hospital grade pump, lots of
plastic pieces, and a whole shpiel about the benefits of breast milk-I didn’t
need the shpiel, but I did need a lot of help getting the machine to work. I should probably also mention that because
Lily was 2 months early, she timed herself perfectly to arrive 9 months after
that freak snow storm last October, so the hospital was packed with babies conceived
when there was nothing else to do.
Lactation was overbooked and undercovered, nurses were pretty frantic
and every maternity room was taken. They
even had a woman recovering in the room usually set aside for NICU parents to
spend overnight visits.
You’ve probably seen a breast pump. But, if you haven’t, there are basically
these two conical, Madonna-bra looking pieces that you hold on your boobs. They’re connected to a pump via plastic
tubing and the pump stimulates the baby’s sucking motions. I pumped and pumped and pumped, every three
hours during the day and only once overnight (the social worker said that I had
been through enough and needed to get some sleep-social workers are really
great people). I pumped with my
sister-in-law in the room, I pumped while my father waited behind a curtain-you
get the picture; I was dedicated. By the
third day, I managed 1 milliliter (prior to that, I only produced moisture). The NICU nurse put a cotton swab into the
vile and rubbed the 1 ml on Lily’s lips-tears of joy!
I also pumped in the pumping room, a room specifically for NICU
moms to use. There’s nothing like
attaching a mechanical, sucking baby to your breasts in a nipple chilling,
sterile room with posters all around you telling you how important your breast
milk is-especially when you can’t seem to create any breast milk. But it did help to bond with other NICU moms
who were there for the same reason (shout out to “A.R.”).
We rented the hospital grade machine and took it home where
I kept up my routine. But I never seemed
to produce more that 10ml per sitting, combined. Was this normal? This couldn’t be normal? I spoke with lactation, but they weren’t
terribly helpful. One of the NICU nurses
was also a lactation consultant, and she mentioned that fibroids (bastards)
combined with a preemie could be causing low output. After about a month of continued frustration,
I thought about quitting. Lily was
growing and she was getting breast milk, exclusively, but she was only going to
get bigger and pretty soon I wouldn’t be able to make enough for her. The hubby and I thought that Lily would be
home in another month (we had been in the NICU for a month already), so I decided
to push through that second month with the machine. I had
to make it work!
There’s this great chapter in Tina Fey’s Bossypants where she discusses the external pressure that women get, from other women,
about breastfeeding-she’s not making it up-women do really hate other women and
feel it’s their job to push their agenda on other women. Somehow, I really lucked out because my
friends and family aren’t like that.
There’s no one in my inner circle secretly judging me or criticizing me
because I wore the wrong jeans or I’m not a vegetarian or I don’t exercise as regularly
as I should-I also almost never wear makeup or do my hair for work, and trust
me, I really should at this point, but my friends don’t harass me about it. So this feeling that I had to make it work, that I had
to produce, that I had to breast feed
my child…it was all coming from me. It
was just more of my own guilt, the feeling that I couldn’t do anything for my
daughter, I couldn’t be a mother in any way, I had to at least be able to do
this for her. Because, if I gave it up,
could I even call myself a mom?
5 weeks became 6 weeks became 7 weeks and I wanted to give
up, again. Lily clearly wasn’t coming
home ‘any day now,’ and she was getting more formula than she was breast
milk. Even though she was tiny, one of
the NICU nurses suggesting letting Lily breast feed. She only did it twice, but both times were
amazing. There was this little thing
completely dependent on me, staring up at me and loving me. If everything had gone as planned and I could
produce and my baby was born at term, I would be a breast feeding mama! I would
never give it up, not until my child turned it away, and even then I’d probably
still try to get her to take it. And that’s
when I realized that I was the one who was being selfish. This was something I wanted for me, not
something that could nourish my daughter-at least, not in the long run. It would be better for her if I just admitted
that my boobs didn’t work, at least not in a lactation capacity (they’re pretty
fun in their other capacities). So Lily
got breast milk for two months, and my boobs dried up within 4 days. And, you know what, I’m okay with it.
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