Some thoughts from the world's worst mother and her formula fed baby boy . . .

I have to admit that I am hesitant to post the above pictures of my precious baby boy. Sure, he's cute (super cute, if you ask me, but I might be biased) but he's holding a (gasp) bottle! Yes, I will admit it: my super cute baby J was not a breast fed baby.

I know that some of you, perhaps many of you, reading this are judging me right now. Anyone can breastfeed, right? Maybe I just didn't try hard enough. Maybe I wasn't properly educated about the benefits of breastfeeding. When I was pregnant with my first baby, the lovely Miss G, I assumed that I would have a natural, intervention free birth after which I would take my sweet baby into my arms and nurse her. I'm not sure any other possibilities even entered my mind. The reality, however, was a bit different. At 39 weeks my blood pressure was sky high and my doctors decided that it was time to induce labor. After several days of labor, a few doses of narcotics and an epidural I ended up almost 9 centimeters dilated and pushing while my OB watched My Name is Earl on the TV in my room. A few hours later I was in the operating room for my C-Section. I am getting a little bit off the breast feeding track here but my point is things don't always go as planned.

Miss G was not a great nurser. Her latch was weird, she would fall asleep every time she got near my boobs. On top of that my milk didn't come in for well over a week. Despite being poked, prodded and yelled at by nurses and encouraged by the lactation consultant it wasn't going well. I never did produce enough milk to breast feed Miss G exclusively. She continued to nurse and we supplemented with formula. We were pretty happy with that situation. When Miss G was 5 months old I had to stop nursing her for 5 days after I took some radioactive iodine for a thyroid scan. When the 5 days were over she had no interest in nursing.

A year or so after that I was pregnant with Baby J. My thyroid condition was under control and I was determined to breastfeed the new baby. I did all sorts of research, made sure that the medications I was taking were compatible with breastfeeding and that my thyroid levels were normal. I WOULD breastfeed this baby. Anyone can do it if they try hard enough, right?

Baby J was born (VBAC, thank goodness) and I was ready. I knew how to position him, how to stroke his cheek to get him to open his mouth. My milk came in within a couple of days (ouch!) we were off to a great start. Only, Baby J wasn't gaining any weight. In fact he was losing weight. We weren't too concerned at first, but at one month old he was barely back up to his birth weight. I went to see the lactation consultant and we determined that though his latch wasn't too bad he wasn't getting much to eat. Did I mention that he was pretty grumpy? Yeah, apparently starvation will do that to you. He was nursing around the clock, only stopping to cry.

The LC sent me off to rent a double pump and told me that if I ate some oatmeal and pumped for 100 minutes a day we'd be all set within a week or so. I rented the pump, picked up some mother's milk tea and went home. When we got back to the house I thawed out the 4 oz or so of milk I had managed to pump with my little manual pump over the previous few weeks. He finally stopped crying and took a nice long nap. I ate a ton of oatmeal and drank mother's milk tea. And pumped, and pumped and pumped. I pumped 100 minutes or more per day for a month. I spent every spare minute pumping. If I wasn't pumping I was nursing. Poor Miss G would sit on my lap and hold the bottles to my boobs just to spend a little time with me.

I added some fenugreek and blessed thistle to the oatmeal and mother's milk tea. And a bottle of Guiness every day. And I pumped and pumped, to no avail. I was lucky to get 4 or 6 oz per day. Often it was less. And as for baby J, he was a lazy baby and soon decided that breastfeeding was a lot of work, for very little reward. I couldn't blame him, I felt the same way. I wanted very badly to be one of those mamas whose cups overflowed, happily nursing away, bonding with their precious little ones. I wanted it more than anything, but it was not to be. No matter what I did there was not nearly enough milk. We began supplementing with formula. Baby J started gaining weight and he was hungry all the time. Soon he refused to nurse at all. I continued pumping for another month or so, but in the end I decided that I needed to spend the few minutes a day that Baby J was not in my arms with Miss G. Having a new baby in the family is not easy on a two year old and she needed her mama.

I am confident that I made the right choice for my family, and I have two happy healthy kids. But it is still hard to talk about. I spend a lot of time talking to cloth diapering mamas who are all about the breast feeding. I try to avoid the whole subject. The "did you try . . .". Yes, I tried. I tried it all. I avoid posting pictures Baby J holding a bottle. It's silly, but it's true.

So, that's it. My biggest failure as a mother so far. Go ahead and judge. I can take it.

Oh, and one more thing cloth diapering mamas - there is nothing magical about ebf (exclusively breast fed) poop. You can throw formula poop diapers in the wash without rinsing too if they are liquidy enough. It's the consistency that's the issue not that ebf poop is "all natural" or some such nonsense.