Breastfeeding

Oh, the dreaded post.  The one where I admit failure (well at least in my mind it is a personal failure).  So, from the beginning.  I always knew I would breastfeed. My entire pregnancy people would always ask "are you going to breastfeed?" I would always so yes! very enthusiastically.  I was so excited about breastfeeding. Rich bought me a nice pump, and I bought lots of nursing gear.  Boy were those dreams shot down fast.

In reality, I was not able to breastfeed. In my mind, I have to justify it by saying it is because of the traumatic labor/delivery.  After 16 hours of labor,  3 hours of pushing (and making 0 progress), an emergency C-Section,  emergency surgery for a ripped bladder and torn large artery in my leg, having a catheter for 10 days (TMI I know), breastfeeding was not in the stars for Noah.   During my 5 day hospital stay (for me, Noah was just perfect), I think I had every nurse,  every lactation consultant and my mom try to get Noah to latch on. He would not. He refused.  See, right after he was born I was in surgery for about another 3 hours.  He was given formula and took to the bottle nipple.  After that, he refused to nurse. REFUSED! He would get pissed, I would get upset, it was a disaster. We tried everything and nothing worked (and to this day he is very nipple picky...he won't even take a pacifier because it isn't shaped like his bottle nipple).

So, I did the best I could. I pumped for 2 weeks before my milk supply ran out.  I cried, I was upset, I hated it. But, he was well fed with formula, he got 2 weeks worth of my milk, and believe me he is not hurting in size.  He also has not been sick with a fever in 8 months.  I found that I can bond with him feeding him a bottle, snuggling with him, singing to him, reading to him, kissing him, loving on him, responding when he cries, ect.  I will confess that I delayed teaching him how to hold his bottle because I wanted that time with him.  Since I wasn't able to breastfeed, bottle feeding was that special time.

I still grieve not being able to breastfeed, but I know that we did the best we could. This is a reminder that not everything goes as planned.  I have quickly learned that planning does not go well with having a baby.  Going with the flow is a much better thing to do.