Fresh Outta Milk: Ending My Breastfeeding Journey
My breastfeeding journey has come to an end and I am not okay!!! I have so many mixed emotions behind it and so many things have gone through my mind. I am proud, I am impressed, I am amazed, I am happy, I am sad, I am disappointed, I am depleted, I am liberated. Yes, I am all of those things because breastfeeding took me through a rollercoaster of emotions, with a lot of highs and lows. Breastfeeding has been physically rewarding - I lost all of the baby weight PLUS a few extra pounds in the beginning (which I have since gained back smh). It has been physically taxing - my nipples got sore periodically and in the last month, I finally reached the point of just being tired of being touched and no longer liking to latch. Breastfeeding has been emotionally rewarding - I was proud and amazed at how my body could produce enough milk alone to sustain the life of my infant (for the first 4-5 months) and I absolutely love the little bond we developed. It has been emotionally draining - my milk supply started dwindling some around month 5 and at the same time, my growing baby required more and more milk to be satiated; as a result, I began doubting myself.
Over the last 3 months my milk supply tapered off more and I really began to feel inadequate sometimes and lacked confidence in my ability to continue providing milk for my baby. Additionally, my baby has been in a lower percentile for weight since he was born, and I sometimes felt like I was the reason he wasn’t gaining weight like he needed to. I have thought that maybe my baby hadn’t been getting a sufficient amount of milk for a while and then his body adjusted and learned how to cope with smaller portions. Of course when my baby was latched, I could not measure his intake per ounce, but I would gauge his intake by how long he nursed. While away from my baby, I pumped around the clock, but eventually I started feeling like my pumping efforts were in vain too because I wasn’t seeing the results I thought I should have been seeing, and I could never shake the comparison to the amount of milk I produced in the first few months versus what it decreased to in the last few months. In the beginning, I was able to latch my baby on one side while pumping on the other. Of course, as he began to require more milk to get full, he would take both sides and there was nothing left to pump. I was informed that when you first have your baby, it might take a couple of days for your milk to come in, but once it’s here your body produces a lot more milk than your baby actually needs. You may end up with an oversupply and that is the prime time to pump and freeze as much milk as you can. Eventually, milk production levels off and normalizes according to their needs. It’s all about supply and demand. When my milk supply first started decreasing, I wasn’t trying to hear any of that! “How could my body just switch up like that?” I wondered. Yet, sometimes I would try to psyche myself into believing that everything was happening as it normally should.
Mentally, I am disappointed in myself because I set a goal for myself and I am unable to see it through. Going into this, my goal was to breastfeed for a year and then throw the towel in. I think of all the things I could have and perhaps should have done differently. However, I am realistic enough to know that there is no sure way to know if my different efforts would have had more promising results. Additionally, whether or not I have another child, I may never get the opportunity to breastfeed again. The thought of that is daunting to me, though at the same time, I am proud to have done it for as long as I did. Many women who have a desire to breastfeed do not get this opportunity at all for one reason or another and to that end, I know I am blessed to have achieved what I have. Breastfeeding to me, is like possessing a super power, and breastmilk is the magic potion. I alone was able to comfort, soothe, and put my baby to sleep sometimes when no one else could. Even with a dwindling supply, I pressed on for as long as I did, supplementing with formula because not all breastfeeding days were created equal. Sometimes I was impressed with the amount I was able to pump and with the amount of time he would stay latched in the morning during the before school feeding and for the bedtime feeding at night. I was intrigued by how some days I was able to pump out a decent amount of milk and then other days, the results were subpar. I even blamed what I yielded (or the lack thereof) on the pump itself sometimes. Maybe I should have tried out something else. In my eyes, there were so many variables and a true science behind this breastfeeding thing.
Ending my breastfeeding journey is bittersweet, but I believe it is necessary and I can rest assured that my baby is just fine. In the latter part of this year, I have spent three weekends away from my baby. Always as the weekend that I would be away approached, it was hard for me to look forward to it and be able to take a mental break from everyday life. I was prison to my own thoughts and anxiousness regarding having to pump throughout the weekend, when I would be able to fit it in, how much time pumping would take me away from whatever else was going on, potentially damaging my already dwindling supply even more if I wasn’t able to pump in a reasonable time period, the awkwardness of having to sneak away from the festivities to pump, and then the whole idea of storing and transporting the milk. Also, trying to plan your consumption of adult beverages around when you would need to pump, almost completely takes the enjoyment out of even partaking. I would be lying if I said I am going to miss the anxiety of all of that. Now, I can be away from my baby and feel free/back to my old self, for the most part, outside of missing him. This past weekend while I was away in the mountains for my birthday celebration with friends, I pumped for only about fifteen minutes one time and it was more so out of curiosity of how much I would get. Fortunately for us also, my baby weaned himself and has not looked back. It’s going on three weeks so far. He has not tried to fight me for a boob, he has not dug his face or hand in my shirt, nor has he attempted to latch. As long as you have his bottle ready, he’s happy with a bottle and we (his dad and I) would be happy if he also starts liking more food, but that’s another story. I now believe that he was just as ready to wean as I was because the last few times he latched, he had started getting distracted easily and would stop often, or he would get fussy because [now I’m guessing] he wasn’t getting enough out. I will miss cradling him in my arm while he nursed and watching him suckle; I will miss caressing his legs, arms, and hair; and I will will miss him staring up at me and me staring down at him; BUT, I think we are both more satisfied with how things are currently. Thank God for formula and a friend who donated a lot of her frozen breastmilk to us; we have been doing a nice little mixture of the two plus baby cereal for a while now anyway. So yeah, it’s a wrap on my breastfeeding journey this go round folks but I will be okay!
