Formula is Food, Too

I recently talked to a neighbor of mine who is pumping and supplementing for her 3 month old son. Like me, she had a difficult time with straight breastfeeding, so she is getting what she can from pumping on an irregular schedule. She's tired of the pumping, and is looking for some excuse to stop. And yet, she winces, "I feel so conflicted."

Oh, how I know that conflict!

I am just one of many new mothers out there who read the books, pamphlets, and heard all the other messages that said in short: BREAST IS BEST. I also clearly heard the subliminal message when you say those words backwards: "If you don't breastfeed, it will be YOUR FAULT when your child gets sick!"

And then, of course, the popular buzz word among baby experts today is "BONDING." It's like what the word "sustainability" is for Progressives. There is an almost unlimited number of ways the word can be used in a sentence. There seems to be no question that breast feeding is a bonding experience that can not be replaced by a silicone substitute. But what does that mean? If I bottle feed will my children grow up to be less attached to me than if I fed them straight from the breast? Or am I more likely to love them less, and be so unattached to them that I might suddenly have an uncontrollable urge to leave them at some stranger’s door step? And what does that mean for my mom’s generation, when women were guiltlessly advised by their doctors to start on formula soon after birth? Is it possible that my childhood could have been different –or somehow better—if I had been given breast milk? Could I have been smarter, more athletic, less anxious, or have better fashion sense?

When my first child was born, I never questioned that I would breastfeed. Only it was quite a bit harder than I could have imagined. I thought the reason with my first was because he spent the first week in the NICU with undeveloped lungs. I had to start up a rigorous pumping schedule. The first couple days I pumped a few drops. But my supply doubled daily for the first week. I expected my supply to outpace the demand, and even wondered if it were possible to make cheese with the excess milk. A few days after bringing him home, my husband came home from work and asked how my day was. I broke down crying. "I had to give Alex a bottle of formula today. I just couldn't keep up with his demand. I feel like such a failure!"

It took a few days for me to accept that supplementing with formula was going to be part of the regimen. But once I did, I had to admit it wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. Through various regrettable circumstances I ended up losing my milk after just 6 weeks. I was probably the most relaxed mom I could have been. Alex was an easy baby, and with the use of formula my husband was able to take some middle of the night feedings throughout the week. I can't even begin to tell you what a difference it makes to be able to sleep 6 hours straight a few nights a week. You can't have that kind of relief when you exclusively breast feed.

When my daughter Zoe came along a year and a half later, I was expecting an all new experience. It was another C-Section, but she was strong strong and healthy. My brother and his wife had a great experience with a doula after my sister-in-law suffered from a bad case of postpartum depression. They offered us a good sum of money for a doula as a gift. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a 24 hour doula like they had. So I thought the next best thing would be to find a doula or lactation consultant who could come out to the house and help me with breast feeding part time. I had a nice local woman lined up to work for me, but she ended up getting a bad case of diarrhea and had to back out. My first night at home was horrible. I got little sleep. After staying up from 11 pm to 4:30 am to nurse, I gave my daughter a single ounce of formula and she finally fell asleep. Minutes after I lay my head back down on the pillow my father-in-law went to the bathroom, which is right across from Zoe's room, and slammed the door --waking Zoe up just minutes after she fell asleep! I started to cry. "Why would your father slam the door? Your parents have to leave tomorrow!” (Unfortunately, they didn’t leave so easily.)

When the sun rose the next morning, my nerves felt shattered. My daughter had another episode of nursing for several hours straight. I finally pumped, and got out two ounces. Zoe drank it and went back to sleep again. Two ounces was as much as I ever would have hoped to get from my breasts so soon after giving birth. I wondered if she was really getting as much as she needed. To make sure I was getting my milk up, I thought I would try both pumping and breast feeding. But Zoe sucked my nipples raw. I hurt so bad from the breast feeding. Pumping was so much easier.

That afternoon I got a hold of one of the doulas that I hoped would help. She was a grandmother named Barbara, and worked with a women's prison ministry. Despite the fact that she wasn’t available to help me, she was very opinionated and for some reason she thought she had a duty to push me around. She told me how she didn't like breast pumps, and back when she was lactating she always expressed milk by hand. She knew a hundred different things that I should and shouldn't do, and she rattled off stories and advice in no particular order. "Did they give your baby formula in the hospital" No. "Have you given your baby formula?" she asked. I admitted that I did give her an ounce so that she could sleep last night. I also told her that I started pumping. She became more hysterical and shrill. "Your just copping out! Every woman is capable of breastfeeding their baby. You're a cop out!" My exhaustion hit a peak. Then she asked if I had any friends nearby who could help.

"All my friends have babies of their own."

"If they were real friends, they would get babysitters for their kids so they could help you out." At this point it seemed useless to point out that the purpose of my calling her was to find someone that I could hire. And to add to the irony, all 3 of my friends had adopted and had no choice but raise their babies on formula. I was tempted to bring this up, but didn’t out of fear that she would berate my friends for not forcing their bodies to lactate. I know it’s possible, so I wasn’t about to put it past her.

I got off the phone as politely as I could, and then cried. I’m not sure that I can adequately describe how miserable that moment was. Trying to function with so little sleep is a close mental equivalent to being just a little bit drunk. I was constantly fuzzy headed. I’ve never been the sort who could take a nap just because I was tired. So I was in a state where I was too tired to do anything useful, but had too many things to think about to relax. And lets not forget that I was recovering from major surgery.

The lactation fanatics like Barbara rule the popular parenting wisdom of the age, and they don’t miss a chance to remind new moms that the path to good parenting is straight and narrow. Formula is the forbidden fruit that leads to sin and death. Barbara had dedicated her life to leading imprisoned women and their babies to salvation through proper lactation. And I had failed. I was a cop out. After pumping milk that night, I lay in bed wondering if I was weak and selfish because I wasn’t staying up a second night in a row to breast feed. Despite the fact that Zoe seemed more content after being given pumped milk, I couldn’t help wondering if I was just a weakling for not being like all the millions of mommies that make it work.

We initially decided that we would supplement the night feedings. But I began to produce more milk than Zoe was drinking, so after a week she was drinking 100% breast milk. She wasn’t a big eater, but she grew to be a roly-poly baby. Eventually I had more success putting her to the breast. But it wasn’t the great bonding experience I expected it to be. And at four months she got her first teeth. I had read that hungry babies don’t bite, but that wasn’t the case for Zoe. She was hungry, and she bit hard. I finally gave up pumping at 6 months, and Zoe switched to formula very easily. But like my neighbor, giving up pumping caused a lot of conflict. Even though I was through with the lactation Nazis, it’s difficult not to feel a little bit like a failure for giving up breast feeding. As silly as it may sound, I suppose I wasn’t so much worried about the nutritional quality of formula. Because after all formula is food. Instead I worried about the off chance that we might be hit with some apocalyptic disaster. What happens if a huge disaster strikes, society is in a panic, and formula is hard to come by?

Okay, so I’m a cop out . . . AND I worry about the weirdest things.