Jun
16

Nipples, Nipples Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink.

When I was pregnant with Simone and her brother, I had two strong feelings about breastfeeding. One was that I really wanted it to work, and the second was that I would not feel guilty if it didn’t.
And then I gave birth fifteen weeks early. Providing food was one of the few concrete things I could do for my daughter, and I asked for a breast pump immediately after surgery. When I was wheeled to the NICU the next day, I proudly clutched two specimen containers each containing a teaspoon of milk. I was like the three wisemen, with the addition of a morphine pump and postpartum swelling. Myrrh schmyrrh—I come bearing colostrum! Take me to the child!
Even if you know better, it is hard not to feel guilty after ejecting a baby who weighs substantially less than your own liver. I felt that motherhood and I had gotten off on the wrong foot, and while I may have been laissez-faire about breastfeeding before Ames died, I was now determined to succeed. After all, I’d ended up with only half the babies I had expected. Surely “I’ll try” for two babies becomes “I will” with only one. Breast milk is important for preemies, both for the immunities it provides and because it reduces the risk of Necrotizing Enterocolitis. So for the next three months, I pumped, at the hospital and at home, filling my freezer with bags of milk arranged in neat rows by date.

Two months into her NICU stay, Simone was cleared to breastfeed, and once given the opportunity she lurched toward my chest and took it with gusto. Her mouth was still too small to latch effectively, so we used a nipple shield, and within a week she was taking full feedings from my very own bosom. Many premature infants have trouble learning to breastfeed, but my daughter has always been single-minded in her pursuit of food, and we became a kind of NICU sideshow that nurses and lactation consultants would travel hallways to see: the incredible nursing preemie!
And then, a month later, we brought that preemie home.

At first things were fine and then, abrubtly, they weren’t: my supply took a nosedive, and during feedings Simone began sobbing in frustration until we were both in tears, windmilling her arms and sometimes screaming until she couldn’t breathe. The nipple shield was no longer necessary, but any attempts to wean her from it were met with the rankest scorn.

I have been hesitant to post about this, because nothing brings out the “ire” in “Internet” like the subject of breastfeeding, but I just spent 70 minutes nursing, sixty of them punctuated by shrieks and deranged thrashing, mostly Simone’s. There was milk to be had—I could express it manually—but she was unimpressed, and eventually I gave her a small bottle I’d pumped this morning. She gulped it clean in ten minutes, sighing quietly between sucks, and I thought to myself: What am I doing? Why am I doing this to us?

At the risk of sounding like a woman defending her abusive husband, allow me to tell you that sometimes Simone and I have perfectly lovely feedings, wherein she nurses happily and neither cries nor hits me. But these are inevitably followed by one that traumatizes the both of us, and as much as I used to enjoy breastfeeding, now I am coming to dread it, not knowing which baby—the content, sighing model, or the version whose head spins at the mere suggestion of areola—I will get. And to be fair, Simone will occasionally scream just as loudly during a bottle feeding as she does at the breast.
Some of the screaming is caused by how contrary she is when hungry, but her anger at breastfeeding, I suspect, stems from both my low supply and the fact that after a month of three pediatrician-mandated bottles a day, she has cottoned on to the fact that with a bottle, the work to food ratio is much lower. I am not saying that bottles are evil, mind you. I like bottles. I doubt I would be adjusting to life with a baby so swimmingly were it not possible for Scott to handle the occasional feeding, so bottles are here to stay.

It is common to experience a decrease in supply around the three to four month mark, and mine coincided with the reappearance of my old nemesis, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. One symptom was an upward creeping of the numbers on the scale, numbers which had remained steady since the return of my Lady Cycle eight weeks postpartum. The impetus for my recent return to the world of Points(tm) was more than my desire to lose weight, it was also conversations with a nurse and lactation consultant, both of whom suggested that skipping breakfast and subsisting on tea and pasta might be affecting my milk production, and both of whom thought the WeightWatchers plan for nursing mothers was an excellent one. And things have improved since two weeks ago. But they haven’t improved enough. I’ve considered exclusively pumping, because I can pump, prepare a bottle, and administer it in less time than it takes me to nurse. But I don’t know if I’m ready to give up on breastfeeding.

And then there’s the guilt. One of the lactation consultant’s suggestions was that I pump after every nursing session and then pump whenever Simone gets a bottle.
Woman, I thought to myself as I gaped at her, you have got to be kidding.
As it is, I have less than 90 minutes between feedings in which to go to the bathroom, eat, and write—forget the things I have let slip through the cracks, like bill-paying, laundry, and personal hygiene. You are high if you think I am going to pump after every breastfeeding session and then ruin my only four-hour stretch of sleep by waking when Scott gives Simone the midnight bottle. I get the distinct impression from breastfeeding advocates that they think I ought to lock myself in a room with only my baby, a hand-whittled nursing stool, and a tube of organic lanolin, not emerging until I have established exclusive, nipple-shield-free breastfeeding, but I am finding that as much as I want this to work, I am only willing to do so much. I take fenugreek. I pump twice a day, and I nurse for four or five feedings, each over an hour long. It’s not the path of least resistance, but it is the path of less resistance, and part of me feels like I should be trying harder. But the other part of me just wants less screaming and more time playing Crazy Arms, you know?

I should mention that as I type this Simone is sleeping against my chest in her sling looking cute as a goat. Which makes me think “Aww, never mind, it’s not so bad!” but I AM POSTING ANYWAY because I know this is infant trickery on her part, much like the way she is silent and angelic as soon as a childless guest enters the house in order to encourage the perpetuation of her tiny species. I’m on to you, baby.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |