melle-belle's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- failing at mommy Breastfeeding is making me hate my baby. I hate it, but the thought of giving it up makes me weep. I did not nurse him at all today. I pumped and fed him the milk in bottles and gave him a few ounces of formula as well. Today was a good day for the baby, but some days... I don't know how I could pump at all... he can cry all day and refuse to sleep. My eyes passed over the breastfeeding pillow and I realized that if I really give this up, I will have to hide it or throw it away. It will be too painful to look at. And it occurred to me that the day will come when I decide I want to feel his squirmy little body against mine but he will have lost the skill and he won't latch on. (Well, he still doesn't latch on now, which is most of the reason why we may be quitting. We use something called a nipple shield which is good for a small babies small mouth but it trains them to not have to open wide and it keeps them from getting as much milk as quickly as they would if they were latched on correctly without the shield. He can suck away for an hour and come away still acting hungry because he is such an inefficient eater.) I weep at the thought now of wanting to feel the closeness I took for granted these first seven weeks. I will weep at the reality then. I wanted to love breastfeeding. It was an important part of wanting to get pregnant and have a baby. I wanted to breastfeed. We were off to a rocky start from the get go. I blame the hospital stay after he was born. Someone was in our room at least once an hour, waking up my baby, all day and all night. He was too tired to learn how to eat. I blame inconsistent nursing and lactation consultants barging in every couple of hours and telling me the exact opposite for what the bitch before her said. I stopped listening to any of them, starting turning them away, and even thought I would hold off on really trying until we get home... and then they kept procrastinating on letting us go home. I blame the UTI he got when he was two weeks old and the three days we spent in the hospital that time. Where everyone wanted to know exactly how much he was eating at the same time that lactation consultants wanted to come in and observe me feeding him. My breasts to not have ounce markers on them. I blame thrush, which he got and keeps getting because of the prophylactic antibiotics he has to take every single day because he has Vesicoureteral Reflux. Every time his lips touch my breast, I wonder if he finally beat it and I'm giving it back to him again. I blame his pediatrician who started suggesting supplementing on day 3, who made us come in every other day to weigh him, completely throwing off carefully timed feeding and napping attempts for that day, in order to give me tangible evidence that I am a bad mother. But I wasn't doing anything wrong, and no it wasn't that I didn't have milk for him. He was fucking sick, you ass. I blame myself. For self-destructing at the hospital and just allowing him to not latch on those first couple of days because I was so fucking tired and because I was so fucking tired of people coming into our room and getting in my way. I thought it could wait until we got home and these assholes were out of our way. And now I watch video after video and read web page upon web page about how important those first couple of days are if a baby is ever going to latch. All of that blame to go around, but I take it out on him. I am ashamed at the things I have said to him, yelled at him, in frustration. To my tiny, perfect little person. Now I am on the brink. But of what? Exclusively pumping? After weeks of breastfeeding for an hour, followed by bottle feeding of expressed milk, followed by pumping. Weeks of gallons of water and mother's milk tea and the most disgusting tincture that smells and taste like rubbing alcohol and black licorice. Weeks of almond butter and cashews and brewer's yeast and hours and hours of pumping. I am making enough milk if only he would go get it. Formula feeding only? Zoloft? I am terrified to take Zoloft and give him breast milk, despite what my OB says. The fact is, everyone thinks it is okay but there have been no big studies and no one yet KNOWS that it causes any problems so they assume it won't. But is the alternative better? Am I hurting him more by being such a monster, even if he can't understand what I'm saying? If I could be sure I was only hurting me, I would proceed as I have been. I just want to love my baby again the way I did when I saw him fall out of my body onto the table, when they put him on my stomach, when I smelled his little head, when I stayed up all night holding him. I want the best for him, but he can't have the best because I'm incapable of giving it. 5:38 p.m. - 2014-01-06 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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