Boob vs Bottle REAL STORIES

It is the debate of the century.

Will you nurse or bottle feed??

Many people will ask you this question.  It is kind of personal....but that is because it is a hot topic.

Try to have a plan before baby comes...or at least have a thought process.

Here was my story of exlusively breastfeeding with my first born:  

I went to a breastfeeding class when I was 7 months pregnant and FREAKED out.  They showed this national geographic video of the most horrific boobs I have seen in my life.  THEN, they showed a two year old go down a slide and run over to his mommy, lift up her shirt and nurse.  

I was totally turned off.   

I didn't think nursing was for me.   

However, I went into the delivery room with the mind set that I would try it.  If it worked, great.  If it didn't, that was okay too.  

No expectations.   

When my son was born, I was hooked. It was not easy...we really struggled, actually...especially with him being three weeks early.  But, it was this instant connection that I can only explain to my nursing friends.  It was our time together.  Something that only I could provide for him.  And it became an emotional bond between us.  

I did not have expectations with my length of time.  First, I said I would nurse for a few weeks. I then extended myself until maternity leave was over.  Next, I said I would nurse until he was 6 months...

...but, I had this "problem" that was NOT a problem to most people. I produced an over-abundance of milk.  There was NO WAY in h-e-l-l that I was going to let myself "dry out" when I couldn't even go three hours without throbbing.  SO~I ended up nursing my son till he was 13 months.  

I would not trade any of those moments for anything.

Breastfeeding worked for me.  

It may not work for you...or you may choose bottle feed from the beginning.  

Bottle Feeding

I actually could not find anyone who decided to exclusively bottle feed from the beginning.  Did you??  If so, tell us your thoughts! 

My dear friend, Kristy, over at Avery&Elliott.com wrote a piece on trying to breastfeed....this is some GOOD stuff

Here is Kristy's story of TRYING to breast feed:

Hi. My name is Kristy and I suck at breastfeeding.

When I was pregnant with my #1, I took the classes, I read the books, I BOUGHT the Medela breast pump. Yeah. Bought it.

I was COMMITTED to breastfeeding her.

We are all aware of the wonderful benefits of breastfeeding. The nutrition, the weight loss (So that might have been a HUGE factor in my eagerness to do it. Don’t hate.), the cost savings, the fact that they will be smarter, healthier, in my mind BETTER kids…all of these things made me think breastfeeding was a NO BRAINER.

Why on earth would anyone choose to NOT breastfeed? THE HORROR!

So you can only imagine how devastated I was when the whole thing blew up right in my face.

In February of 2008, in a hospital right outside of Dallas, I gave birth to the most precious baby girl, Avery. While in the hospital, Avery initially did ok with the whole breastfeeding thing. Huge emphasis on “ok”. There were no fireworks blasting, there was no mother and child bonding in peace. It was hard work. They would bring her to us from the nursery every couple of hours for night feedings, and it was an hour of sheer torture to try to get her to stop crying, latch on, and for the love of God….EAT something. She never really would. Did I mention Avery cried a lot? She did. A lot.

They asked me if I wanted to give her a bottle, and I refused. I knew if I went down that road, we would never make it work.

I stuck to my guns. But the more time went on…the fussier Avery became. I found peace only in the idea that if we tried hard enough and stuck to it…she would catch on.

I took her to her routine pediatric visit a few days after she was born, and to my horror, she was losing weight. My pediatrician immediately made me an appointment with a lactation consultant at the hospital. With tearful eyes, I picked up my crying, hungry baby girl and rushed over to the hospital.

There I sat in a cold room, waiting as I watched the nurse unwrap my baby girl and put her on the scale. The scale that was quickly becoming my enemy.

I then stripped down and sat there topless as my nurse looked on…coaching me along the way.  Avery cried, she pushed me away, she bit me, I finally got her to latch on, she let go. After a 30 minute torture session, they took her and put her back on the scale. She hadn’t gotten enough. Try again.

With tears in my eyes, I tried again. She would latch sometimes, and eat a little…but it just wasn’t enough. For me to continue this…they said that I would have to feed her more often, every 90 minutes, to make sure she was getting enough. 

Each feeding took 45 minutes to an hour anyway. You start to factor in doing that every 90 minutes, and there wasn’t a lot of down time.

For the next couple of days, I sat in my room in the rocking chair, crying a lot, trying my hardest to make it work. In between the constant feedings, I would try to shower, sleep, eat, and mentally prepare myself for the next shift. Often times, Avery would have just fallen asleep, and I would have to strip her down flick her foot, and wake the poor girl to go at it again. I am not going to lie, I was losing hope, and the exhaustion was setting in.

This is NOT what I had imagined it would be.

At the end of Avery’s first week in the world….her tired mama feel asleep after lunch. During my nap, my mom did what any loving parent and grandparent would do. She made Avery a bottle.

A bottle that she sucked down.

When I woke up, Matt brought be into the family room and sat me down on the couch to break the news to me.

I was devastated. I was relieved. I was exhausted.

But mostly, I had failed.

For those of you who know me, you know that this is something that I don’t like to do.  And for most of my life up to this point, failure was something that I was able to steer clear of.

Funny how this tiny six-pound baby could bring ME, a hard working, go get ‘em grown women to her knees.

Avery had just given me my first lesson in parenting.  No matter who you are, no matter how hard you try…sometimes things just don’t work out the way you planned them to. Insert parental epiphany HERE.

Back to the failure…I accepted the fact that I would have a sickly child who would be below average on the smart kid scale…and that I would be super fat forever. It was going to be ok. I just wanted her to be ok.

I wish I could say it was all rainbows and butterflies once we went to the bottle. But all of our problems weren’t immediately over once we gave Avery formula. Turns out, she has a milk intolerance, which is PROBABLY why she didn’t want mine!

Poor girl spit up all the time. We had a textbook colicky baby on our hands.

We switched her to soy formula.

It helped a lot.

We started putting rice cereal in her bottle to make it heavy so gravity would keep it  down.

It helped a little more.

We crushed up Prevacid and put it in that same bottle, and it helped a little more.

I felt like Tom Cruise in Cocktail making my baby’s bottles. But hey….whatever works.

About the time Avery was 7 months old, my mom started to realize that Avery wasn’t wearing bibs in every picture anymore. The spitting up had finally slowed down.

I am happy to report that Avery is a flourishing 4 year old these days. Low and behold…she is healthy, and she is brilliant. Come to find out, kids who have formula as infants aren’t always special. You can laugh at that idea…but I was ready for her to ride the short bus to school. She likes to read, play with her legos, and ride her bike.

Isn’t it funny how things work out? I praise God for my parenting boot camp that He put me through with Avery during week one of her life. I learned SO MUCH from it.

As a parent, it’s important for us to appreciate what I like to call “the space between.” Between where we set our expectations, and where things actually end up.  To me, that isn’t always defined as disappointment anymore.  This is the space where, as a parent, we stretch and grow. Stretching and growing is never a bad thing, right?

Side note: #2 came along a couple of years after Aves, and he breastfeed brilliantly. GO FIGURE. I only did it for a few months. I had learned a valuable lesson from Avery that babies are JUST FINE with they drink formula from a bottle, and daddy taking a few night feedings after I gave it up for sure saved my sanity. Did I mention I don’t do well with the whole no sleeping thing?

My advice to any new parent on breastfeeding is this:

It should make you smile more than it makes you cry. Every mom and every baby are completely unique…and only YOU know what is really best for your baby.

The world likes to throw a lot of things at us about HOW we should be as parents. For example: how messed up was my vision of breastfeeding before I had Aves? Thanks, world for making me feel so bad at sucking at it! Use the books, websites, advice from others…use it all as a guide, but never as the “be all to end all”.

There are no hard and fast rules in parenting. Just about the time you think you have something figured out…that child of yours will send you reeling. It’s just the way it is, and it’s wonderful. Once I embraced it, it taught me to relax, have fun, and enjoy the ride.

 

Oh, and one last piece of advice…never BUY the breast pump. Just rent it.
Trust me on that one.

Love,

Kristy

What if I cannot nurse but have the breast milk???    Blog Post coming soon!  Get ready to Pump It Up!

www.avery&elliot.comwww.averyandelliot.com