Breastfeeding woes

This blog is meant to be about Brody and the path to his arrival. However, since he's eats 8-12 times a day, breastfeeding has been consuming both his life and mine for the last 4 weeks. It's been a very difficult road for us and therefore seems fitting to write about it here.

Today, you'll hear from nurses, doctors, birthing class teachers and almost any book you read : Breastfeeding is the best for babies. There are a ton of benefits from breastfeeding and obviously I want to give my son the best start in life. So from the beginning I expected to breastfeed for at least 6 months.

However, for something that is supposed to be so natural (formula wasn't always around), it doesn't come naturally to everyone. For a variety of reasons, it was very difficult for me to breastfeed. Not only was it painful, but it became both physically and emotionally draining for me. To be completely honest, there were a couple nights where I cried while holding him due to the stress. (As a bit of background, I've never done well on lack of sleep - tears come easy when I'm sleep deprived)

Since Brody wasn't gaining weight as quickly as they wanted, I continued to breastfeed until he was back to his birthweight. At 3 weeks I decided to switch to exclusively pumping. I no longer nurse, but I feed Brody pumped breast milk in a bottle instead. He's still getting the benefit of breastmilk and I get to keep my sanity. There haven't been any tears since. Plus in the first week of pumping, he gained almost a pound. Obviously we're doing something right!

However, exclusively pumping isn't a picnic either. Not only do I spend 20 minutes feeding Brody a bottle, then I spend another 20 minutes or so pumping. Plus he's eating more than I can pump for him, so we are giving him one bottle of formula once a day.

I'm honestly not sure how long I can keep up the pumping schedule, but I'm taking it a day at a time. Even if "breast is best," I do believe that formula is not poison and I know a ton of smart, healthy adults that were fed formula as a baby. So stay tuned...