Being a MOOmmy: An udderly fantastic job.

            There is nothing in this world more humbling than being hooked to an electric breast pump.  AND this is coming from a woman who has had two c-sections and went through labor through the point of pushing with a natural birth.  I have had people help me bathe when I looked my absolute worse and people have literally seen my guts, but nothing is as awkward as using a breast pump.  Please don’t let this deter you if you have never used one but may need to in the future.  It is a perfectly fine way to get milk for your baby.  I did it for Princess.  I also hated ever second of it. 

            I never really pressured myself over breastfeeding with Princess, but when it was easy for me, I decided to devote myself to it.  It was a great experience in some ways and one that almost cost me my sanity in others.  I remember truly feeling like a milk cow (except for cows have it easy in this respect since they don’t have to deal with being socially acceptable).  My entire being was wrapped around this need to feed my child constantly…well almost.  Every two hours doesn’t sound that bad until you live it.  Every two hours means that from the time your baby starts eating this time, to the time she starts eating again, two hours have passed.  Depending on age, your baby will nurse anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes.  This doesn’t leave a lot of down time.  Now there are many ideologies for feeding schedules.  1. The timed method—You feed your baby every two or three hours to the minute by watching the clock.  If your baby gets hungry half way through that time period, they scream until it is time to eat, or they give up and wait patiently.  2.  The demand fed method—You feed your baby when she is hungry (no matter how long it has been) by relying on signals from your child.  3.  The blended method, which combines the two above.  Princess was demand fed, which basically meant that whenever she convinced me she was hungry, I fed her.  I wasn’t hard to convince.  Demand feeding worked for me, because I was never confident in how much she was eating.  She was a great nurser, but a poor eater in general (she still is for that matter).  She was born quite large, but she is built small, so I always wanted to feed her as much as possible.  I don’t believe that demand feeding was the best choice for my sanity, but I also don’t think the timed method is perfect either.  They both have flaws.  With one, there is a risk that your child will have to be hungry in order to keep him on schedule, with the other, you risk teaching him that the answer to every little crisis in his little life is fixed by shoving a boob in his mouth.  I’m not sure how the blended method really marries the two perfectly even after reading how to do so.  It seems that the mother’s natural tendency to either dictate when the child can or can’t eat or the tendency to compensate with more feedings would shine through.

            Anyway, back to the point.  Princess was demand fed, and boy was she demanding.  I loved nursing, because it made me feel special.  I unashamedly admitted then and now that I needed Princess to love me more than she loved anyone else, and she did…for a while.  Then I grew up and allowed her father some equality in her life.  While she was nursing early on, I was her prisoner.  It was the price of being loved the most.  I had to be with her at all times.  OR I had to pump.  I remember the first time I was brave enough to pull out the electric breast pump my friend lent me and “hook up”.  (As a side note, the “hands free” thing is open to interpretation and NEVER worked that way for me)  My husband and mother couldn’t even hide how horrified they were when they walked in on that scene for the first time.  My mother described it as looking animalistic, while my husband was convinced it had to be painful.  It wasn’t really.  It was worse to see than it felt honestly, but I despised it for some reason.  I hated it so much so, that I knew I would supplement with my next child to keep from having to do so.  I know women who could never get their child to latch on who pumped for anywhere from the suggested 6 weeks to an entire year and then bottle-fed the breast milk to their baby.  I applaud them.  I do not see how they did it.  It would have to take up a majority of your life to do that.   

I once saw a picture in National Geographic of a tribal woman sitting on a log weaving a basket.  Next to her sat her young child, breast-feeding!!!  Now, at that time, I thought it was a frightening display of what time, child bearing, and gravity could do to the female body.  I have now come to realize that it is an awesome display of multi-tasking.  I have managed to do simple things like talk on the phone or eat while nursing, but something that required two hands was not an option. 

            I never thought about not being able to breast-feed the twins at least at some level, but as I said before, I knew I would supplement.  When breast feeding was failing for me, I found myself nursing both babies at once and then bottle feeding them immediately after.  It was like feeding four babies, and it made me give up on breastfeeding at all rather early on.  I felt like a failure to some degree only because I did it so well with Princess.  However, I also felt like it might be healthier for me mentally to not have all of that pressure with two infants and a toddler depending on me.  So, I turned in my breast pump and went to Wal-Mart to buy more bottles…a LOT more bottles.

            I feel the need to defend both types of mother here.  Mothers who breast-feed feel that mothers who bottle-feed have it easier, while mothers who bottle-feed feel that mothers who breastfeed have it easier.  Both are a lot of work.  The conveniences of breastfeeding are 1. No bottles, 2. No nighttime preparations, 3.  The milk is always the right temperature and 4. You don’t spend your whole life washing bottles (keep in mind I’m washing for two).   The conveniences of bottle-feeding are 1.  Not being excluded in public 2. Not being half naked (or at least mildly exposed) underneath a thin barrier in public 3. Others can feed your baby and 4. Breast milk is free, while formula costs a FORTUNE! 

            What I’ve learned in my time at pasture as well as in the check out line is that what really matters is that your child is fed and loved.  The twins have yet to accuse me of loving Princess more, and I can guarantee Tank and Tinker are both well fed and pretty attached to their mommy.  I don’t think they’ll hold it against me as adults that they weren’t nursed, just as I don’t think Princess will be ashamed of the bond we shared.

In the grand scheme of things, both options are a labor of love and I don’t think either was more convenient in the long run than the other.  Feel free to disagree.