Breastfeeding Is a Full-time Job (Part 1)

Current employees report perpetual leaking, late night working hours with no extra pay, and no vacation time!

I didn’t prepare for breastfeeding before I gave birth because I didn’t think I needed to — mentally, or otherwise. I figured it would go something like this: baby’s hungry, pull out a boob, feel the rush of oxytocin wash over me as I stare lovingly at the human I’m feeding with my own body. Simple! It’s only natural, right? Have a body? Feed the baby? Everyone’s happy, right?

…Silly old me.

Like seemingly everything on this journey through matrescence, there is unfortunately little oxytocin to be found in me and instead I’m crazed, dazed, and mixing tears with spilled milk.

I feel like I was hired for a job I wasn’t qualified for, and now I’m stuck working late night hours in a toxic work environment with a boss who rarely smiles. Breastfeeding is a full-time job and the hardest I’ve ever worked.

I’ve thought about putting in my two weeks’ notice since Week Two. Yet here I am, heading into Week Eight, still trying my best to make breastfeeding work. And because I’ve been able to push through discomfort and distress for two months now, after telling myself that I would quit week after week, I face an ongoing internal conflict: is this just hard, or do I really need to stop?

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Who Called the Lactation Police?

The first jolt to my breastfeeding experience came immediately after I gave birth and was wheeled into recovery. Only a few hours prior, I was zooming to the hospital with my husband and contracting in the operating room while getting prepped for my c-section. In the blink of an eye, I had a baby in my arms and a lactation consultant was asking me if I had any stored colostrum.

“Have you been hand expressing?” She asked me as I stared wide-eyed at the ceiling trying to process what I just experienced. “I have not, I’m two weeks early and this is my first baby.” I replied. “Oh, well you can start hand expressing weeks before you give birth!” Uh oh, have I already done something wrong?

Then, someone called the lactation police. A squad of nurses and lactation consultants rolled into my freshly postpartum space with flashing red and blue lights and the maddening sound of “WEE WOO WEE WOO BREAST IS BEST WEE WOO.”

My first nurse helped me hand express; she was quite helpful and encouraging. It was all downhill from there.

One nurse donned herself “Nurse Ratched” and told me that, and I quote, “formula is yucky.”

One lactation consultant was ecstatic to find my 20 mL collection of hand expressed milk squeezed by the first nurse. She told me, “This is plenty enough to feed your baby! It is actually all she needs while she’s here!” It wasn’t. While I was glad that my body immediately went into colostrum-producing mode, I had to repeatedly demand formula in the middle of the night to receive it. My baby drank an entire bottle of prepared formula over just a few hours. Apparently, my little drops were indeed not enough, and I was continuously fighting the urge to not feel guilty for feeding my child with “yucky formula” while feeling frustrated that I had to advocate for myself in my most vulnerable state, and also without any idea what I was doing as a first-time mom. I knew my baby was hungry — even despite the rhetoric of “Your body will do what it needs to do. She doesn’t need any formula.” But will my body do what it needs to do? It hasn’t always. What if I don’t produce milk at all? What if I can’t? Motherly instincts are vital. Well-intended but hollow quips won’t feed my baby. But formula will.

One lactation consultant told me she was on a “mission to teach all these young nurses how to help women lactate” and that she was “more experienced than everyone here” while mashing away on my postpartum body and condescending all of her coworkers.

One lactation consultant told me that I should use the hospital pump and not my own pump because the “Hospital pump is superior.” I said, “I’m not using the hospital pump at home, can you please teach me how to use my own?” She didn’t know how, so I sat on YouTube for 25 minutes trying to figure out how to put the parts together and what all the buttons meant.

One lactation consultant told me “breast is best,” which is not as bad as “formula is yucky” but is still cringey.

Several other lactation consultants rolled in at various times to help my baby learn to latch. “Try football hold!” “Try a nipple shield!” “Try not to cry!” But none of it worked for me and my baby. Eventually, they all blurred together and I was so frustrated by the ninth consultant that I refused to let anyone else referring to themselves in any way by “lactation” into my room.

I had incredible doctors and nurses during pregnancy and birth — but someone called the lactation police during hospital recovery and I think it tainted my breastfeeding experience from the start. Despite the rolling enclosure, not one educated me about supplementing, storing, engorgement, mastitis, D-MER, weaning, or any other realistic action I might face in my feeding journey.

Beware the Evil Mastitis Spirit!

A day after I was discharged from the hospital, my colostrum stopped and my real milk came in.

I was so excited. I would be able to feed my baby with my body! How cool is that? How lucky am I to be able to do this? And my transition milk is golden!

I celebrated my first few ounces with a heaping plate of chocolate cake, attached myself to my pump, and thought that I would soon be heading for breastfeeding bliss.

Except Joni never learned to latch, I engorged beyond belief, and the Evil Mastitis Spirit wreaked havoc on my body and soul. At one point, I was doubled-over with ice packs shoved into my sports bra, crawling around on the carpet like a creature wondering when the sharp pain, swelling, tenderness, and redness would leave so I could focus on my postpartum healing.

I defeated the Evil Mastitis Spirit with cold and warm compress, a warming lactation massager, many tears, and Game of Thrones to distract me from it all. I was determined to push through the discomfort, realizing that breastfeeding is a longterm game. If I could at least make it to Week Two, the engorgement will go down (hopefully), my milk will exit its transitional phase (hopefully), the pain will stop (so I’ve heard) and I can continue feeding my baby from my own supply (fingers-crossed).

Thankfully, it did get better…in some ways, but worse in others.

Pumping Joy? Pumping Hell?

Because of Joni’s latching issues, made near impossible by my own anatomy, I have become an exclusive pumper. I have not had any issues with supply, and for that I feel extremely grateful. However, an oversupply is another obstacle in itself — requiring three different bra sizes in one day, perpetual body dysmorphia during morning and afternoon engorgement, becoming one with the pumping machine like it’s an additional appendage, no sleep (because when the baby sleeps, I sleep pump), and being constantly covered in spilled and overflowing milk to maximize my overstimulation. Small sacrifices to feed my child, right? I should be happy that I can produce milk, right?

It’s not that straightforward. I feel like a milk maid. I feel frustrated that I can produce milk but I can’t actually feed on the breast. Does it even count? I have started to ask myself: why am I fighting so hard to accept that formula would be just fine and that I can stop at any point? I wrestle with duality. Pumping Joy and Hell.

Pumping Joy: I’m pumping milk.

Pumping Hell: I need to pump 6 to 8 times a day for 30 minutes to produce enough milk. 30 minutes turns into 45 minutes between cleaning and storage. 45 minutes turns into 60 minutes to catch pre and post pump letdown and excess.

Pumping Joy: I have a supply for my baby.

Pumping Hell: I cannot sleep more than 2.5-3 hours at a time, even if my husband takes a triple-shift, because I need to produce enough supply for my baby.

Pumping Joy: My baby latches onto the nipple shield, sometimes, eliminating a pump session in the evening.

Pumping Hell: My baby punches the nipple shield across the floor like a champion boxer. Also, the standard size is too small for me, but the size that fits is too big for her tiny little mouth, and now I’m bleeding, so I guess it’s back to the pump!

PUMP PUMP PUMP! The sound of the Spectra S2 will forever be the soundtrack to my nightmares.

I want to feed my baby what is best for her. I want to breastfeed — I may never be able to again. I want to appreciate every single session that my body, by what feels like magic, produces milk. But I don’t want to do it at the expense of my mental state. Because even if “breast is best” (fed is best), I cannot be a good mother if pumping exclusively is sucking the life out of me.

There is a physiologic condition called Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex (D-MER) that causes intense negative feelings associated with breastfeeding. It has been generally associated with the drop in dopamine during a letdown. After experiencing extreme hollow, nauseous, and anxious feelings during all of my pump and attempted breastfeeding sessions, I learned about D-MER: first from one of my best friends, a champion breastfeeding badass who I admire and love so much, and then from my OBGYN who confirmed that what I was experiencing was indeed D-MER.

The knowledge that this condition exists, which is physiologic in nature and not psychological, helped me feel immensely relieved about what I have been wrestling with these past eight weeks — apparently, my body really loves its dopamine and rebels aggressively when it’s depleted.

It has already been eight weeks; it has only been eight weeks. The duality of all things motherhood constantly reminds me that everything is temporary and nothing is without reward. For all the frustration breastfeeding has caused me, it has also brought me appreciation for the way my body can grow, birth, and feed another human, and it has made me feel more admiration for all of the women who can breastfeed, or choose to breastfeed, at all.

It has taken me three weeks to write this post — in between constant bottle-washing, baby crying spells, feedings, and naps, it has taken on new form over and over again. When I first started writing this post, I thought I was stopping my milk production cold-turkey. That was during Week 5. Peak of Purple Crying and engorgement.

Then Week 6 came.

And now it’s Week 7.

And on Saturday it will be Week 8.

And I’m still here, and my baby is still fed, and somehow, every day, it does get a little bit easier.

Tomorrow I might wake up and throw my pumping bottle at the wall like a dart. I might leak through my catch-pads, straight to my mattress, and cry over spilled milk. Or I might wake up at 6am to make my baby a fresh morning bottle. I might pop-open my new carton of formula powder and start to supplement. I might make an entire pitcher of formula and buy cabbage leaves and leave this pumping era behind me for good.

I’m not entirely sure where I’m headed on this breastfeeding journey, now that I’ve simmered on this post for three weeks.

I said I would quit, and I still haven’t.

All I know is that every day, when my baby is fed and full and smiling and cooing, no matter where the milk came from, I’m doing something right.

Xo,

Violet Carol

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More words from Violet Carol can be found on Instagram.

Other Mother Love Letters posts can be read here.

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