Nurturing

I must apologize to any man who happens upon this post because of the subject. Check back for another installment of my normal ramblings. Brace yourself, I'm going to talk about breastfeeding.

When K was born she was huge at 9 pounds, 12 ounces, with a perfect round face and a sprinkling of strawberry-blond hair. I was so hopped up on painkillers and the euphoria of my firstborn that I barely knew what this thing was they had just placed on my chest much less having the desire to feed her. After she had been weighed, checked, and bathed, they brought her to me and I got to really look at this beautiful baby that had, only a few minutes earlier, been living inside me.


She was rooting, opening her mouth, a sign that she was hungry. The nurse tried to show me how to feed her but I was still reeling from all the drugs they had given me that I didn't really want to do it then. And, frankly, neither did she. She tried to eat but didn't like it. We tried several different methods of getting my milk into her and most of them worked except the one I really wanted.


We both eventually got the hang of it but I never felt that "bond" I was supposed to feel. Sure, I loved K with a love I had never experienced before but that special time of nurturing her with something only I could give her wasn't what I wanted it to be. And it wasn't what she wanted it to be, either. So, after 4 months we switched to formula.


I was devastated. I felt like a failure as a mother, as if I were somehow less of a mother because I didn't continue to breastfeed. I would see my friends, still nursing their babies who were older than K and I felt like an outcast, no longer part of an exclusive, special club that I wanted and almost needed to belong to. Was I horrible for giving her a bottle? No. Did it make me a bad mother? No. But I still felt that way.


When L was born, I was determined for it to be different. And it was. She caught on much more quickly than K and I was the pro that I wanted to be. She did what she was supposed to do, my body did what it was supposed to do and we sailed into the mother/daughter relationship beautifully. But I still didn't have that bond with her. After 9 months, we switched to the bottle.


Jump ahead 3 years and everything changed. H has been a completely different story. I don't know if it's because he's a boy, because he's my last, or because of the circumstances surrounding his birth that make this nursing experience so different. It's probably a combination of the three. I feel a sense that he truly needs me, that he needs that comfort that only I can give him. Both of the girls are cuddlers, as is H, but he needs something different than they do.


I didn't get to hold H until he was 3 days old. I realize that many mothers of preemies don't get to hold their babies for weeks or months but those 3 days were an eternity to me. And when the day nurse told us that after shift change we would be able to hold him, I was ecstatic. I cried at this news and the hours from 6:30-9:00 PM ticked by more slowly than the pregnancy itself. And the feeling I had when the nurse picked him up out of his special NICU bed and placed him in my arms, wires and IV tubes dangling out from his blanket, oxygen tube on his face and all, can only be described as elation. He settled in, knowing my voice and my smell, the touch that only his mother could provide. I had only been able to hold his tiny little hand or foot for 3 days and now I was able to cuddle him in my arms, providing a security he had not felt for some time. He was still getting his nutrition through the IV but it would be less that 24 hours before he would get to try a bottle of breast milk for the first time and less than 48 before I got to try to nurse him for the first time.


He took to it right away even though it exhausted him. He eventually got strong enough to take everything I had to offer and we know now that he is doing just fine. He is over 20 pounds and growing like a weed, mostly getting his nutrition from breast milk for the first 5 months.


However, the weaning has begun. I promised myself that I would give him a year, that I would provide that for him as it really is the best start you can give your baby. Any time I thought about quitting, I would look down at him and know that I was giving him something that no one else could, providing immunities his body so desperately needs. I finally understood the bond that all the mothers were talking about, the special time of nurturing that they had experienced.


I don't know that I'm ready to give all that up. I still feed him first thing in the morning and just before bed. I guess it's that comfort thing, both for him and for me. I need to be needed, to feel that I'm giving him something unique, and he needs that comfort from his Mama.