mommy guilt.

i have about 20 pending blog posts.
something about caring for a newborn makes it impossible to do anything. life is now on a three hour cycle. remington is like a clock. almost to the minute, every three hours he requires feeding, changing, sometimes changing again, and then you might have the remaining two hours to sleep, clean, launder, leave the house for a walk, or consider blogging, before he wakes up.
i'm not complaining though. really, besides some postpartum emotions that overflow, i've never felt so happy.

but i do hate feeling behind in anything, even if it's just feeling behind in the posts i want to do. so i'm going to combine several topics here to ... what's that word you use to say you're combining things to save time?
yeah, pretty tired all the time, so my vocabulary might suffer.
it's fine.

so the combined topics here are:

mommy guilt
breastfeeding
how much i appreciate my mother and travis


all right. this starts about twenty minutes after remy was born. it was time for the thing i have dreaded and feared all my life. breastfeeding. but after what had just happened to me, you know, birthing a baby, whipping out a boob and shoving it in remington's mouth wasn't quite as weird or awkward as i had imagined. don't get me wrong, part of me was like, oh kay, everyone has seen every other part of my body and now the nurse is touching my boob. but in the afterglow of remington's arrival, it wasn't that big a deal.

he seemed to "latch on" and it hurt, but i had expected that and figured it would get better. he ate for about ten minutes on each side and the nurses were ecstatic about it. at this point, i was so tired and hungry and excited, that the room was spinning. i figured, oh good, breastfeeding will be a snap. all that worry for nothing.

until a few hours later, when after our families had filed out of the room and i'd eaten the best grilled cheese sandwich of my life. remington was happy in my arms. travis and i were glowing. then the nurse came in and asked how long ago remy had eaten. oh yeah, you have to keep feeding these things. whip out the boob and shove it into his mouth. i expected the same success we had had earlier.

no such luck. this time, as his lips and tongue rubbed against my nipples, it hurt. more than earlier. i immediately pulled him off, which also hurt. the nurse said he might be having trouble latching and she tried to help. and then she had to leave for another patient and travis and i were alone trying to figure this out. i kept trying to feed remington, but my nipples were burning. ten more minutes on each side, with my toes curling and travis rubbing my shoulders and encouraging me, and then i was sobbing. not just because of the pain, but from the craziness of the whole day, the whole pregnancy.

we sent remy to the nursery and they said they would bring him to me to eat, which terrified me, but i figured i'd deal with that in a few hours.

morning came too soon and remington was brought in to eat. oh, i had such mixed feelings about seeing him. on one hand, here was this beautiful boy i'd brought into the world just yesterday. on the other, seeing his little face meant that i had to try to feed him and that meant pain. in the bathroom mirror, i looked myself in the eyes and said, "you can do this. you can do this."

somehow, it hurt far worse. my nipples were already sore enough that my clothes rubbing against them was painful, and so this wet little mouth sucking away felt more like sandpaper. sandpaper being rubbed back and forth over and over and over. my toes were curled, my back arched, and i realized i was clutching remington's little body too tightly. travis was standing behind me, rubbing my shoulders and probably feeling pretty helpless. the nurse came in and brought a nipple shield, a little piece of plastic she instructed me to place over my nipple. then she left the room. i was confused because the shield's "nipple" wasn't the same shape as mine. how was milk going to get through the shield into remy's mouth? i tried the shield and that seemed to make the pain worse.

after trying for some time, i handed remy to travis and crawled into bed, defeated. why wasn't this working? this was not the way i wanted to start our new little life together.

travis and i decided to attend the breastfeeding class that was held daily. wearing a hospital gown, a giant diaper for my bleeding vagina, my hair still unwashed and messy from the day before, i limped down the hall and into the room where the "lactation specialist" would hopefully have answers for me.

the class ended with me in tears and the lactation specialist promising to come to our room to show me correct techniques. everything the nurse had told me about how to hold him, where to put his mouth, was completely opposite of what this specialist was teaching.

we headed back to our room. when i saw the clock, my heart dropped. it had been three hours. i needed to try to feed remington again. please no. please no. please don't make me see my son, because when i see him, that means i'm going to have to literally grit my teeth in pain. these are thoughts i'm having, thoughts i was filled with guilt to be having.

travis insisted on my mom coming over, knowing i needed her. she was there when the lactation specialist came in the room and was unable to get remington to latch. she told me to just "express the colostrum into a spoon and feed it to him that way" which is a fancy, nice sounding way to say, "squeeze your overly sore boob and nipple until a strange, thick, yellowish liquid comes out a tiny bit at a time." after these words of wisdom, she left.

then several hours later, it was the same story. toe curling pain for a half hour, worse with every feeding, travis and my mom trying to help me. sandpaper being scraped over my nipples. the new nurse wasn't helping either. she kept saying, "we advocate for breastfeeding here. just keep trying. pain is a normal part of breastfeeding. it gets better after a few weeks."

finally, my mom looked up at her and said, "oh, did you breastfeed your children?"
the nurse looked a little sheepish when she said she hadn't. that she had, gasp, formula fed. "but we advocate the breast. it's better for everyone." she insisted.

my mom, who gets a bit "mother bear" whenever one of her children is suffering, looked her in the eyes and said, "you don't understand this pain unless you have breastfed a child who didn't latch right. it hurts. and formula fed babies do just fine." she gestured to me. "this girl was formula fed and she got straight A's at the university of utah. she was healthy and perfect."

the nurse shut up.
and my mom is the greatest mom.

at this point, it was time to try feeding remington on my other breast and as we switched him over, the tears spilled out again. what an awful feeling, that you are responsible for nourishing this tiny human and it is the most painful thing you could have imagined. did i have to grit my teeth and push through this? the guilt i felt for even thinking, "formula fed" was all encompassing.

and yet, a piece of my mind was saying, "wait a minute. it's not enough that you were sick for months? it's not enough that you have scars on your arms and scar tissue in your veins from needles? it's not enough that your teeth are decaying from unending vomiting? stitches in your vagina? your body stretched and changed? all of that wasn't enough to prove your "motherhood?" now you have to rub your nipples raw until they bleed to prove that you love your child?"

but that guilt, it didn't let up.

travis took my hand and looked at my puffy red face. "collette. i think we should talk about doing formula." and then i started crying harder and shaking my head. no no no, i have to do this, we can't do that. he told me it wasn't worth it if i couldn't bond with remington, if i dreaded seeing my own son. he told me that this didn't make me a quitter, which is exactly what i was thinking. a huge weight was lifted from me. having travis and my mom both supporting this, this decision i wanted but felt too guilty to choose, oh how that saved me.

travis continued to make me feel better by making jokes, telling me the guys at the station had told him (months ago) that breastfeeding was overrated and that those boobs were for him, not a baby. (and for my feminist friends who might be shaking their heads at the notion of my breasts being travis's play things, please know that travis knows they are mine to share with him only if i choose to. he wouldn't have said that to me unless he knew i was good with it.)

so the nurse brought us some formula and i fed remington.
he is gaining over an ounce of weight every day and has grown over an inch.
he sleeps great, (knock on wood) he has twelve thousand bowel movements a day, and he is a happy and content baby.
the hospital sent us home with a breastfeeding log, to keep track of what time we feed while we learn. travis crossed out "breastfeeding log" and wrote in, "bottle feeding, fool!"
and i don't dread seeing remington, in fact, feeding times are kind of my favorite.

and yet, i still hear this voice in my head.
oh so you gave up breastfeeding after two whole days? it takes longer than that for your breasts to stop hurting. 
but after only two days of trying, my nipples were scabbed over and bleeding for two weeks. two weeks!
remington has a small mouth and the side of his lip stayed curled under and he wouldn't latch and-
and you gave up after two days. don't you know that breast milk is better for your baby? couldn't you have just sacrificed this for the sake of your child's health, brain development, and nutrition? 

funny thing though, our pediatrician told us that we should be supplementing our formula with omega-3, because the formula we are using only has as much omega-3 as the average american woman's breast milk has, which is lower than what is recommended. breast milk isn't perfect either. don't get me wrong, i know the benefits of breastfeeding. just saying.

and shouldn't i get to choose who i share my breasts with, whether sexually or for breastfeeding? aren't my breasts mine? do i have to feel judged and guilty for not sharing them? even if i only chose to stop breastfeeding because i just didn't want to, shouldn't that be enough of a reason?

the mommy guilt. it kills me. i already experienced it with pregnancy.
didn't take prenatals because they made me throw up even more.
drank diet dr. pepper almost daily because it made my migraines and nausea more manageable.
took medications while pregnant.
didn't take the glucose test because i knew it would make me sicker, even though it meant fighting with the nurse about it.
before remy was even here, i was already feeling pretty guilty.

and how could i not? our lds culture is obsessed with motherhood. we all judge each other for every little minuscule decision we make.  well i don't want any part of that and i don't want to care about what others think about my decisions.

but i do.
will keep working on that.

thank goodness for travis, because i would probably still be trying to breastfeed and my nipples probably would have fallen off by this point.
thank goodness for my mom, who stood up to that nurse for me and has always taught me the importance of being a mother bear for your child.
thank goodness for remington, who loves me even if i feed him formula.

xo.