Cigarettes and Formula

I went out for coffee Thursday night with a new friend, Melissa. She, too, had to deal with low supply issues because of a breast reduction that she had had years ago. She combo breastfed/bottlefed her daughter until she was 16 months old. (What an inspiration!)

She knew that I've been struggling again and really pushed me to figure out why I'm being so hard on myself. I would never, ever be this hard on anyone else for breastfeeding, but for some reason I can't bring myself to be proud of myself, to be accepting...I just feel empty and sad for not being able to do what I wanted.

So I've been pondering this for the last few days. Why I can be harder on myself than I am on others is a bigger question than just this whole issue. But there's something else that I've hit on, which is my feelings of formula.

When I'm giving Lex a bottle of formula, I feel ashamed and dirty. Like it's something that I want to hide and just refuse to accept because it is so unnatural. This pretty much parallels my feelings of cigarettes. As an ex-smoker, I know that I didn't always feel this way about smoking...when it was just part of my routine and I wasn't thinking about it, I wouldn't feel like that. But I did always sort of hide my smoking...and hated it, too, especially the control it had over me.

The weird thing is that I would never, ever even think of saying to anyone that formula is something that you should be ashamed of using. I don't think I've ever even thought that to myself. But when I took the time to examine my feelings, here they all were.

So now this leads me to wonder if I am more upset at using formula than I am at not fully breastfeeding. I'm sure there's some sort of ying/yang element in there...one begets the other (except for bottle-feeding breastmilk, which does not bring about those same feelings for me).

I feel like I have been brainwashed by those "breast is best" messages out there. And brainwashed in the truest sense, as I didn't even realize this was what I was thinking and feeling subconsciously. But at least now I have a tactile starting place to moving forward, which is deprogramming this feeling around formula. Before this realization, I had already been thinking about calling formula "baby milk"...after all, expressed milk is called breast milk. Those breastfeeding evangelists out there insist on dubbing formula "artificial baby milk", but I think I'll take the opportunity to cross off that first word and make formula more affectionate-sounding.

Already when I pump, I tell Tommy that this is special baby milk. It is, in effect, all baby milk, right? Let the positive feelings begin trickling back in.

Photos by Tommy 2

Photos by Tommy

We discovered a while ago that Tommy enjoyed taking photos with our camera. First he just took pictures of monster truck videos that he watched on YouTube.

Lately our camera has been disappearing. When we find it, we also find a narrative of Tommy's world, complete with self-portraits and photo staging. Here's a couple of recent sets.

The beginning of the end

I can't pump anything, not a drop. I don't know why, but I can't, even after 3+ hours away from nursing. I am blaming it on the 4 PC After 8's I had today. I had been avoiding mint like mad until this.

This is really choppy; I'm in shock. I didn't expect it to go like this. I hope I am wrong but I'm worried I'm not. I'm not ready for this.

The worst thing about cleaning

The worst thing about cleaning is noticing the other stuff to be cleaned. Seriously.

It's not like the other stuff to be cleaned wasn't there before. It just hadn't been noticed yet and I kind of prefer it that way.

Today I cleaned the shutters and the stairs. Now I've noticed how dirty the railing is. I think I'll let that loom for a week or so.

Oh, procrastination, thou art my friend. The end.

Desperate to not be a housewife

Excusing the play on words of the popular TV show (which I quite liked in the first season, but has since then jumped the shark), this is me nowadays. Pretty desperate to escape the frame around me.

When I first went on mat leave, I was amazed at the burden of stress I felt lifted from my shoulders. No more crazy deadlines, office politics, balancing many different worlds and their various demands. Just being at home with the kids -- still work, but different and fulfilling.

I was amazed at how great it felt. I remembered my last mat leave and how desperate I was to get out and do something. This time around it was definitely different. Having Tommy to talk to (even though he's only 4) helped make it better. Having the house instead of a tiny apartment. Things were going along really well.

Recently, things haven't been as great. Besides dealing with internal conflict from breastfeeding, I feel like there is this housewife framework that has been growing tighter and tighter around me, boxing me in gradually. I didn't see it at first, it was too far away. But now I see it and am running around like a mouse in a maze, desperately trying to escape it.

It's just those usual things: get up, make breakfast, tidy up, make lunch, tidy up, make dinner, tidy up. It's the sameness of them all, the knowing exactly what is going to happen each and every day. Also, being the one person who does them all. Jim is great, but I've noticed more and more of the everyday stuff being left to me. Maybe I'm just making myself be the first one to do it, but it's still me. I can't remember the last time someone else has made dinner, vacuumed the floors, cleaned the bathrooms.

And so now I'm fighting against this framework. I don't want to be the housewife whose life revolves around these things. It goes against every bit of my self-identity. It makes me really feel like I'm imprisoned in this 1950s world where things like washing shutters, windows and stairs are all-important. And the funny thing is that they do feel kind of important; it drives me crazy to see them dirty and I find it fulfilling to have them clean. But I hate that I find it fulfilling. It seems so trite, so menial.

I know that unless I want to keep feeling this conflicted, I am going to have to temper my identity with something else right now, even if it's only just temporary. I guess I could just convince myself that going with the flow will make me happier and me being happier will make my family happier.

Maybe something like that will work, maybe not. I've been sticking my head in the sand for the last couple of weeks; sleeping a lot. I think I'll take it easy on myself this week while these things float around in my head and come to a resolution on the weekend.

More thoughts on breastfeeding

I'm sorry if this is getting to bore everyone, but I really need to get this out of my system and figure it out. It's not something that I push myself to obsess about, but it's ever present; every time I feed Lex, I think about it.

Today I was sitting outside on our swing after dropping off Tommy at school. Lex was fussy, so I was nursing him, but I knew that eventually I would have to go inside to get him a bottle. All I could think was how much I wanted to just be able to sit there and nurse him and have him be full. That's it. I don't want anything else, just to be able to do that one thing. I wouldn't care if I was sleep deprived, my house was a mess, I hadn't showered, or anything else. And I know it wouldn't make my life perfect or make him any better than the amazing baby he is right now, but my heart longs for it so much. So, so much. I don't know how to make it stop.

Last week, I was at the school's playground. I've been getting to know some of the moms. There's a particular group from India & Pakistan who are very friendly and love to talk to and cuddle Lex. They started talking about breastfeeeding their children and again, they all had so much milk...too much milk. I had to force myself to smile and tell them that I didn't have enough.

I know that in a year or so, I'm not going to care this much about it. It won't be everywhere like it is now. Lex won't be on formula, so I won't be reminded of it each time I feed him. I can't help but be angry that this is making his babyhood more difficult than it should be. And I hate it when women titter about how it is just all supply and demand, when it is not that simple for me.

I've been trying to dump some of these feelings into boxes so that I can deal with them, one by one. So far, I have:

1. Feeling judged by others. While I would like to be the person who could completely ignore everything that others do, I'm not. I can ignore quite a lot, but I'm human and sometimes these things get to me. This judging consists of a) people who just judge me for not breastfeeding and b) people who think that I didn't know enough or do enough to breastfeed and that if I had done something different then I would have been able to. The second group bugs me more...incenses me is more like it.
2. Feeling inadequate as a mom. This is the hardest, by far. And usually, it is this feeling that spins off from the other ones. e.g. I feel judged and then I feel inadequate. I react to this the most. I have no idea how to get past this. I feel helpless. I hate my body.
   
3. Feeling frustrated with the system. This is somewhat tied into 1b). The system that pushes breastfeeding on everyone. Breast is best, blah, blah, blah. Need I say more?

I'm sure there is more here, but I've only just begun this process.