Breast Feeding

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So as most of you know, I have had my baby. I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Nori, on September 28, 2010. He weighed 7lbs 8ounces. He was 20.5 inches long. He did not come out the conventional way - I had a c-section. I do not regret it because if I had pushed any longer it would have been an emergency c-section and I did not want to put my baby in distress. The labour story itself is very long and amusing at times. I say amusing now because I am not in the moment anymore. I am just glad that I did not go into the delivery room with a set plan in mind because after 45 hours of labor one cannot really be set in stone with their ideals. Babies come out whatever way they want... not what I want.

ANYWAY, this post is about breast feeding. I recently decided not to breast feed. It was not an easy decision but I feel it was the right decision. There are numerous reasons why. My intention was to breast feed for as long as possible. Who knew that 4 weeks was what 'as long as possible' meant. Nori unfortunately swallowed meconium prior to coming out. Sadly his first experience of having anything in his mouth was a tube down his throat sucking out the meconium. So needless to say, when it came to breast feeding, he was having none of it. I felt bad for him and wished to help him work through his trauma but sadly he was unable to tell me how he really felt. I tried to breast feed but had to supplement. After bringing him home I supplemented him on breast milk and formula... My body was not producing anything... and he was not latching properly.

Funny enough, all of the above things they do not go over in the prenatal class... one of the many things I felt lied to about. I just remember the woman telling us that breast feeding is best and throw away the formula because if we use it once then we will remember how easy it was to formula feed with a bottle. Well, given my experience, breast was not best. Not only was he not latching, Nori was reacting poorly to my breast milk. I have no idea why.

So my beef here is not to tell you my sordid story about why I am not breast feeding - almost feeling like I need to justify my reasons to you. My beef here is to really question why people almost judge you for not doing... or at least that's my experience. I almost feel like I have to tell my whole story as to why I'm not breast feeding in order for people to understand or accept what choice I have made. The worst was the doctor. I told her I stopped and she tried to tell me how good it is for babies (like I did not know already) and asked many questions as to why I did not want to breast feed anymore and that breast is best crap. I just looked at her, answered her questions and said I was a formula fed baby and as far as I can tell, I was fine - physically anyway. Being adopted I did not really have a choice as to whether I was breast fed or not... formula was the only option. I felt that my doctor was trying to convince me, without actually saying it, that I was making a mistake and I needed to give it another try. I was not impressed.

Recently, I was at a restaurant and had Nori with me and this woman asked how old he was and he was about 5 weeks at the time and she said her niece just had a baby and was about 6 weeks old. She went on to say how great her niece was breast feeding, tough at first but she showed her how to do it and now it is going so great. My first thought was "who says that?" Of all the things to say, she tells me about her breast feeding niece. It was bizarre.

So here I am with a 6 week old baby that I am unable to breast feed due to circumstances out of my control... it is what it is and I refuse to let other women make me feel bad about it. This is just another experience telling me that we never know why people do what they do or what their circumstances are.