The unexpected Women Supporting Women Trilogy (Friendship, Fark off* and Frenemies) last week really took it out of me. It's hard for me to sustain thoughtful and deep. I'm much better at frivolous and shallow. However, there is a sad matter that I briefly mentioned on Friday and has stayed sad all over the weekend. It's Gisele Bundchen and the booby debate.
I'm sad because I don't understand why breastfeeding is such a loaded topic. It's such a personal, personal thing, yet as a society we judge, we criticise, we gloat, we complain and we sneer. I'm not going to go further into what I think of Gisele Bundchen and her thoughtless remarks (she is, after all, recovering from being runover by a Bugaboo) but I am going to tell you about my own experience with breastfeeding. I feel the need to share.
I struggled with breastfeeding. Struggled and struggled. I did everything I possibly could for every one of my three children, but it's never felt enough.
After a shaky, emotional, difficult eight weeks, I finally got Maxi-Taxi feeding and happy and maintained breastfeeding until just after 12 months (thank you ABA!). My milk supply was never great and we needed a nipple shield to begin with, so feeding, especially in the early months, took forever. I dedicated myself completely to getting the feeding going. I kept a feeding journal (I'm that kinda gal) and some days that child was on the boob for up to 14 hours a day. Really. But we got the milk going and everything was calm and lovely after those first weeks. I even picked up the night feeds again at eight months when I went back to work in an effort to keep the breastfeeding going for as long as we could (WMG? Yes, a little!)
Cappers went straight on and was breastfed until almost six months when she self-weaned. Bit mortifying, but a bit of a relief, really. She hadn't been thriving on the boob as my milk supply was dodgy and I just couldn't devote the same amount of time to my second born as I could to my first born. Reality bites. By six months, we were both really over it and she was close to eating 'real food' anyway. Putting her onto bottled milk at that stage just felt right. Consequently, I didn't contact the ABA about her self-weaning because as much as I had valued their support in the past, I just didn't feel like a big lecture. We both moved on to bottles without a hitch.
Then along came The Badoo. She was a sluggish, enormous newborn She had been breech and 'stuck' so she didn't move much in utero and was consequently... er... fat. And hungry. And The Badoo. On first presentation of the breast, a little hand leapt out of the wrap and slapped the boob away. I couldn't believe my eyes and nor could the midwife. We both burst out laughing.
I stopped laughing very quickly because The Badoo wouldn't go near the boob at all. She would get her mouth to the nipple and... nothing. Her sucking reflex sucked. She just never caught on and consequently breastfeeding just wasn't an option. She preferred having a bottle poured down her throat.
I didn't take the news lightly. For over eight weeks I expressed milk. Remember that low milk supply? It would take me over an hour to pump 150mls. I would get up for the night feeds, attempt to get her on the breast, feed her a bottle and then sit there with my electric pump for hours, pump, pump, pump. To this day, when I hear the suck and wheeze of an electric breastpump, I feel cold and lonely and tired and defeated.
The Badoo had a few other 'breechy' birth issues and at eight weeks we were due to go back to her Paediatrician for a check-up. Dr Lilystone is an ancient, kindly, old-school kind of doctor and.. get this... he bulk-bills. A specialist who bulk-bills? Immediately you can tell that he's one of the good guys.
I poured it all out to him. How sad I was at this failure to provide basic nourishment to my child. How I had managed with her siblings and I felt I was really letting her down. How I worried that she wouldn't be as clever, as beautiful, as happy because she would be formula-fed. How she just wasn't interested, even though I had been trying and trying and trying. His response was simply, "Maybe she's French".
"I beg your pardon?" I said, thinking did he not hear me?; thinking maybe it's time he retired.
"Well, only a really small minority of French women breastfeed," he explained. "And the French seem to be doing okay."
The relief I felt was instantaneous. He's right, I thought. The Badoo will be okay, breast or none. It's not the end of the world. I'll just make an extra effort to ensure I feed her right for the other 17 some years that I'm in charge of the food. French, yes. Maybe she's French.
As parents, we will make millions of choices on behalf of our children. Many of these choices are carefully planned and executed. Many of them are not. Still others are choices we thought we could carefully plan, but found out that we had to improvise and adapt and change the way we felt as we went along.
Breastfeeding was like that for me. I'm a huge believer in it, huge. But I'm even more of a believer in letting the parent decide how they will feed their child. Most of all, I believe that the choice they would like to make is often not possible. Let's not judge such a personal matter lest we stir up a whole tangle of emotion. Please.
* Not being coy, really. It's just that Mum reads my blog and she might be a tad upset if I said the word fuck. Oh fuck, I said fuck. Sorry Mum.
[Image by Nicole Canto chosen to represent freedom of choice]