Breastfeeding

There are many words I overuse - misuse even - and one of those is the word love. I mean, I don't probably really, truly, love a certain movie or store or piece of clothing, but folks, there is something I do love: breastfeeding.

For pretty much my whole life I simply thought that breastfeeding was gross. It wasn't something modeled for me by anyone in my family, I wasn't breastfed, nor was my sister, and quite frankly, boobs were sort of a taboo thing in my house. Mom didn't talk about em much, didn't show em off and certainly didn't value them for their intended purpose: nourishing offspring. So I just grew up not really knowing all that much about the whole nursing thing, but whenever it did come up, I sort of rolled my eyes and thought "Eeeew, how weird. I can't ever imagine myself doing something like that."

Then I grew up.

Fast forward to on say, 2007. My world was constantly evolving. I was preparing for and then did marry my best friend and together we started a life or ourselves, a family of two. We dreamed about children that we'd create out of love and how we'd like to raise them. Along with those dreams I started to learn about and then really catch on to the idea of breastfeeding. From that point on, I've steadily educated myself (and others, even if they didn't want to hear from me!) about the benefits of breastfeeding for babies and mothers. I checked books out from the library, I read information on sites about it, I talked with nursing mothers who I respected and valued. I was ready! Whenever my time came to be a mama, I was going to nurse the crap out of my child! Ideally, sticking with it up to age two.

Then Zachari came along.

She was for weeks early, had a pretty significant tongue thrust and she didn't take to the breast as naturally as I had expected her to. The night she was born I put her to breast and she sucked and it was a strange experience/sensation, but fantastic too! That night was just a one time deal though. At less than twenty-four hours old she was transferred to the NICU because her blood sugar was too low. She was put on Similac formula immediately. We were told that because she was early and weighed so little that she didn't have the energy to learn how to nurse, nor could she afford to burn the calories it would take to suckle, so feeding her formula was essential. I didn't feel like they were feeding me lines of bull shit or trying to force formula on a baby who would've otherwise been breastfed exclusively, they were doing what was best for her and I agreed to all they were suggesting. However, I was very disappointed. I didn't want her to ever taste formula, only mother's milk. My, how my ideals had changed over the last few years. Any my, how they had to continue to change in the weeks that would come.

This is getting long. Who knew I had so much to say?!

She spent a week in the NICU. That's not very long in the grand scheme of things, but when all things birth-related went awry, every single second that my baby wasn't at home and in my arms seemed like forever. One of my biggest worries during her stay in that little NICU pod was lost time for us to bond and learn how to breastfeed. I saw the lactation consultant Helen a few times (who was fabulous), but not much progress was made. My beeb simply didn't have the strength or energy to work at it long enough. That, and she wasn't allowed out of her bassinet for very long. Ugh. I resorted to pumping every 2-4 hours and gave her as much breast milk as my body was able to produce. I pumped through the night, in between meals, first in the morning, last thing before bed time. I pumped all. the. time.

She came home, I still pumped. We tried and tried nursing, but it didn't work. We met with a new lactation consultant at Wood County Hospital, Jen, and she too was excellent, but nursing just wasn't coming as easily as I would've hoped. We tried all sorts of ways to get ol girl to suck from my nipple, but nothing, nothing, nothing.

Fast forward again. This time through lots of heartache, lots of sore nips, many tears shed, a ridiculous emotional/mental roller coaster, more pumping, more trying, and two days shy of Zachari being 10 weeks old.

It was the night of Sunday, April 11th and I was rocking her in her room, trying to get her to stop crying. For whatever reason, in the midst of her screams and wiggles, I tried nursing again. She did it. That's right, she finally did it! I was in shock. She just started sucking and kept sucking and stayed there eating to her heart's content for a solid 20 minutes! Blinn and Miles were out on a walk, the house was still and together my child and I were working together in what was probably the most beautiful way since the night of her birth. I cried. I hadn't been that happy since she was born really. It was happening and I could hardly believe it!

She kept nursing and now here we are nearly 4 months later and my gal is a nursing machine! Its faaaaaaaaaantastic!

Okay, I'm finally getting to the part where I can write about the things I love about nursing my girl. In no particular order, I love that:

• I'm the one nourishing her. Not Blinn, but me. I'm the one who is meeting all of her needs and though she relies on her Papa for many things, this one thing isn't something he can tackle. (No offense, my love, but this is just how it is!)
• There are some times when we make eye contact and its the most precious thing. Its especially cute if I'm using a nursing cover and I peek in on her and we lock eyes.
• I can soothe her when nothing else in the world can soothe her. If she's scared, I can fit it. If she's tired, I can fix it. If she's hungry, I can fix it. If she's hurt, I can fix it. I don't mean for this to sound like I'm trying to fix things because I sure don't want to be "that mom", but I really can change whatever the situation by merely whipping one out!
• I'm giving her the very best nourishment there is. Some refer to breast milk as "liquid gold" and well, in that department, Zachari is full!
• I gave birth to a 4 pound, 5 ounce baby and today she's more than 4 times her birth weight. I think if she was in a line of other babies her age, she'd still be small, but she is healthy. She's got rolls on her thighs, chubby cheeks that are oh-so kissable, and a tum that is round and adorable.
• If Blinn and I want to leave the house in a hurry, we can and we don't have to worry about packing bottles or mixing up formula and all that jazz. I'm at the ready all the time and my girl's taken care of as long as I'm around!
• She likes to play Peek-a-boo sometimes. See details in item #9 here.
• I'm a woman of color who is doing this. Recently I ready that about 19% of African American women breastfeed by the time their babies are 6 months old. African American teenage mothers are even less likely to breastfeed. Those numbers are staggering to me. I hope I can be a face of change for that in some tiny way.
• I'm doing this and I'm so passionate about it even though its not something that I learned from my mom or my family. I educated myself on it and realized the importance of it before I became a mother.
• I get to have extra special Mommy-Zachari time multiple times a day. There's really nothing else like it in the whole wide world.

Sheesh, this turned into much more than a post about my love of breastfeeding, but I'm glad I took the time to process everything. Let me be clear about two things: One, I am not the shit. I, in no way, am trying to say that because I nurse my child I'm amazing, because there are millions of women the world over doing the same stuff as me. I'm just proud of myself and I'm proud of Z and the way we've learned to work together to accomplish something so bonding and life giving for the two of us. Two, Zachari has had more formula in her short life than I'm okay with. Like I mentioned, she got a bottle of the stuff at less than 24 hours old out of necessity and we've supplemented with it ever since. Some days she didn't get any, some days she got quite a bit. I'm not hiding that fact, but since this post was dedicated to milk that's not packaged in a plastic container, I chose to leave out some of those details. :)