Imagine having twins. My sister had two boys both over 7 pounds when born. She started breastfeeding and felt like such a failure when she turned to formula. But her two sons, just turning 19, are amazingly brilliant, creative young men because she spent all those years being an amazing mom. Like you are ❤️
We had our first kid in November, 1995. My wife breastfed and pumped. We froze her extras in our garage deep-freezer. In January, 1996, we had an ice storm and lost power for a few days. We didn't think much about it, as everything in the freezer seemed to stay frozen.
My wife went back to work in the evenings a few weeks later and I took over child-care during those hours. Our child was still exclusively breastfed. Everything went great. After a few weeks, we burned through the milk my wife had frozen since the ice storm. When I used one of those one evening, my child quickly let me know, to my horror, that all the pre-ice-storm milk had thawed just enough to have soured! The kid wouldn't take ANY of it, screamed bloody murder, and got progressively hungrier and hungrier. This was before cell phones, and I wasn't going to bother my wife by driving to her work for an emergency feeding. So I just rocked the kid and tried to provide consolation while pacing around the house. Miserable! My wife still remembers the look on my face when she drove down the driveway and saw me, exhausted and frantic, holding our kid in my arms as I stared into the headlights.
At the very end of pregnancy having not yet thought much about the whole feeding process, I had a nightmare about how there was nothing in the house to feed the baby. That was the only part of it I remember: the feeling of like, he’s hungry and I have nothing to give him. It’s absolutely awful not being able to meet their needs because no amount of reasonable explanation or reassurance will assuage them!
I'm a father of two, who stayed home to take care of both kids, while my wife went into the office.
My eldest child just loved her bottles so much, "Bah!" was one of her first expressions of language, my cue that she was hungry, and I kept giving a bottle to her well past the point when she probably should've been weaned, because it helped her relax and fall asleep, and it was a nice feeling of bonding for me.
The next baby took the bottle for a couple of weeks, maybe, and then never again. Just refused, and any attempts to keep the nipple in her mouth only made her cry harder. We tried different types of nipples and bottles, but no sale. Every day, for months, I would just hope that she'd sleep most of the day, at least until the afternoon, so I wouldn't have to go through the futile routine of offering a bottle and rocking a crying baby for more than a couple hours before my wife could come home to nurse her. I wish that I could look back on it and laugh, but it's hard to feel rejected by your crying child for months on end. But at least breastfeeding was not a problem for her, fortunately.
It is indeed a love/hate experience, and different for each parent and child. Best wishes to Hannah. It sounds like a difficult experience, but also going about as well as could be hoped.
i have a three month old daughter. my wife has two breastfeeding battle stations, something we resisted for the first baby (foolishly) and committed to for the second. it helped tremendously, by like all "this worked for us" advice for parents, it's barely transferable to others.
besides snacks and pumping equipment, the stations are set up to help her nurse ergonomically, or as close to it as she can manage. that means lots of little pillows, boppies, my brest friends - stuff she can grab and stack up to get baby into position.
like a lot of things in parenthood, you're often miserable when you're in the middle of it, but miss it when it's over.
This was wonderful - thanks for writing about it. Pumping also seemed to work best for my wife and our family, and I'm disappointed that all the new-parent resources talk about it as only a last resort if you have to go back to work or whatever. I think there are real advantages to pumping (though also the complexities you wrote about), and it should be treated as a real option, not just a fallback plan. https://kaleidoscopemind.substack.com/p/the-case-for-exclusive-pumping-bottles
The discourse really makes pumping seem like sort of a non factor, just an ancillary part of breastfeeding for when you go to work. For the months that pumping dominated my day to day schedule, that aspect was really kinda lonely! In addition to the actual act of pumping being pretty lonely.
Imagine having twins. My sister had two boys both over 7 pounds when born. She started breastfeeding and felt like such a failure when she turned to formula. But her two sons, just turning 19, are amazingly brilliant, creative young men because she spent all those years being an amazing mom. Like you are ❤️
We had our first kid in November, 1995. My wife breastfed and pumped. We froze her extras in our garage deep-freezer. In January, 1996, we had an ice storm and lost power for a few days. We didn't think much about it, as everything in the freezer seemed to stay frozen.
My wife went back to work in the evenings a few weeks later and I took over child-care during those hours. Our child was still exclusively breastfed. Everything went great. After a few weeks, we burned through the milk my wife had frozen since the ice storm. When I used one of those one evening, my child quickly let me know, to my horror, that all the pre-ice-storm milk had thawed just enough to have soured! The kid wouldn't take ANY of it, screamed bloody murder, and got progressively hungrier and hungrier. This was before cell phones, and I wasn't going to bother my wife by driving to her work for an emergency feeding. So I just rocked the kid and tried to provide consolation while pacing around the house. Miserable! My wife still remembers the look on my face when she drove down the driveway and saw me, exhausted and frantic, holding our kid in my arms as I stared into the headlights.
It's funny now. It wasn't then!
At the very end of pregnancy having not yet thought much about the whole feeding process, I had a nightmare about how there was nothing in the house to feed the baby. That was the only part of it I remember: the feeling of like, he’s hungry and I have nothing to give him. It’s absolutely awful not being able to meet their needs because no amount of reasonable explanation or reassurance will assuage them!
I'm a father of two, who stayed home to take care of both kids, while my wife went into the office.
My eldest child just loved her bottles so much, "Bah!" was one of her first expressions of language, my cue that she was hungry, and I kept giving a bottle to her well past the point when she probably should've been weaned, because it helped her relax and fall asleep, and it was a nice feeling of bonding for me.
The next baby took the bottle for a couple of weeks, maybe, and then never again. Just refused, and any attempts to keep the nipple in her mouth only made her cry harder. We tried different types of nipples and bottles, but no sale. Every day, for months, I would just hope that she'd sleep most of the day, at least until the afternoon, so I wouldn't have to go through the futile routine of offering a bottle and rocking a crying baby for more than a couple hours before my wife could come home to nurse her. I wish that I could look back on it and laugh, but it's hard to feel rejected by your crying child for months on end. But at least breastfeeding was not a problem for her, fortunately.
It is indeed a love/hate experience, and different for each parent and child. Best wishes to Hannah. It sounds like a difficult experience, but also going about as well as could be hoped.
i have a three month old daughter. my wife has two breastfeeding battle stations, something we resisted for the first baby (foolishly) and committed to for the second. it helped tremendously, by like all "this worked for us" advice for parents, it's barely transferable to others.
besides snacks and pumping equipment, the stations are set up to help her nurse ergonomically, or as close to it as she can manage. that means lots of little pillows, boppies, my brest friends - stuff she can grab and stack up to get baby into position.
like a lot of things in parenthood, you're often miserable when you're in the middle of it, but miss it when it's over.
This was wonderful - thanks for writing about it. Pumping also seemed to work best for my wife and our family, and I'm disappointed that all the new-parent resources talk about it as only a last resort if you have to go back to work or whatever. I think there are real advantages to pumping (though also the complexities you wrote about), and it should be treated as a real option, not just a fallback plan. https://kaleidoscopemind.substack.com/p/the-case-for-exclusive-pumping-bottles
The discourse really makes pumping seem like sort of a non factor, just an ancillary part of breastfeeding for when you go to work. For the months that pumping dominated my day to day schedule, that aspect was really kinda lonely! In addition to the actual act of pumping being pretty lonely.
You obviously write movingly and masterfully about subjects other than baseball. Lovely and insightful.