How sweet.

I don’t know about you, but this is what I pictured before I had Noah when I thought about nursing him. My biggest fear was that I’d have sore nipples, and I was all, I can total deal with that dude; breast is best and I’m on my way to becoming Supermom. Here’s a little something I’ve learned since I gave birth to my son. This is for all you pregnant ladies out there. Listen up. Ready?

BREASTFEEDING IS FREAKIN’ HARD, Y’ALL.

Did you get that? Because here is a list of people who will not tell you: your doctor, your baby’s doctor, your mom, your grandma, your girlfriends with kids, the author of your favorite book, God. They will all tell you that it is awesome, and that you will love it, and that it is TOTALLY NATURAL, and that it takes oh, a tiny insignificant amount of time to get the hang of it but then you’ll never ever want to wean your baby because of how wicked beautiful it is to nurse him. I am the only one who will tell you like it is. Which is the reason you are reading this, right? Right.

I was beginning to worry when I noticed that Noah was oh, SCREAMING IN AGONY EVERY TIME I NURSED HIM. I called the lactation consultant after a couple of days of this. I wanted to know if there was a chance it could be something in my diet, like dairy. She literally scoffed at me, told me to stop reading things on the internet, and that it was probably just a tummy ache. (According to her, all babies get tummy aches at four weeks old.) (That’s bullshit.) Her advice was to “give it a couple of days.”

**A couple of days later**

I pull my screaming son up after another horrible nursing session and begin walloping his back to try and get him to burp. I was at my wit’s end because this breastfeeding thing was so awful almost every single time we did it. I was jealous of moms who talked about “comfort nursing.” Noah HATED nursing and screamed if I even held him close in my arms unless he was really hungry. And when he WAS really hungry? Well, let’s just say that pounding his back was the only thing that seemed to get him to calm down after a couple of gulps. I called the pediatrician to ask if we should give him gas drops, and we started shoving meds down his little throat every time he ate. He was never eating more than five minutes at a time, because of all the screaming you see. Apparently screaming makes it hard to swallow. I don’t know for sure, I mean I’ve never tried, but that’s what I assume based on the pool of milk that I watched dribble out of his mouth during the screaming.

So I cut dairy out of  my diet.

Did you read that? NO. DAIRY. Also NO HAPPINESS.

For a month, I didn’t eat cheese. For a month, I had zero happiness. (I’m just kidding.) (Kind of.)

**A month later**

I pull my screaming son up after another horrible nursing session and begin walloping his back to try and get him to burp. (Hey, at least it wasn’t dairy!)

I had a talk with a couple of people, including my pediatrician and my friend Calla Maria, who is studying to be a midwife and, incidentally, had taken a breastfeeding class. They both said the same thing: “Maybe you have a too-strong let-down reflex.” Do you know what this means, Reader? It means that my breasts, in their eagerness to feed the son of my womb, were over-producing so much that the second he dared a gentle suck they flooded his little mouth with a tsunami of breast milk.

He didn’t like that. Go figure.

Gulping and gasping, he would scrunch his little face in pain and try to keep going, out of hunger, but he just couldn’t. His mouth would rip off my nipple and he’d start screaming, and I started noticing that during this, my nipples were streaming! STREAMING! ON THEIR OWN! ACROSS THE ROOM! A STREAM OF MILK!

So I did what I do best, and started scouring the internets. I found this great website, and on it, I read this:
Does your baby do any of these things?

Gag, choke, strangle, gulp, gasp, cough while nursing as though the milk is coming too fast
Pull off the breast often while nursing
Clamp down on the nipple at let-down to slow the flow of milk
Make a clicking sound when nursing
Spit up very often and/or tend to be very gassy
Periodically refuse to nurse
Dislike comfort nursing in general

When I read this… I can’t explain. I was like going, yes, yes, YES, YES! YES, THAT TOO! It was like someone had filmed Noah’s life from four weeks on for research and written down their findings. I had no idea what to do about it right then, but I was so relieved that someone had figured out what was wrong with my son and me. IT WAS MAGICAL! I researched some more and talked to the pediatrician, and started strategizing how best to help Noah deal with my torrential boobs. I started expressing some of the milk before I fed him, only feeding him on one side per feeding (to try and slow the crazy milk production), and leaning back so he had to work against gravity to get the milk. Also so it wouldn’t spray directly into his throat and cause him to gulp, thus swallowing air. And, biggest of all for me and my schedule-loving self, I started feeding him on demand. I stopped looking so much at the clock and started paying more attention to his “hunger cues.” When he was really alert, or sucking on his hands, I’d feed him. That way he wasn’t crying and swallowing air before I even began the feeding process. It sucked at first, I admit (no pun intended), because I was feeding him every two hours. Sometimes more. Luckily he’s regulated himself now and he’s back to every two and a half hours.

But it worked. The difference was night and OH HAPPY DAY. Having him eat and then sit up, burp, and SMILE at me… it was like my birthday was every day, and Noah was wearing a little party hat on his balding head. I thought I had it made in the shade. I relaxed. I started seeing why some people actually enjoyed breastfeeding their babies. I was beginning to picture us like the mother and child at the top of this post.

AND THEN I GOT MASTITIS.

Mastitis: inflammation of a breast or an udder. Yeah. My udder? INFLAMED. I woke up one lovely Saturday morning, felt a little dizzy, needed to lie down again, and within an hour had a temperature of 101. And I felt like I was dying. And kind of wished I was dying, incidentally. My doctor called in a prescription for an antibiotic, which I had to take four of, PER DAY, for TWO WEEKS. I also had to buy a probiotic to make sure that Noah didn’t lose all the good little bacteria in his body.

So why do I keep doing it then, you ask. I know you’re asking, unless you also are a breastfeeding mom, because before I got pregnant I heard a conversation at the gym one day between a new mom and a mom who had older children. The mom with older children was explaining how hard nursing was for her, and how her child had refused to latch, and how it had been painful. The new mom was all “Then why did you keep doing it, if it was so awful?” and I was like walking on the treadmill thinking “Yeah, why’d you keep doing it, Crazytown? Just so you could complain about it later? Sheesh.” And she was kind of taken aback, trying to explain, going “Well, I just knew it was best for my baby… and I felt like a failure if I gave up.”

The truth is everything I just told you, Reader, fades swiftly from my memory every new time I bring my baby up to my breast. Knowing that I am providing him with the best nutrition and comfort, knowing that he needs me, is so precious to me. I don’t understand why I love nursing my son, even after all the trouble it’s been for both of us, but I do. I’m determined to make it work, because it’s best for him and it’s best for me. And regardless of how hard it is, my doctor, my baby’s doctor, my mom, my grandma, my girlfriends with kids, Dr. Sears, and God were all right. I’m going to have a hard time weaning him when the time comes.

Because I hate nursing.

But I love nursing.

((sigh))

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