On Saturday I met a woman in a Target parking lot where she gave me a bag full of frozen breastmilk.
Maybe I should back up for a minute.
In the great breastmilk vs. formula mommy “war,” I feel a bit like Switzerland, as I am a bottle-feeding mom who believes that breast is best.
Breastfeeding was the norm in our house. Neither my brother nor I ever even drank from a bottle, let alone had any formula. In 1973, when my mom became a mother, she knew no one who breastfed. Literally no one. There were no lactation nurses in the hospital, the doctor had no advice or instruction, she was totally on her own. She was the last of five sisters to have a baby, but she couldn’t even call on any of them, as none of them breastfed.
She told me that she just kind of “winged it,” and that blessedly she and Guy figured it out right away. By the time I came around three years later, she was in a new city and found a La Leche League and had a neighbor with a similarly-aged baby. She found a tribe. She allowed me to self wean, which I did around 14 months.
So it was never something I even had to give thought to; of course I would breastfeed.
It wasn’t the loss of pregnancy or birth that I had to mourn as much as it was the idea that I wouldn’t be a nursing mother. So when I discovered the idea of inducing lactation and adoptive nursing, I was like a rabid dog on a bone.
I connected with a Minnesota mom who successfully induced lactation for her first adoption. She was a huge source of knowledge and encouragement to me, even finding me a used pump and sending me articles and a Lact-Aid supplemental nursing system (SNS).
In October, before I knew of Harry and there was no baby on the horizon, I connected with a mom who was looking to donate her entire frozen stash. Her baby was then three months old, and the milk she’d pumped to give him when she returned to work wasn’t going to be used, as turns out, she wasn’t returning to work. And they were out of freezer space, so she was down to dump or donate. The milk she gave us filled an entire cooler.
It was my plan to begin pumping once we were matched, and to quickly connect with an LC once we brought baby home to help me with the SNS. Rarely does an adoptive mom make enough to exclusively breastfeed (although I did read one blogger who was able to EBF by the time her adopted son was three months old). But the idea is that they are getting something, and of course there are the non-nutritive benefits, like bonding.
And then we were matched with a baby already born who was 1200 miles away. As we were throwing things in our car for the drive to Utah, I made the decision to leave the pump at home, as space was precious and I still didn’t even really know how to use it.
In those first few days, he latched quite a few times and like my mother before me, I was totally winging it He would suckle for comfort (and still will on occasion).
When we got home, I connected with an LC who showed me how to use the SNS and the pump. That afternoon at her house, he took two full ounces from the SNS, but it took three pairs of hands to get him on and to get it going. It was an amazing feeling, but there were no angels singing the hallelujah chorus as I’d perhaps expected.
In the days following, we kept trying, but after a few times that resulted in little more than a frustrated baby, frustrated mommy, and frustrated daddy, and formula spraying everywhere, I decided—this is silly. And I realized that nursing via the SNS was for me, not for him. I was trying to heal some loss in me and was trying to replicate some experience for me.
And what I learned was that it was important to me that he get breastmilk, not that he got it from me.
The initial donation was going to last us some time at one bottle a day, but I knew it would run out sooner than I’d like. My friend Jill in Michigan offered to ship me half of the stash her partner had built up from breastfeeding their June-born baby. So 11 pounds of breastmilk whisked its way overnight in a box full of dry ice.
And then I found Eats on Feet, a Facebook group whose aim it is to connect breastmilk-making mamas with babies who need it. Their motto is human milk for human babies.
Let me be clear that I feel no shame or guilt about feeding Harry formula. None. It is a functional alternative that gives him the nutrition that he needs to grow. But it’s not “as good as” breastmilk. It’s just not. But I am okay with that.
And I think that is where a lot of the ire comes from, and perhaps what frustrates some people. If you have to feed formula, own it. You are doing exactly what your baby needs: you are feeding him. But let’s at least be honest about it.
Formula is what it is, but it can’t protect my baby from sickness like breastmilk can. It doesn’t coat his esophagus and stomach with a lining of antibodies to ward off colds and sickness. It can’t clear up diaper rashes or cure pink eye. It’s not self-replenishing, and it’s not free.
And it is not as convenient as breastfeeding. I read on a message board about a mom who chose to formula feed for “convenience” and I laughed out loud. There is nothing convenient about bottle/formula feeding. There is no chore I like less than washing bottles; and we use the dishwasher most of the time! There are a million parts and there is always the worry: are we getting these clean enough? And then there are the worries about plastic bottles (we actually just switched to glass), and are the nipples in good shape? And getting up at 3 a.m. and having to listen to your baby cry as you stumble around fixing a bottle is a special kind of torture. How is that more convenient than rolling over and popping a boob in his mouth? It ain’t. And the cost! Even hoarding coupons and samples (and supplementing with donated breastmilk), formula is spendy. Stupidly spendy. (So it makes me even crazier that the further down you go on the socioeconomic scale the more likely a mother is to formula feed. That is wrong and we should all be vocal about righting it by advocating for breastfeeding education and laws that protect a working moms right to breastfeed.)
But I also want to say, if you are able to feed your baby milk from your own breast, don’t go around waging war on the evils of formula. It’s not poison. It’s disingenuous to infer that it is, and it ensures that no one wants to listen to you.
A few weeks ago, some girlfriends and I went to our favorite cloth diaper store. One of them is a fellow adoptive mom (who actually did induce lactation), and another is a bio mom who exclusively pumped her daughter’s entire first year of life. (She is amazing.) We were trying out different baby carriers, and Harry started to fuss. The store employee asked if he was hungry, and I said, “He might be.” She pointed to a glider and said, “You can sit there and nurse him if you’d like.”
I wanted to say, “Oh, CAN I?” It was so assumptive. The fact was that out of the three of us, none of us could’ve plopped down in that glider, whipped out a boob and fed our baby. (Even though all three of those babies are fed all or some breastmilk.)
So instead I sat down in the chair, pulled out his bottled, dumped some formula in it and fed my baby.
Feed your baby. At the end of the day that is all that matters.
(And if you are a breastfeeding mama, please join your local Eats on Feet page and donate!)
This is such a well-written, thoughtful, SANE piece of writing about a subject that is, as you know, so often so crazy-making. And how cool is Eats on Feet? I love knowing that that such an organization exists!
I love your “Oh can I” at the end. It’s the perfect sentiment.
This is a great post. I love hearing about all these options for adoptive mothers. As someone who exclusively pumped for 10 months, I can totally relate to your feelings of giving Harry the best, however possible for you. I’m so glad that he found the two of you – what a lucky little guy.
This is such a perfect post and I’m so glad you wrote it!
Wow. This may be the best thing I’ve ever read on the subject. I don’t even think I have a comment, beyond the fact that I am not surprised that you are an amazing, thoughtful mama, because you are an amazing, thoughtful person!
Thank you for this. I am a bio mom with a medical inability to nurse that I was diagnosed with when my son was 7 wks old and I had a double mastitis staph infection from weeks of trying round the clock to breastfeed, supplementing with formula to get him to grow. I was judged and condemned by so many family and friends and felt such shame until a friend reassured me that formula isn’t poison. Those words and the diagnosis that finally explained it all finally removed the shame and gave me freedom to happily bottle feed my son his formula, which he also liked better than my breastmilk. I mourn not being able to nurse, but feeding my baby the nutrition he needs is what feeds my soul in the end. You are a great mama, and thank you for sharing your beautiful journey!
What a well written, non-biased post. thanks for sharing. I imagine the store employee assumed you were able to nurse because in my experience, cloth diapering and nursing go hand in hand– a lot of hard core CD moms are just as hard core about BF. Do you find that to be true (since you’re a CD mom)?
Well a lot of the CD moms I know are also adoptive moms, so that hasn’t been my experience too much, but I would say that is generally true, yes.
What a great post! I feel like mothers who feel as we do don’t generally write our opinions about this because such a middle-of-the road and reasonable opinion stirs up so much controversy. But I’m so glad you did write it, and I just wanted to publicly say I agree 100 percent.
You know all the mental anguish I went through with Helen regarding breast milk and formula and it was all for naught. With a combination of both she thrived, and I stepped away from many of the nursing/breastfeeding sites which is a shame but I couldn’t take the vitriol.
I vividly remember when Helen was tiny and we were at a bookstore. She was hungry and needed to be fed, and I felt ashamed about pulling out a bottle (of breast milk, mind you) because I dreaded the comments or disapproving looks.
It wasn’t long after that when I calmed down and accepted that Helen was never going to nurse so her nutrition was going to come from pumped milk and formula and I might as well make peace with it. Then I could whip out a bottle without even thinking about it, but why should any new mother have to go through those worries at all?
And it’s a good lesson for everyone — as evidenced by you in the baby store and me pulling out bottles of breast milk for my preemie baby — you don’t know what you’re seeing, and most importantly, no one wants to hear (or see on your face) your uninformed opinion about it.
It is embarrassing for me to admit how much of my long, nine month struggle to nurse James was about me more than it was about him. It’s only now that I can say, you know, we did the best we could to feed him the best we could, and if we’d gone to formula sooner, that would still be true. While breast is best, formula is good enough and in parenting, good enough is really good enough. You don’t get extra credit for martyring yourself and there are no gold stars.
In my experience, I feel crazy about breastfeeding because it was so hard for us and I had to feel super committed to it in order to keep doing it. I think sometimes when you feel that super commitment, it spills over into nuttiness about what *others* should do and that’s where it gets weird. I am sorry that you lost the experience of nursing but I am so happy that you had donations and friends who are going through the same thing as part of your journey. I swear that breastfeeding was truly the craziest thing I’ve ever done and when I had to switch Anthony to formula when he was … seven? eight? I can’t remember, months old, it was so harrowing and then so freeing when I realized I could just feed my baby and give him what he needed.
Well this made me well up – it was what I needed to hear, and from the looks of it, what a lot of moms need to hear, too. Thank you for writing this, J.
Great post. I’m actually a bio mom who is bf’ing my 13 month old, and also a PAP – early in the adoption process. I, however, will not be trying to induce full supply for the new baby as that was something I struggled with for my daughter. I think admitting that to myself and that it was okay that the new baby is going to have some formula was one of the hardest things I’ve done. Breast is best. No question. But feeding your baby (and not driving yourself into depression…) is paramount.
From my experience, I did not enjoy breastfeeding. I was unable with Mary as she never took to the breast and I pumped exclusively for three months. But when I had my second child, I wanted to be able to experience breastfeeding. I did for six months but found it freeing when I went to formula. Here’s an article from the Atlantic Monthly that I relate to. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/04/the-case-against-breast-feeding/7311/3/
I think as mothers of babies we feel chastized by whatever we do. I do find that as your children get older you feel less pressure on parenting and can really do what YOU feel is the best for your child without nearly as much pressure as you experience the first year.
I commend all the mothers that have enjoyed breast feeding. Breast feeding is so intimate and personal so I think you have to see if it works for you. Read the article because it does not commend nor devalue breast feeding but is balanced and addresses the societal pressures that mothers experience.
Thank you for this post. I’m at the beginning of the adoption process and this topic is really important to me. I am so grateful for all your information!
Courtney, I have to respectfully disagree with you that the article you posted, one that I read a while ago, doesn’t devalue breastfeeding. The way that the author talks sarcastically about the ‘milky elixir’ and how she describes someone who is pumping as looking like a fetishist is hardly without judgment.
Great post! I agree with the owning it part of making your decision. Both of my preemie girls struggled so much with breastfeeding that it really was in the best interest for me and them that we switch to formula. It wasn’t what I had planned or really wanted for my children but I found that in order to not feel guilty and push away at the criticism, I had to just own our decision!
Love it! Thank you for writing this. I 100% think breast is best but I had crappy milk supply and there was so much stress trying to pump and Z was always angry and hungry after a feeding that after 6 months, I just gave up and went to formula and he was happy. So incredibly happy, I felt like i had a whole new baby. I wish I could’ve breastfed him longer but I also recognize that I had to feed my baby but i felt a lot of guilt until i just said screw it and stopped caring what other people thought. I respect you a lot for wanting to breastfeed and/or provide breastmilk for your baby but also realizing if it just wasn’t possible that you are still caring and loving for your baby 100%.
You are a great mama! We should feel free to love our children in the best way we know how and not feel pressure to do what some one else did or is doing.
It is tricky to encourage women who are breasfeeding or plan to and yet not alienate people. There definitely is the assumption of package parenting. Since I cloth diaper, babywear and breastfeed, it’s assumed that I co-sleep too. Nope, sorry. Co-sleeping means no-sleeping for me. So the babe has their own bed.
Great post, Johanna!
Wow. You seem like such à strong and determined person! I am deeply impressed with all that you do for your son. I live in Sweden where most mums breastfeed and we also have the great opportunity to stay at home for as long as a year and a half with our babies. Both parents have the same opportunity (so either mum or dad can be home) and will get about 80% of their salary while doing so. I think that is a contributing factor to why so many swedish mothers breastfeed, we have à really long, payed maternity