breast is best

For the first 10 days of Mathilda's life, I had a guilty secret.  I hated breastfeeding.  She kept her eyes closed and drank away happily, while I tried Lamaze-style breathing and self-talk to uncurl my toes to get through the pain. I met with the hospital lactation specialist, and also called 3 or 4 times in those first few days.  Was she latched correctly?  Was she sucking too much air?  What was that clicking sound I heard?  Did my milk let down too quickly?  Why does she spit up? 
I felt horrible because I was supposed to love breastfeeding.  Me of the cloth-diaper, make your own baby-food variety.  We were supposed to be bonding.  But she didn't even look at me. I was just a pump, a trough, literally bleeding to keep this tiny, oblivious, human being alive.  Once I calculated how many more feedings I'd have to go through before week 4 came around and we could introduce the bottle.  When I figured out the number, I started to cry.  Then I felt guilty about crying. Repeat.

Then one day, it didn't hurt. And she opened her eyes. And she made little cooing sounds, and grabbed onto my shirt, my skin, my finger with her little hands.  And in the middle of a 24 hour storm of overtired crying, exuberant spitting up, rushed "meals" and showers, bouncing on that damn exercise ball; nursing became 30 minutes every 3 hours where we were both calm and connected. I started to love it.  I love how she will wake up hungry and wail until cradled in my arms, when suddenly a relieved stillness will come over her as she recognizes me, and her approaching meal.  That she hasn't been forgotten.  It makes me really feel like a mother when so often, with one poop-filled diaper after another, it's easy to feel like a nanny.  At night, she often falls asleep in that cradled position, her long eyelashes almost touching her cheeks, her breathing slowed.  It's 4 in the morning and I can barely remember my own name, but I am completely in love with her, fixated on her in that moment.

Week 4 of Mathilda's life came around and I started to pump between nursing sessions.  If I thought I felt like a dairy cow before, pumping brought my sympathy for those animals to a whole new level and really made me consider switching to soy.  I was excited to pump, to start a stockpile- each bottle stored in the freezer representing a bit of freedom. Freedom to get my haircut, to see a play, to go to work, to get the flu!  But when the time came to introduce Tilly to the bottle, well, the time wasn't quite right.  First, I wanted a bigger supply in the freezer, then I wanted to make sure I could find the time to express every day.  Then it was week 5 and according to "the experts" necessary to introduce a bottle to avoid her forming too strong an attachment to just one nipple.  The thing is, my nipple had formed an attachment to her.  When would Reggie feed her?  Surely not the middle of the night- how silly for him to get up, go to the fridge, warm a bottle, all while she screams and I could have had her half fed by the time he got back upstairs.  Plus, he has to get up for work.  And I couldn't give up the last feeding of the day- the one where I rock with her and gently put her down in her crib to sleep.  That's our special time.  Then there was the fear of the "new nipple".  The girl won't take any type of pacifier really, so I was sure she'd reject this artificial breast instantly.
I was wrong.
Reggie sat in my rocking chair, while I was nowhere to be found so as not to confuse her (say the experts).  And she easily took 3.5 oz from a bottle. The first bottle we tried. The one that comes with the breast pump.  That's how easy our baby is.  And I was a little sad.  Slight tear-formation but no waterfall kind of sad.  How easy it was.  I know in my intellectual mind that I haven't been- won't be- replaced by this silicone imposter, but my emotional mind isn't so sure.  The milestone I had once prayed for I now resented.
So I made an appointment to get my hair cut.