Full Bellies - Giving the Finger to Nature In Favour of Living

By the Dowager Tartess
Posted on Friday, June 24th, 2016

I had every intention of breastfeeding my baby. I was 100% onboard. I was even a bit of an ass about it. I never posted online about the inferiority of formula nor did I give anyone any flack, but deep inside my own mind I smugly thought breastfeeding was best, always. 

And this stemmed from a pull towards natural parenting. I also wanted a home birth. I wanted to make my own baby food. I wanted to baby wear. I was wary of all medical or synthetic everything. Looking back, I think it was just a manifestation of my anxieties, this newfound belief that natural was safe and not ever dangerous or insufficient (I just ignored all past history of horrible mother and baby mortality rates throughout time).

This fear-based, false-calm faith in nature led me to go 43 weeks pregnant. I said things like, “A ripe piece of fruit will fall from the tree.” “The baby will come out when he’s ready.” “My body knows what it’s doing.”

Like fuck it did. And looking back on my body’s extensive history of dicking me around, I should’ve known better than to trust it with something as important as a safe act of reproduction. 

Oh, I got pregnant easy enough. Immediately, actually. And other than feeling miserable for the entire time, I had an uneventful pregnancy. I had midwives, who due to living in Ontario, Canada, are regulated medical professionals. They monitored my pregnancy throughout, talked to me about my desire to breastfeed, and when I went overdue they tried to help me with membrane sweeps. Ow, pain. Didn’t work. They offered to have me transferred to an OB for an induction after 41 weeks. I declined. I tried acupuncture, herbs, nipple stimulation and sex. Painful awkward late pregnancy sex. No baby.

At 42 weeks, they said I could probably schedule a C section if I wanted to at that point. I was already going into the hospital every other day for ultrasounds and non-stress tests. When I hit 42 weeks, the dating software on the machine wouldn’t recognize the gestational age. I still was wary of interventions. 

At 42 weeks and 5 days I threw in the towel. My baby was huge inside me and unfavourably positioned. My Braxton Hicks were insane and constant. My cervix was 0 and 0 for dilation and effacement. This pregnancy was just going to keep on chugging. The ultrasounds had been showing lots of fluid and a healthy cord and placenta, good heart rate, everything. No end in sight. But like hell was I going to put my vagina through this epic baby. I wanted a C section.

Already my grip on all things natural had slipped in favour of pragmatism. 

The OB I was transferred to made the decision I would not be granted my C section, despite acknowledging the seriousness of being almost 43 weeks along. He decreed I’d be induced because “vaginal births are better.” Never mind if it would be possible. I never saw him again after he made that shitty choice on my behalf.

I’ll spare you the lengthy descriptions about how I got a bad reaction to Cervidil and burned internally for hours, or the morphine I needed to bear a Foley catheter after the Cervidil tag opened me 0 cm. I can tell you breaking my water did nothing, and oxytocin racked my exhausted body for mere hours before I needed an epidural that didn’t fully take so I felt yet another catheter go in ohmygodthathurt. 

I will say all that took roughly two days. When my baby’s heart rate dropped, I rudely demanded and was granted a C section. 

Here’s where the breastfeeding comes in. Kiddo latched immediately after being put on my body. And not only that, he had neck control. He raised his head. All that extra time in the womb, and he was a near 10-pound tank. He was no squishy newborn. He was the size of a 1 month old infant and was sturdy. 

I had colostrum. He ate. It stung like a mofo, but I did it anyway. I developed a mad case of hives and was given Benadryl for it, though no one knew what the allergy was for. Apparently that can tank breast milk supply. Not that I wouldn’t have taken it had I known. Of course I would have. You’d have to be pretty reckless or stupid to be faced with an allergic reaction to an unknown quantity and then choose to let it slide. But I didn’t know about the side effects on my milk, so when my baby was losing weight, I didn’t consider that maybe I had low supply. I had read that low supply was not a thing, and that women would make enough for their babies because nature!

We left hospital after 2 days with 10% weight loss. But my midwives would be checking in on us every day for a little while, so we weren’t worried. However, the next weigh-in was 12% weight loss. My son’s lips had dry skin I could peel off. His urine was reddish coloured. 

Formula. My midwives, crunchy and pro-breastfeeding as they were, said he needed formula. Right away. He chugged that bottle. My husband had to go out and buy the powder, but we had bottles in the house.

I was given instructions how to always get baby to breastfeed first, then formula feed with an SNS tube, pump, and then take fenugreek, drink Guinness beer, eat oatmeal, drink tincture. And I also went on Domperidone.

Of course I didn’t go on the Domperidone until I got back from the hospital. Again. See, I had a uterine infection. I was readmitted to the hospital and sent to post-op. In the old days they called this infection childbed fever, and it killed women regularly. These days they hook you up to a 24/7 IV with antibiotics for a couple days until every microbe in your body has died and gone to Hell and every germ that ever looked at you sideways wished it hadn’t.

I was separated from my baby. Two days, no baby to suckle. The pump was there, but went untouched for the most part. I had a painful C section scar that I’d only been given Tylenol and Advil for (No idea what that was all about. It was not enough). I was not allowed to bend the arm my IV needle was in. I had no means to sterilize my pump. I got in maybe half a dozen pump sessions in two days, enough to prevent total milk loss, but not enough to build supply.

I’d tell you how it all felt, but I can’t. After sobbing and wailing from hormonal fluctuations, stress, exhaustion and motherly distress about being parted from my infant, I went numb and just muscled through it. Sometimes it’s easier to bear emotional pain if you give in and wait it out. 

By the time I went home, my hives had mostly disappeared, so that was something.

Three months into motherhood and breastfeeding and I was managing to pump up to 7 ounces per day at my peak. It was difficult to leave the house while I was living like that. Also, my son rejected the pumped milk (and in any case was eating about 36 ounces a day). Despite the fact it was never more than 12 hours old when he drank it, and it was stored properly, the milk would turn. It was sour. There’s some sort of scientific reason for it to do with lipase, blah blah blah, and you can scald the milk, blah blah blah.

But by then I gave no shits about that. One more step? Fuck that noise. I was not a “natural parent”. I was a practical parent. I just wanted to get things done. Formula got things done. I could leave my son in the care of his father and get some freedom from the chain of the pump. I could sleep in the morning while my husband fed the baby so I could catch up on my rest.

I learned to appreciate the science of formula, how I could see exactly how much my son consumed. I liked how my diet and health had no bearing on his food quality or intake. I took pleasure in wearing clothes that did not revolve around accessing my breasts. It was comforting to know I would never have to figure out how to wean him from me.

Even if the can itself was side-eyeing my choice.
Like, come on.

As for my milk? Well, I said nuts to that after those three horrible months. I breastfed my son in the morning, when my breasts were full enough for a reasonable meal, but I quit pumping and taking all supplements and drugs. Nature took its course and after a couple weeks I had nothing but drops and that last feeding disappeared.

Formula feeding, honestly, was great. And I was a smart shopper, and paid around $800 for the whole thing start to finish. Which was about what I had paid for the nursing bras, tops, drugs, supplements, pump, etc. 

I have some regrets. Like not just straight-up formula feeding in the first place when things looked bad. But I guess I needed to try for personal reasons. To try and be that natural mother I dreamed of.

But becoming a mother hasn’t changed who and what I am. I am a practical and pragmatic person, who loves personal freedom and values my independence and who sleeps well at night when there aren’t scary things to worry about, like whether my baby’s eating enough.

Breastfeeding was not practical for me; it chained me to a stressful situation and kept me anxious and frustrated. Once I tried to abandon the formula, took a “nursing vacation” and my son wound up losing a ton of weight. There’s nothing sensible about that. What justifies starving your child? I felt hideous. My little baby could have been eating all that time, but hadn’t been and for what? What ever warrants not feeding your hungry baby real food? Actually available nutritious food?

Nature sometimes sucks, sometimes fails and thank god we’re living in the time we are because when it drops the ball, we have things like fertility treatments, the NICU or obstetrics or antibiotics or formula to come to the rescue when our reproductive systems fuck off on us when we need them.

I love formula. Breast milk is all well and good and natural, and I support those who do it, but seeing firsthand that sciencey formula milk succeeded where my own milk failed, I gotta say, I’m a big fan. No apologies. No qualifiers. Formula is amazing. And due to my own extremely positive experience feeding my very healthy and wonderful child with it, I am supportive of any woman who uses it for any reason.

So, not only did it save my son’s life, preserve my well-being and work really well for my family, I think it also made me a better person. It opened my eyes that nutritionally ideal and biologically normal does not mean best. Natural is not better. Best is a full belly.  

About The Author

Canadian underachiever, mom of one, writer, occasional artist, and a silly goose.