Formula Frustration

I am one of the lucky mothers who has had an easy time breastfeeding. With the exception of the first week when Molly would fall asleep as soon as she started nursing and a few weeks later when we had a nasty bout of thrush, Molly has nursed easily and consistently. I have loved breastfeeding her; it has been one of my favorite parts of motherhood.

But oh I hate the breastpump. It's just mechanical and uncomfortable and a nuisance. But that I can handle. What is more problematic is that my job has an unpredictable and inconsistent schedule. I have to meet with students around their schedule and, beyond that, one can knock on my office door at any given moment. I can't control if a meeting overlaps with a traditional pumping time, and I certainly cannot excuse myself from it to pump. So it's difficult and frustrating at best.

Which is why (or at least part of why) I have only ever intended to nurse for a year. After that we'll gradually wean to mornings and evenings, then just evenings, and then...

I both dread and look forward to weaning Molly. I will miss those intimate moments, just the two of us, but I will also be glad that David will be able to take a more equal role in taking care of Molly (and I know he will be glad for it, too).

These are all things I have known and anticipated all along, things I could handle.

Then, about two months ago, I refilled my POP birth control prescription and found that I had been given a different brand. It's not uncommon; my insurance gives me whatever is the cheapest at the same dosage. But I still read the included pamphlet carefully to make sure it was still a POP and would be safe to take while breastfeeding. It was, so I took it as normal.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I noticed a significant drop it my breastmilk supply, something I had never had an issue with before (just the opposite, in fact; another thing I was grateful for). Then, much to my great displeasure, my period returned. I put two and two together and decided that it was unlikely that those two changes didn't have something to do with the different birth control. So I called my doctor, switched back to the POP I had originally been on, and crossed my fingers.

Though my supply did increase, it never got back to where it had been originally. While Molly has never seemed to notice a difference when she's with me, I have since had a hard time pumping enough. I have been having to send at least one bottle of frozen breastmilk every day that Molly went to daycare. Luckily I had a good supply of frozen breastmilk, so much so that I had previously donated about 60 ounces to a mother who needed it. Unfortunately, the supply I kept has quickly dwindled over the past two months, so much so that I now only have enough for 4 or 5 daycare days left.

Which means, of course, that in the next week or two I am going to have to start using formula to make up for the bottles that I can't pump.

Of course there is nothing wrong with formula. Formula is a perfectly wonderful way to nourish a baby. And if I had needed to use formula from the beginning, I would have accepted that and been fine. But to have to use it now, 6 weeks from the finish line, feels like a complete failure. It's as though I spent 9 months training for a huge race, then got 80% of the way through it and had to drop out.

And yes, I know, it's not like that. I'm not dropping out, more like eating an energy bar to get to the end. But it's feels like dropping out, like failure.

I think this has far more to do with the enormous expectations we mothers have for ourselves. We not only want to do it all, but we expect to do it all, which of course we can't. And when we fall just the tiniest bit short, it feels like a permanent blemish on our mother badge.

Why mothers do this to themselves (ourselves) is far too long a conversation for this already-lengthy post. And yet I find myself contemplating it all the time. For the past ten months, I have fallen short of my expectations for myself - as a wife, a friend, a family member, a student, a teacher. To the best of my knowledge, I haven't let down the other sides of those relationships, but I haven't lived up to my standard. But I have allowed myself to fall short in those areas in an attempt not to fall short (of my goals) as a mother. By introducing formula, I will.

Will Molly suffer for the introduction of formula? Not one bit. Will it alter our relationship? Not at all. And in 6 weeks it won't matter anyway as we'll switch from formula to full-fledged cow's milk. It's not a big deal. I know that.

And yet, when I look at it, my mother badge looks slightly less shiny than it did before.