Our Breastfeeding Journey is Ending

I think our breastfeeding journey is coming to an end soon and I’m feeling a lot of feelings. Breastfeeding has been a magical, tough and unexpected journey for me. 

I didn’t have great expectations because I had heard so many stories of just how hard and painful it could be.

I bought every tool I could think of in preparation so I could give it my best shot but I was also prepared to give Charlie formula because all that mattered was that my baby was fed. 

When Charlie was 5 months old, I wrote:

I feel extremely grateful that, 5 months in, our experience has been seamless and that my body is able to provide everything my baby boy needs to thrive. I love the connection I feel with Charlie as he looks up at me and knowing that he feels completely safe in my arms. What I did not expect was the loss of the sense of freedom and spontaneity and the emotional toll that it would take on me at times.

Breastfeeding a newborn and then an infant is so emotionally and physically tolling in a way I never expected. Constantly planning my life around my boobs and pumping and freezing and sanitizing drained me most days. Waking up with soaking sheets or leaking through a shirt got old really quick. Not being able to find clothes that made feeds easy but also looked good was a challenge. Finding a nursing bra that fit and gave me support without underwire was impossible in Singapore. Feeling like my body wasn’t my own has been so hard. 

I felt trapped and alone for most of the first year. 

Being a first time mom naturally comes with a lot of anxiety. I have had friends share that they never experienced anxiety before having their children. It is a lot of responsibility and the internet, as amazing as it can be, can also terrify you into thinking you are doing everything wrong. 

Do you set a schedule? Do you feed on demand? Do you wake your baby for a feed? Do you pump during the night to keep up supply? Are you resting enough? Is the baby getting enough at each feed? Is your baby crying from being hungry? Gas? Tired? Your stress levels?

It is so overwhelming. 

I felt really confident early on because breastfeeding did come easy to both of us. Charlie was born in the 75th percentile and stayed there consistently until he was 6 months old. That’s when his weight dropped to the 25th percentile and the doctor seemed very concerned about that. I spiraled. 

I questioned everything I was doing as a mom. I felt like I was failing my baby. 

Looking back, he was fine. He had started crawling, we had started baby led weaning and he was sleeping through the night. I just wish I had stuck with our original pediatrician, who we have since gone back to, because I know he would have been the voice of reason I needed. 

This whole episode didn’t come at the best time either. It was right after I started to despise the pump. 

I started pumping when Charlie was 4 weeks old. I would do his first feed of the day, chug water and eat a small snack and I was able to pump anywhere from 5-9oz about 30 minutes after finishing his feed. I did this every day for 2 weeks to start building a freezer stash. 

At 6 weeks old, we introduced a bottle of expressed breast milk at bedtime. It was really important to me that Charlie took a bottle so I could have a little bit of freedom when needed. We would pull 5oz from the freezer to make the bottle and I would sit to pump while Nick fed him. For every 5oz we pulled, I was able to replace it with about 7oz. My freezer stash was growing!

Now fast forward to when he was 4-5 months old. We traveled to the US and, for the first time ever, had people willing to watch Charlie. Only issue, I had no freezer stash in Maine. My body went into internal overdrive. I would pop out of bed anxiously at 5am just so I could get a pump in at least an hour before Charlie woke up. I’d sit there pumping, chugging water, stuffing my face and just praying that I could get enough to fill one bottle so Nick and I could take advantage of free babysitting. Then, of course, my pump would have to come out with us so I wouldn’t leak while on a date but I would only ever get 1-3oz. I wasn’t replacing what he was drinking.

So much anxiety.

This is the point where you may be asking, “Why wouldn’t you just give him formula?” And, honestly, I don’t know. It didn’t feel like an option to me because I was so determined at this point to make it to 6 months. I knew formula was an option but, all things considered, breastfeeding was still easy for us. Just not easy for me. But I am the mom and being a mom means making sacrifices, right? 

I had just come off this trip and all that anxiety when I was told my baby’s weight was now an issue and we’d have to come back before his next well-baby visit to make sure he was ok. 

Failure. 

Despite all this, we stuck it out. It was when he was 8 months old that I almost threw in the towel completely.

He was a confident crawler, wouldn’t sit still, couldn’t focus on the boob and each feed felt like a mini war. To this day, 8-9 months was the hardest month of motherhood for me. It almost broke me. It feels like a distant dream now, thankfully, but man it sucked. This was the month that I went out and bought formula. Just having it in the pantry felt like a weight off my shoulders. Having the back up, just in case, helped my mental state immensely. 

When Charlie was about 10.5 months old, I realized my lack of pumping and hatred of it meant that I couldn’t pump a whole lot. We had friends visiting from the US (remember when we could travel??) and had my in-laws visiting, which meant free babysitting! We were ready for a night out. We pulled the usual 7oz from the freezer to make Charlie’s bottle.

We got home that night and I was only able to pump 3/4oz total. On top of that, Charlie didn’t finish his bottle. 2oz down the drain. I bawled. I’m hoping another mom can understand this emotion because even now, just a few months later, my reaction seems a bit irrational. But at the time it was so very real.

It felt like the end was near. If I couldn’t replace what was being consumed and possibly not consumed and dumped, how would I ever have freedom to go out to dinner or do normal human things?! At that point we were only a month and a half from Charlie’s first birthday. The new goal date was near but also felt so far away. 

There was a shift that happened after I bawled my eyes out that night in December.

I stopped looking at my freezer stash as something that had to be built. Instead, it was something that had to be used up. I stopped worrying about replacing milk and moved to gratitude for every drop I got out of me. 

For the first time, things felt easy.

As soon as I let go of my control over how I thought things needed to happen to be successful with breastfeeding, it felt effortless. Here we are at 16+ months and it still feels that way. 

So why do I feel the end is near?

I had weaned Charlie off of his two daytime feeds before we went into lockdown in March. We were just feeding when he woke up and before bed. But then we were home all the time, I never wore a bra and it was an easy thing to do to get him to stop moving for 10 minutes so I could just lay there. He was back to feeding on demand.

Now that lockdown is over, I’ve re-weaned him off the daytime feeds again. 

The one other shift I have done is to stop pumping at night if we give him a bottle of soy milk. This happens maybe 1-2 times a week right now when I just need a break or we go out for some reason. I actually threw my old, broken pump away two nights ago and gave the one I was borrowing back to my friend yesterday! We are currently a pump-free home, which feels really significant.

For now, I’m leaving the morning and evening feeds up to him. Charlie loves the boob so I think he’ll want to keep them around for a while. We joke that he’d breastfeed until he went to college if I let him! 

I’m happy to follow his lead for the rest of this journey because, Lord knows, I have tried to control every aspect for the past 16 months. So while I am sad that this may be coming to an end soon, I am truthfully relieved. I am proud of us and proud of myself. I have learned a ton and will go into feeding a second child (one day) with a totally different and, hopefully, healthier mindset. I’ll put less pressure on myself and listen to the little nudges from the universe a bit more closely. 

I cannot end this post without mentioning the resource I turned to most often on this journey - www.kellymom.com. The content is evidence-based and provided by Kelly Bonyata, who is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant. If you have any questions, this is where I’d look first.

To all those mamas out there in the thick of it - you are doing a great job. I hope you are able to be a bit more gentle on yourself than I was on myself. Trust your mama gut - you know what is best for you and your baby.