There is a deep chasm of fear and failure that separates the mother that I am, and the mother that I long to be.

When I was pregnant with Max, I was SO good at parenting that some days I amazed even myself. I took classes on breastfeeding and childbirth at a swanky private boutique mother’s club. I bought fancy nursing bras and cute little tank tops with tiny clips that would allow me to discreetly feed my baby in the ONLY WAY THAT NATURE EVER INTENDED. I was so confident about how natural and normal and easy breastfeeding would be, that I even made jokes about strippers and baring my breasts in public. Oh yes. I sure did.

When I was 8 1/2 months pregnant we sold our house in the city and packed everything up to move to the suburbs. Except our new house wasn’t ready yet. Minor details still had to be ironed out, like plumbing and cabinet doors, and oh yes, the mortgage paperwork?! So we lived in a hotel for almost 3 weeks. The hotel where our dog died, and then Max decided to flip around in my belly so that he was suddenly in the breech position.

Why am I telling you this?

Because you might be new here, for starters. But mostly because I blame all of these things for what happened next.

I delivered Max by C-section, because in my mind, it was the safest way out when your baby is ready to enter the world feet-first.

I don’t regret for one second that Max came into the world that way.  Of course anyone who knows him also knows that this is how he bounds into any room…feet first.  He was born healthy, and perfect, and while I did not split my girl parts open to bring him into this world (and I can’t say I’m bummed about that, honestly), I was awake and alert for every octave of his “hello, world!” first cries.

So what happened after that?

I. HAVE. NO. IDEA.

I have no idea.

I remember starting to shake. I remember my arms were tied out to the sides and I was freezing. I remember asking the anesthesiologist to tell my husband to move out of the way so that I could see my baby over there, and she laughed and said “That’s not your husband, that’s the doctor”.  I remember Sean brought Max over to my face, and feeling his sweet baby skin against my cheek was the most complete I’ve ever felt in my life. I remember Sean asking if he could go with Max to the nursery, and me saying “Yes, yes please. Of course.” And then the doctor said “I can give you something for the shaking…” and then….

Nothing.

I remember nothing.

Telling you that, admitting that, breaks my heart open and spills it across my lap. It makes me want to throw up.  Do you know how horrible that is, to not remember the first hours of your child’s first day on this earth?

I have pictures of me holding Max in the recovery room. I think that I remember that. Sean tells me I was there. But it’s like looking at pictures from your childhood. It’s possible that the memories don’t really live in your mind, they’ve just been entered in like data, because you’ve seen the pictures enough times to know the story.

5 or 6 hours later that day….that’s clear to me. I remember the drugs wearing off, and the nurse helping me up as I sobbed and sobbed.  I remember wanting to be with Max every single second, to make up for the time that I had missed.  I had carried him for 9 months in my belly, and even though I couldn’t feel anything from the chest down for those first few hours, I missed his little frogger body curled into mine.  When night fell on our first full day together, I could barely walk, but I held on to the side of his bassinet and followed the nurse into the tiny office where she did his hearing check.  “You don’t have to come with us” she said, in her kind, condescending way.  “I’m going to go everywhere with you” I told her, and followed her back down the hall with my baby.

But what I don’t remember? I don’t remember nursing. I don’t remember feeding my child, and to this day, I’m not sure I did in those first 5 or 6 hours. I know that he was with me. Some of the time. I know that on the second day, when Susie came to visit, I nursed Max under a nursing cover for an entire hour. At least I think I was nursing. I’m not sure he was ever really, truly latched on in a way that would help him at all. But I remember watching the minute hand on the clock and thinking “Wow. This tiny baby is STILL nursing.” And then “I think I just fell asleep with my eyes open, and Susie and my mom just kept talking to me. Coooool.”  So glad that I took the swanky expensive nursing class.  Learning “the football hold” means abso-fucking-nothing when you are on drugs and delirious and your baby has no idea how to latch.

To say that I had a bad reaction to waaay too much medication, would be an understatement. My birth plan was being used as a coaster for the endless cups of apple juice they were plying me with.

So it wasn’t a surprise that on my 3rd morning at The Hospital Inn and Suites, we noticed that Max was trembling every time we held him. A quick heel-stick showed us that his blood sugar was dangerously low. Do you know what it feels like to think that you have been STARVING your baby? That this tiny child is going to DIE because you have no idea what you’re doing? And do you know how cute and small and EASY those little formula bottles are when you are scared and exhausted and BLEEDING FROM YOUR STAPLES and your nipples are red and raw because the lactation consultant came in and said “Yeah, if he’s still not nursing well tomorrow maybe someone should bring you a pump.”

Maybe someone FUCKING should.

Instead, they brought me formula. And more pain meds.

And because I hadn’t prepared for a C-section, and had just moved into a new house oh, 6 days ago, and our dog died while we were sitting there watching her, and I probably couldn’t even have told you my name if you asked because I was so doped up on god knows what…..I said “Yes, please”.

I figured I’d nurse when I felt better. I will never forget my mom pleading with me, sitting next to me on the couch, begging me to at least pump if I wasn’t going to nurse. And the 16 year old naive part of me crying and saying “I WILL Mom, I’m just so tired right now!”. She told me about supply and demand, about the learning curve of nursing, about how the more bottles Max took, the less he’d want to work at nursing. That nursing WAS harder, but it was worth it.  I heard my friend Jenny in my head, reminding me that the first few weeks would be the hardest, but that it got better from there.  I took out the pump that she had loaned me, and I hooked myself up.  My mom brought me water, and snacks, and support.  My husband held Max while I watched the tiny glistening droplets of milk fall into bottles that were still way too empty.

The hormones, the adrenaline let-down, the lack of sleep….they never got better. So I trudged through nursing, and supplementing with formula, and I pumped my never-engorged boobs off, and I would gingerly carry the bottles of breastmilk to the fridge, and put them away. 1/2 an ounce in each bottle. Only drops.  I had missed the window.  My milk had never been given a chance to come in.  I hadn’t welcomed it with open arms.  I hadn’t thrown it a little party, with balloons and streamers and cupcakes.  I had shut the door on nursing, before I even realized what I had done.

When Max was 10 days old we took him to the lactation consultant at the swanky expensive boutique mom’s club. She couldn’t save us at that point, as hard as she tried. But while I was running to the restroom to cry my eyes out about how badly I had failed my son, my son was puking up formula exorcist-style over my mom’s shoulder and all down the back of the swanky expensive rocking chair in the swanky expensive mom’s club.

We had bigger fish to fry, my boy and I. Max was having major reflux, and we were just beginning our journey of belly-ache hell.

Would it have mattered if I had nursed him? Maybe. Probably not. What we know now is that Max has severe Reflux, Delayed Gastric Emptying, and probably some food allergies. I would’ve had to have gone on a severe elimination diet, and well, with the Post-Partum Depression and inability to even get dressed without crying…I’m not so sure I would’ve had the strength to eat a balanced diet that consisted of anything healthier than graham crackers and bagels with cream cheese.  In fact, I was about a step away from either needing marriage counseling or the loony bin.  So formula it was.

I’ve already told you how it felt for me to feed Max with a bottle. How when I came out of my post-c-section fog I was mortified that I was now one of THOSE moms. How I spilled the powdered formula EVERYWHERE one day at music class. How I had nightmares that I forgot to bring the bottle of perfectly distilled water in the diaper bag, and my baby starved to death. How I hid formula in Medela bottles so other moms would think it was breastmilk that I had pumped. How I tried 7 different formulas and 10 different brands of bottles, but it never mattered because Max puked everything up, whether it came out of an expensive Dr. Brown’s bottle or a cheapie Gerber one.

Max was thriving, and growing, and adorable, but he was sick.

And as time went on, I spent less time soothing my wounded ego and more time really talking to other moms I knew.

Turns out there are lots of us. There are tons of women who weren’t able to nurse, for one reason or another. In fact, some of them were feeding their babies bottles in my playgroup. I just never noticed because I was too busy looking at the ones unsnapping their cute nursing tanks with the tiny clips and clucking over their cooing, perfectly content babies. “Oh, he just won’t stop with the boooob” they’d lament. And I’d want to scream at them “Shut UP! Just shut the fuck up. Really.” Fuck you with your nursing tank top. Fuck you with your “I have so much milk I spray my baby in the face” stories. Shut. Up.  You have no idea how blessed you are.  You have no idea how much I hate you for not having to carry an extra-large diaper bag that will hold 3 bottles of water and 3 huge servings of powdered formula.  AND your boobs are still huge, AND you’re losing weight because you’re nursing, AND the first ingredient in your breastmilk is not High Fructose Corn Syrup.  So just unsnap your little tank top and shut.the.hell.up.

When Max was about 6 months old, someone whispered to me that it would start getting easier. “Now that he can eat other things, there won’t be so much focus on how he gets his milk.” they said.

Except he started throwing up his cheerios. And the avocado that I lovingly smushed up for him because that’s what my hippie-crunchy mama food handbook said to do. He puked up the rice cereal and the purees and pretty much anything else that we offered.  When well-meaning folks suggested that we give him banana/applesauce/anything at all, we would sometimes give in just to prove to them that yep….there he goes…sorry…can I get you a wet paper towel so that you can wipe the vomit off of your shoes?  Now next time, would you please just trust me, because I AM HIS MOTHER AND I KNOW WHAT HE NEEDS.

This feeding thing was AWESOME, y’all. And on top of feeling like I was doing it all wrong, I couldn’t stand to see my sweet boy in so much pain while he was eating.  While he was just crawling around, minding his own business.

So we finally found a hypoallergenic, prescription formula that worked for him.

And at that point, I could’ve cared less what anyone thought. My baby was growing. My baby was getting healthier. My baby held my hand and twirled my hair while he drank a bottle in my arms, so put that in your pipe and smoke it all you Boppy-wearing mommies.

Max grew stronger, but his belly still wasn’t working properly. When he was about a year and a half, his team of GI doctors finally insisted that we stop solid foods all together. They asked us to only give him formula, for at least 3 weeks.

I argued with them. I cried out loud to them. I embarassed myself begging for them to reconsider. “He has come SO far.” I said. “He has done feeding therapy and occupational therapy. Won’t this set him back months?”

They insisted that it was the only way to finally determine, once and for all, what was bothering his system so much. Another mom on one of the GI message boards gently asked me “Does it really matter whether or not he eats solid food right now? If it’s making him so sick, then does it really matter?”

Those bottles gave him life, for 3 weeks. Those bottles nourished him, and energized him, and soothed him. My sweet boy cuddled in my lap and drank his bottle, and his belly started to heal.

My heart started to heal. It wasn’t about the Formula-Feeders versus the Lactivists. It wasn’t about my failures in those first few days of Max’s life. It wasn’t about the missed opportunities with his first pediatrician, or my frustration with the formula companies for making their rep leave cute little bottles in a cute little bag for every new mother in the maternity ward.

It was about feeding my child.  It was about embracing the most important thing that we can do as a mother.  Because feeding is about loving is about healing is about bonding.

It was about saving my baby.

It is possible to love a child back to health. It is possible to bond with a child over a bottle. It is possible to rest a tiny boy against your chest and have your love flow into him from the very deepest parts of your heart, instead of from your breasts.

The bottles are what saved us, in the end.

So you can see how it was hard for me him to let them go.

A few weeks ago, we decided it was time.

But this was no ordinary goodbye.

Max is almost three years old, but this was not about bottles being for “babies”. This was about Max finally being healthy enough to survive without them. And as much as you might disagree with how we fed our child, this was about me him letting go of the little moments. The curling up together in bed while he drank a bottle. His little fingers dancing across my wrist as I held him. The deep breaths that he took in between sucks. The content smile that helped him to drift off to sleep.

When we were finally ready, both Max and I, we took each bottle out of the cabinet and placed it in a bag. We said “Thank you bottles for taking such good care of Max. Thank you for keeping Max so healthy, and helping him to grow big and strong”.  “Thank you bottles” I cried that night, as I set them gently in the garage.  Thank you for helping him.  Thank you for making him OK.  Thank you for teaching me that love washes over our children, regardless of how we feed them.  That it is my love for him that kept him alive, and the bottles that kept him fed.

20120311-204644.jpg

Share
---here---

18 Replies to “Bye-Bye Bottles”

  1. When I video taped my parents answering questions about me growing up, I found out that my mom never breast fed either my brother or I. I was shocked, I guess I always just assumed, but she said she never could produce enough milk to feed us. She said that back when you and I were born, it was the cusp of cloth diapers and disposables, before sonograms were a normal thing and they thought I was going to be a boy, and when formula was a very weird thing. It was crazy to hear my mom talk about her own struggle with it, and to contrast that with my assumption that she did it. It was sort of a ‘huh’ moment.

    Thank you again for sharing so much of your journey with Max, I know that it helps me as a potential mom know there isn’t just one path and I’m so glad you’re out there helping other people hear they aren’t alone.

    <3 you… Tor

    1. Thanks Tor! I love that you were videotaping your parents….and how amazing that there are still new things to learn that you didn’t know about before?! And just goes to show, formula-fed babies turn out just fine 😉 But really, I love your mom already, but please pass along to her that it makes me feel a special kinship with her that she struggled with this 😉 And that she let us stay up too late and eat m&m’s for dinner when we were 15 too, of course. xoxo

  2. Beautifully written story. Thank you for sharing.
    I too fully intended to breast feed exclusively…and that did not work out as I had planned.
    But somehow it all works out. And in the end, accepting what IS, and not what SHOULD have been is a much better way to nourish and love ourselves and our children.
    Thank you bottles!

    1. Thank you so much for your encouraging words! I love what you said about accepting what “is”. So true!

  3. I empathize with you on this wholeheartedly. I was exclusively breastfeeding. Until Zaid was born via emergency c-section and the hospital gave him formula (and I only knew that b/c they wrote it down). I didn’t even know WHAT SEX my baby was until he was hours old and I was finally coming out of the fog. I did breastfeed him for 16 months, but those first few hours? They are lost to me. Much like any memory prior to the first day of kindergarten and then anything after but before fourth grade. Gone. Also like I feel now w/having to work.

    Look at him work that straw! I love this b/c it is such a testament to why we should listen to ourselves as parents. Bravo to you and to Max for being ready/able to say goodbye to the bottles that were such a help.

    1. Thank you SO very much for posting here and sharing your story. I have honestly never heard from another mom with the same secret, about not remembering those first few hours. It’s such a scary truth, and yet it’s so nice to know that you were able to push past it and have the nursing relationship that you wanted. I love hearing that, because I can stockpile your positive experience and come back to it if we ever have another. It CAN be done, and that gives me hope!

  4. Failure should not even be a word in your vocabulary. Courage. Strength. RESILIENCY. These are the words that should be used to describes Max’s Mama the absolute hell she went through the first 2 years of his precious little life. No one failed at anything. On the contrary, you SURVIVED and lived to tell the tail. And now, through your writing, and putting it all out there for the world to read, you are helping countless woman (myself included) help their babies faster, sooner and easier than you were ever allowed to help yours.

    Thank goodness for Warrior moms like you Kim, because when it comes to our children, failure is just not an option.

    1. Oh J, your sweet words have me bawling all over the place! I appreciate you so much, and you have no idea how healing it has been for me to watch you mother Adam with such strength and grace. It really does make me believe that our little family will be ok if we ever have another baby, because I’ve watched YOUR family start the process of healing your little guy so much sooner than we ever could. You have been such a support to me for so many years, and having you cheering me on is such a wonderful blessing in my life. xoxo

  5. What a beautiful story— thank you for sharing. It seems the larger the expectations, the harder the fall.
    and they are ALL different. I had a super hard time nursing my first—it was 13 weeks until I stopped bleeding and felt like I could kind of handle it–then I turned into a nursing machine. I weaned her at 18mos. for the next one, she nursed really well right away and I weaned her close to age 2.
    this last baby was a wiggler, wouldn’t latch well and was losing weight by 2weeks. we started “topping her off” with formula and I LOVED IT. I LOVED being able to throw bottles into the diaper bag and let someone else feed the baby. I loved that she slept longer than 45 min stretches. I gave up nursing her for good right around 6 months.
    they are all different. and you are different for each child, too. You’re older, wiser, and just have a different awareness of what is important in the big scheme of things and what isn’t.

    mothering/parenting/life isn’t a competition. we’re all doing the best we can to get through the day, and sometimes just the minute.
    xoxo

    1. Stephanie,

      Your words lift me up 🙂 It is so encouraging to hear your story about how each child was a different kind of nurser…it gives me hope that if we ever have another baby, I will have a second chance. I appreciate your perspective on why you used formula too…it’s a good reminder that each of us come to our feeding decisions for different reasons. Nursing moms have their own trials, and get frustrated and weighed down with their “method” just like formula moms do. Very good points! Your kind words help to ease my heavy heart about the whole thing 🙂

  6. Oh where were you when i was a new mom. How come i am finding you only now (i suppose cause now i know what i should be looking for and not trying to run wit the sheep to conform). Thank you for helping me put to rest the demons i still fight, the guilt i still have and the time i am trying to make up for.

  7. Thank you! The short version of my story,I had two months of unexpected bedrest followed by constant trips to the hospital from the home nurses worry about one thing or the next. I ended up having a scheduled c-sect. They couldn’t het her out. it was terrible and painful and i almost blacked out from blood loss and pain. It was some time before I was able to get a quick peak at my 9.5lb baby girl. My husband left with the baby while they worked on me. My 24 hr nerve block failed and i could feel half of my abdomine on fire as the were wheeling me into recovery. i barely held my daughter in the first 24 hours and ended up in ICU. I hate even typing this and remembering all those moments. Due to all the trauma my milk never came in, i only managed a few drops, ever! I spent over six weekes drinking nasty tea, POWER PUMPING! i would fall asleep hooked up to see if i could get a few more drops. I spoke with so many lactaition consultants and tried every trick they new and nothing, I felt like such a failure. I broke down late on sleepless night in the kitchen sobbing about how I couldnt feed my baby. My husband took the pump and packed it up. My body had undergone to much trama to have anything left to produce milk. I wish someone had told my to stop trying much earlier. to focus on rest and to reveal in how she was flourishing. the best thing i did was before the c-sect i gave my husband our camera and had it set on video, he followed our baby around for all those moments I would have missed. The nurses taped him giving her the first bath and everthing. They are my favorite moments and helped while i was in the ICU and now showing her videos of herself just moments old. She loves it! Thanks for helping me to share a little of what is some tough memories from the best thing in my life, my daughter

  8. I have just discovered your blog (via the I Support You movement, which is pretty much the best idea ever). When I got to the end of this entry, the tears were flowing freely. Thank you so much for sharing such an intimate goodbye.

  9. I’ve just found your blog and it has been a wonderful thing to read. This post is so beautiful I couldn’t help myself and cried out loud. My boy is 18 months old and he still drinks from his bottles. I couldn’t breastfeed him due insufficient milk supply and even now my broken heart is still healing. Thank you for helping me notice that “my love flowed into him from the very deepest parts of my heart, instead of from my breasts.”

  10. my son just turned 11 years old but i still remember the struggle i had feeding him
    in the beginning when i started breastfeeding him i suffered because he would not latch on and i was so depressed because my mom was not alive to guide me during this time so i turned to aunts, friends and professional. when i did give up and gave him formula all he did is cry and throw up. he wouldn’t drink the milk so i went back to breast-feeding with bleeding nipples and trust , which was brutal. and it did start to get easier and finally he was feeding but he never gave a full night sleep till this day when he gets up 5am because he cant sleep. i don’t care what anyone says it is not easy or natural to breathed it is lots of work and even then all you can do is persevere.

  11. I’m so sorry you had a such a hard time. I was formula fed – soy formula due to a severe lactose intolerance – in Berkely in the 70s. Women were horrible to my mother. I feel insulted when I hear that you can’t bond with your child if you bottle feed, forget my son, you are insulting my relationship with MY mother! I formula feed/fed my son. He’ll be a year old in less than a week. I have struggled with the image of formula feeding although luckily I am overseas where the pressure to breastfeed is significantly reduced. We had to switch formulas because he struggled miserably on the first one (we have three choices here and only one was free of sugar). That first bottle with the cheaper including sugar formula instantly created a different child. He went from fighting, screaming, crying every single swallow to suddenly just sucking his bottle down. The spitting up was much better…to go back to the very beginning, at the hospital the morning after he was born I was in the nursing room because you can’t take the babies out until 8am and so there I sat with my little pre-mixed bottle and my baby surrounded by women pumping and nursing and I COULDN’T GET HIM TO DRINK FROM THE BOTTLE. Nope. None of them offered to help but I didn’t feel like they were judging me either, I think it was a religion/language barrier. And I could have asked. But I took my baby, my bottle, and my shame back to my room as soon as I could and sat there and cried until my husband came. He took the baby and the bottle and shoved the bottle all the way into his mouth and off they went. Talk about feeling completely incompetent! I couldn’t even bottle feed my baby. Granted it would have been nice if at some point someone had mentioned that you can’t just stick the tip into their mouths…yeah. Anyway I’m so sorry to read about the struggles with feeding your son. And yes, you can bond over a bottle 🙂 My son is almost a year but still won’t hold his bottle (well he won’t if it’s formula/milk). He curls up in my lap and I hold his bottle and I feed him and I don’t multitask while I do this and it’s beautiful and wonderful and I absolutely adore him. I hold him and rub my cheek against his face and nibble on his nose, he’s just so precious. Parenting is terrifying for everyone at some point – over the course of the rest of your life 🙂

  12. I just stumbled across this blog/post. My son is 2.5 and still on elecare. While we technically use “sippy cups”, he really will only drink them while I cradle him (preferably with at least one bare foot so it can be rubbed). Our goal is generally 16-24 oz a day though we really range 8-32 in any given day. He can be a great eater or have days at a time where he is only drinking. While outwardly I always joke that he is still going to be climbing in my bed when he is a teen to drink his “tup”, I worry what will happen when it is time to get rid of the cup when he still needs the nourishment. I know it will all work out, it is just nice to know that we are not the only family dealing with this kind of thing.

  13. Thank you so much for sharing this! Your story is pretty similar to mine. I had a c-section and could not nurse the way I needed to because my milk was not coming out! My son was losing weight quickly and ended up having jaundice. I did all the try try try’s too, and still nothing. I could only get drops out. So we ended up with the bottle and formula. My son is a year and a half now, and as you can see I still have guilt not being able to breastfeed him, otherwise I would not have come across your blog! Thank you again. I know I am not alone in this!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


− 3 = 1