The Twinkies

I was asked recently whether I liked breastfeeding. The question took me by surprise; I have been so grimly focused on getting breastfeeding to work that the question of whether I liked it hadn’t occured to me. It wasn’t relevant.

The short answer is that I am incredibly GRATEFUL for breastfeeding. It reassures me that my body will do something right. It allows me to maintain a bodily connection with my children past their birth. It feels like a sacred communion between me and them.

It is also a pain in the ass. There are days when chomping is rampant and my gratitude is focused more on Soothies than breastfeeding. Cluster feedings are tough. Growth spurts are tough. The day I had a baby at the breast for 90 minutes straight remains memorable. Sometimes I find myself looking at the babies going “Reallly, again? Please not again.”

I remain annoyed that I was told breastfeeding was “easy.” Oh, it’s so easy; all you have to do is pick the baby up and put it to your breast; if it hurts, you’re doing it wrong. Yeah, umm, not quite. No one bothered to mention that surgical birth can impact breastfeeding, that the antibiotics I was loaded up with can cause thrush, that thrush sounds innocous enough but feels like someone stabbing you in the nipple with a razor. Breastfeeding advocates need to drop the “breastfeeding is easy” message, which can make women feel like they’ve failed at something simple. I suspect that “easy” message leads to more women quitting than would if they were just given accurate information. I have a suggested alternate message:

Breastfeeding is going to suck at first, pardon the pun. It is going to be really, really hard and awful and you are going to want to quit. You are going to cry and it is going to hurt. Possibly a lot. But if you make it through the first 6 - 8 weeks it will suddenly get much, much easier. You won’t have to wash bottles, you won’t have to carry formula around when you go out, you will lose a lot of weight very quickly and, oh yeah, it is one of the most wonderful feelings in the world to look down at your nursing babe.

So, yeah. I guess I like breastfeeding.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 10:52 am and is filed under Breastfeeding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.