And to you I say: do yourself a favor and hit the unfollow button. If it's on my mind it's gonna be posted, and while I try to be tasteful and courteous, there are a lot of things that I feel very strongly about and I'm going to talk about it. Feeding your baby is one of those things. Things went really well with the Lima Bean for the full first year that the AAP recommends you nurse them for. We didn't make it 12 months by the letter, because by about 10 months I hit a psychological wall about my body being my body and that I was my own, separate entity that was NOT a cow, and so on so forth, but I didn't mind pumping and I had a small milk supply already built up. So the Lima Bean really didn't drink ANYTHING but breast milk until just a couple days after her first birthday. Even with these struggles, we were still one of the lucky ones. My baby thrived through the first year, we only ever bought a single can of formula (for if I forgot to pack some/enough milk from the freezer), and I even managed to shed all of the baby weight before No.2 came along, most of which was in that first 12 months. And now No.2 is here, and I can't even begin to tell you how much joy the Walker has brought into our lives. I wouldn't give her up for anything, and watching the Lima Bean play with the Walker is the highlight of my day, second only to my husband walking in the door form getting off of work. But those those nursing struggles are already back, and we haven't even hit three months yet. I've been crying over giving myself up to her on her screaming demands, degrading myself for hating to feed my child, frustrated that I have such difficulty getting her to latch correctly on the one side that I am in constant pain every feeding session for days. It's hard, guys, it really is. For those of you that haven't nursed a child, don't you DARE ever tell any woman that it should be easy. Also, I don't care how well informed you think you are, it also is NOT painless. You and your little might get to the point where you are a well oiled machine and latch perfectly the first time every time, have a set schedule so you always know what to expect and be able to read his/her cues perfectly, but that takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears (quite literally) to reach that point, and if you get there I will salute you till the end of days. But that's not most of us. I could probably say that's not any of us. And that's okay. I haven't even nursed the Walker for three months, and I am already giving up. I've decided it. And I've decided to be at peace with it. We're going to try to just pump, more or less exclusively. I'm sure there are plenty of studies out there that you could cite that says this is a terrible idea, but I have found that more terrible than this is locking yourself in your room while your daughters scream outside so you can cry and hope to pull yourself together for one more hour. What I have found is more terrible than this is hungry daughters, hungry for food and milk, hungry for attention, hungry for love, but you have nothing left to give them. What I have found is more terrible than this is the resentment that can grow if left unchecked against your own blood and darkens your whole life. It's just not worth it. Tell me, fellow moms, care givers, family members, kin- if the child is hungry, are you going to let him starve? If you have to give her a bottle, are you just going to drop it in their lap and walk away? No- I feel it is safe to say you probably are not. You are going to take that child and, regardless of the manner of feeding, you are going to hold her close and tell her how much you love her. You're going to do everything in your power to make sure he has the things he NEEDS- calories, basic vitamins and minerals, hydration- and you're going to make sure he gets enough of them. And it doesn't matter how your kid gets these things, as long as he does. At the end of the day what I am trying to say is that if you are Mom (or whatever title is more apt), then stop beating yourself up over how hard it is. It IS hard, and you are not weak. If there is something that you need to do that may not be considered "optimum", it is better that you do it so that you can actually be there, be happy and be present for your child than that you do it "perfectly". Because let's be honest- if you kill yourself trying to be perfect, then you are going to fall much more short than if you let it go. And if you are not that Mom figure? Then shut up, because it isn't any of your business what she decides to do to care for her child. I think I might make a string of these- 'Confessions of a Millennial Mom' or something. -Creampaws
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