One More Thought on Why Breast is Best...And Then Sometimes You Just Need to Feed Your Baby!

I was 21 when I had my first baby, Kailee.  She is now 13 years old; where has the time gone?  I often look at her baby pictures or watch her home videos and find myself not so much focusing on her, but on me.  I will find myself yelling at the "21 year old me" saying things like, "What do you think you are doing?" or "Are you crazy? Get that baby covered up!" or "Oh, I'm so sorry Kailee, I really had no clue."  I'm sure I could go on with plenty more negative things that go through my head about myself as I watch those videos, but I'll stop there.  It's kinda sad.  But what I have realized more, now than ever, is that everyone must go through the same kind of thing. If you didn't, could you please at least lie and say you did?

When I was pregnant with Kailee, I always new that I would be a breast feeding mom.  Everyone I talked to and all the parenting books I read told me that this was the thing to do, and if I didn't do it, then something was wrong with me.  Breast is Best. I was intent on not deviating whatsoever from this plan.  No baby of mine would ever get a bottle, because that would just make me a bad mom, and that was not something that I would ever be called.  I was going to be a great mom...

...And then, my blood pressure got the best of me and we had to deliver Kailee three weeks early.  She was fine, I would be fine; I was just excited to start my journey of being a mother. She was absolutely perfect, cone shaped head included (after I learned that her head wouldn't always be that way :0). But soon there was a bit of a problem, my plan was not working.  All Kailee wanted to do was sleep.  What parent isn't happy about that?  This one, that's who! She wouldn't stay awake long enough to eat. I had to do everything to try and keep her awake and really, nursing for her was a lot of work and she was just not having it. So I'm feeling like a failure at this moment in time. Lots and lots of tears. The nurses would even come in and supplement my almost nonexistent nursing with feeding Kailee a medicine cup of formula, not a bottle, teaspoons at a time. I thought this was a bit weird, but the nurses were like, oh a bottle would be too easy for her and it might make nursing even that much harder.  I bought into that, why, because I had no clue.  So I let my sweet baby lose weight because I had to live up to this notion of what I thought a good mom looks like.  Here's the deal, a good mom doesn't let her baby go hungry.

I didn't give up though, and within a couple of weeks Kailee and I figured it all out and she became, to this day, my chubbiest baby of all.  Rolls and rolls!  After a while, I even had Jeff give her a bottle. He loved being able to feed her too. Sad that I wasn't willing to let him be a part of that sooner.  Lesson learned.

When Evyn came along, two weeks early, my views had changed just a bit.  There was no way that I would put her through what Kailee went through.  She would not be hungry. Lucky for me, the nursing thing took off right away. But I was very willing to let her stay in the nursery will a bottle of formula so I could get some rest.  That's not being a horrible mom, that's being a smart mom. 

My sweet little baby Reese will be here in a couple of months, and again I'm looking forward to being able to nurse her.  It really is one of my favorite things about having a baby.  Breast is best, I truly believe that, but I have come a long way to know that it is not the only way, and it definitely doesn't make me a bad mom when I choose to give my baby a bottle. We have too much on our plates as women to feel bad about something like that.