As new mom’s it’s ALL we hear. “Breast is best!” “You’re breastfeeding right?!” There’s no escaping it. Well what happens when you can’t breastfeed? There’s TONS of mom blogs to read and tell you exactly what you need to do to be a successful breastfeeder for your baby. But throughout my struggles with breastfeeding I couldn’t find a single blogger talking about their failures with breastfeeding and saying “it’s okay to give your baby formula.” I mom shamed myself beyond belief until I finally realized breast is not best…. FED is best.
As a first time mom, breastfeeding was all I could picture throughout my pregnancy when I thought about what motherhood would look like. It’s such a huge part of the bonding process and obviously incredibly important for the health of the baby. I remember talking with other moms who explained how they loved breastfeeding because they were literally keeping their little one alive with their own body. I couldn’t wait. If you’ve followed my blog or instagram, I’m sure you have seen what a happy, cheerful little girl Harper is….well it wasn’t always that way.
Jump back 5 months ago to January 2018. We discovered after about a week into breastfeeding that Harper had a cows milk allergy, which is surprisingly more common than I expected. But, being as uneducated as I was, I had just cut out cheeses and milks and obvious dairy products. Obviously that didn’t work, after doing more research and looking through my pantry I realized there was milk protein in literally EVERYTHING I was eating! Bread, chocolate, you name it, So I immediately cut those out and it worked! For about one month that is….
Then her screaming fits started…
When she was just about two months old, she started having AWFUL screaming fits out of no where. I remember Jordan looking at me with a face so discouraged during her third episode and he just said “I think she’s colic.” There was no way! She didn’t fit the symptoms. So I scheduled her an appointment that Monday. Harper happened to have an episode in the doctors office that day, her pediatrician was so concerned with her level of pain that she sent us to Children’s Hospital to get an ultrasound to check for something called “intussusception” which is a scary condition where the intestine essentially telescopes over itself. We were thanking God to hear it wasn’t that. So the next step was to discover what was triggering these outbursts. I paused breastfeeding (continued to pump) and had her on a hyper-allergenic formula called Nutramigen. And just like that she was our sweet happy girl again with no screaming outbursts! I started messing with my diet, and reading mom blogs of moms dealing with similar situations. I cut out soy for a while, then tried breastfeeding again. I cut out nuts for a week, then tried again, etc. etc. Nothing was working.
And soon the Nutramigen didn’t work either.
A week or two later we started to find a ton of blood in her stool. We got referred to a pediatric Gastroenterologist and discovered she was having a hard time digesting the actual proteins in the formula and he suggested putting her on Elecare, an infant formula that is broken down all the way to the amino acids. It came down to having her on this formula full time, or going on a total elimination diet where I would eat no wheat, dairy, eggs, nuts, fish, or soy, and was told it still might not work. What the heck else is left to eat?? Not only that but I had already done that and NOTHING was working. I was crushed. My breastmilk was literally causing rug burns inside my baby’s intestines, as the doctor described it.
Now onto the mom shaming.
I should clarify. I was never shamed by another mom, in fact every other mom I talked to was incredibly supportive. But the amount of mom shaming I put on myself was unreal and unhealthy. I read blog after blog of all these moms talking about their baby having allergies to milk and other things and how successful they were with their diet. I could not find a single blog where a mom talked about success with formula or failure with diet changes. Everything was “breast is best” “try this and this and this.”
I tried those things, I failed. In my mind I failed my baby.
I remember sitting in church one day, pulling out a bottle, and feeling ashamed that I wasn’t breastfeeding. I felt as if people were watching me, judging me, thinking that stupid phrase “breast is best!” I know this is so untrue, but as mom’s we do this to ourselves, we unnecessarily shame ourselves because of what society says is “best” and what all the other mom blogs say is “best.” Well I disagree. I wish I had this attitude months ago, when I would cry every time I had to feed her and couldn’t breastfeed. My breastmilk would literally torture her from the inside yet I couldn’t get out of my head “I need to try again, maybe it’s better.” No, no, no!! This was my selfish desire and was not best for Harper. Post-pregnancy hormones do crazy things y’all!Mama’s you know your baby. You know how hard it is to hear that screaming.
Before we can go and say “breast is best” we have to actually determine that breast IS best. In my case, and several other mommies cases, breast is not best, FED IS BEST.
I’m writing this blog for all those mommies out there who shame themselves daily, who want so desperately to breastfeed but in cases of reflux, allergies, protein digestion, milk production, etc they just can’t and that’s okay!
Something Jordan told me while I was crying over this one day really stuck with me….“Harper is YOUR daughter, you are an amazing mother and are doing what is BEST for her. You formula feed, OWN IT! No body is judging you, if they are, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that Harper is a happy, healthy baby”
He was right. Harper was happy and healthy, she hadn’t had a screaming episode in weeks. Her intestines weren’t being ripped to shreds by me “testing out” different allergens for my selfish desire to breastfeed.
With that, I just want to say, you know your baby. Stop looking to society for approval and comparing yourself to other mom’s. You know your baby’s needs, is breast actually best in your case? Maybe not, and that’s okay. If it is or it isn’t…
OWN IT.
