Formula Feeding
nicademus20
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Do you ever feel like you failed your baby?
nicademus20
member
Each can says that breastmilk is best.
My pediatrician said the same.
But my body wasn't ready to produce milk as my baby was premature and trying to jumpstart the body was near impossible to tolerate the pain.
I may as well have taken razors to my nipples every 3 hours both for 15 minutes each time. That is what it felt like on top of the post partum as I cried each and every time at even the thought of having to use those horrid machines at the hospital. The lactation consultant said to put it as much as possible to start the body producing milk, and then back one notch.
It was colostrum for nearly a week, that began after 3 days. Just maybe 10ml tops of that. Very tiny amount, much more if I could have fed him the tears of trying.
I tried it on a setting that didn't feel like I was slicing them up, and the colostrum dried up.
I couldn't bring myself to start up the torture again as I was still trying to cope with seeing him with all his tubes and being robbed of the experience of "giving birth" (I was put under and have no memory of the experience except how scared I was being put under and then waking up not pregnant anymore).
So I couldn't put myself through more stress, despite the pressure to breast feed.
Lots and lots of pressure from family/society, and myself.
I get tired of feeling the guilt that "breast milk is best", as I feed him formula.
Has anyone else had to deal with this?
I know another woman that was not able to breastfeed and we discussed how it takes away the experience of feeling like a mother.
So much pressure to breastfeed.
I wish I could go back and power through the nipple slicing razor pain while I cry. But also why that when formula does pretty well?
(Not as answerable, just awake at the 3am feeding)
Have any of you had to jumpstart the body?
Have you felt the pressures to breastfeed?
Do you sometimes have the thoughts that you've failed your little one?
My pediatrician said the same.
But my body wasn't ready to produce milk as my baby was premature and trying to jumpstart the body was near impossible to tolerate the pain.
I may as well have taken razors to my nipples every 3 hours both for 15 minutes each time. That is what it felt like on top of the post partum as I cried each and every time at even the thought of having to use those horrid machines at the hospital. The lactation consultant said to put it as much as possible to start the body producing milk, and then back one notch.
It was colostrum for nearly a week, that began after 3 days. Just maybe 10ml tops of that. Very tiny amount, much more if I could have fed him the tears of trying.
I tried it on a setting that didn't feel like I was slicing them up, and the colostrum dried up.
I couldn't bring myself to start up the torture again as I was still trying to cope with seeing him with all his tubes and being robbed of the experience of "giving birth" (I was put under and have no memory of the experience except how scared I was being put under and then waking up not pregnant anymore).
So I couldn't put myself through more stress, despite the pressure to breast feed.
Lots and lots of pressure from family/society, and myself.
I get tired of feeling the guilt that "breast milk is best", as I feed him formula.
Has anyone else had to deal with this?
I know another woman that was not able to breastfeed and we discussed how it takes away the experience of feeling like a mother.
So much pressure to breastfeed.
I wish I could go back and power through the nipple slicing razor pain while I cry. But also why that when formula does pretty well?
(Not as answerable, just awake at the 3am feeding)
Have any of you had to jumpstart the body?
Have you felt the pressures to breastfeed?
Do you sometimes have the thoughts that you've failed your little one?
Re: Do you ever feel like you failed your baby?
But during those minutes I teared up--nothing new as this week I've been crying more anyways.
But I had the thought a few times, this feeding, where if I were breastfeeding would we still be having this fight?
Surely some breastfed babies would fight too. But I regressed into a memory of my baby was crying in the NICU once when I visited him and I brought the container with the tiny amount of colostrum and I put a dab on my finger and put it to his mouth and he stopped crying. Then I began crying.
Because that told me, at that moment, to keep trying even though my c-section pain didn't hurt at all in comparison to the nipple slicing by razor pain that those machines caused.
I felt even worse deciding in the end not to continue to give myself added stress of the intense machine pain. When I have that memory it is both sweet and painful too.
I would like to think in the end that he doesn't know the difference. What I hate is that I do.