This crunchy hippie mama is doing what?!

I'm not sure when I'll be brave enough to post this. As of the start of this entry, Tycho is 10 days old, so we'll see how long it takes me to actually... you know, buck up the courage. :)

I was so lucky to have the most perfect birth I could have ever asked for. It was at a birth center, no interventions, with supportive people, in water... it seriously could not have gotten better. I was taken aback by how quickly and ideally it worked out, and have come to savor in it.

Everything since then, however, has been completely different.

I had all these pragmatic ideas on how we would raise Tycho: We would cloth diaper (after his umbilical stump came off, as even the BG newborn AIOs were too big for him!), I would exclusively breastfeed (EBF), we'd introduce a bottle only when preparing for daycare, we would cosleep. Literally none of those have worked out.

And you know what? I'm okay with that.

Probably the most poignant "loss" I experienced was the breastfeeding relationship... if you could even call it that. As a side note, I ended up getting some mild PPD after his birth, and for at least the first week of his life, I was in a desperate fog where I actually found Tycho to be so much a burden that I wanted nothing more to do with him. Nursing was the main issue, as it took at least an hour each time, and though his latch and suck were strong, it didn't seem effective if he was on the boob for that length of time. He was eating every two hours, and considering one of those hours was spent actually feeding him, I only had a break for an hour before he'd be crying with hunger again. This went on day and night, leaving me exhausted and cringing at the thought of the next feeding.

Not to mention what all this did to my nipples. After only a couple days, Tycho had made some deep gouges in both of them, my right nipple especially, and I came to dread each time I would have to feed him. So it wasn't only taking forever and leaving me drained and exhausted, but I would come close to crying at the thought of that one hour of rest flying by because I knew I would be in so much pain.

But I went through it for another few days. By day seven, I had given up, telling Matt that I didn't want to do it anymore. I ended up supplementing by pumping for a day or two after that. Pumping showed that I was making enough milk (if barely), and I'd have 3 ounces from both breasts combined. Pumping came with its own struggle, though -- when I wasn't feeding him bottled breastmilk, I was pumping, tied down to a machine that left me feeling like a dairy cow. It would take a half-hour at least to get that milk out, and when you add that to feeding him (another half-hour) and that he was still feeding every two hours, I wasn't saving myself any time or energy.

The final straw came when, in a fit of desperation, I supplemented with formula -- Similac Sensitive, to be precise. He took to it really well, so well that I debated throwing in the towel altogether. I still had some pumped breastmilk in the fridge, though, that we wanted to use up before deciding if it would be the end or not, so in between formula bottles, we gave him a bottle with breastmilk.

It ended up being the last time he would touch the stuff. Not even twenty minutes after the breastmilk bottle, Tycho started to look really ill. He was lethargic, his face was contorted, and his stomach was making all these terrible noises. Finally, he released a torrent of breastmilk (and some partially-digested formula!) all over me, himself, the couch, a prefold we've been using as a burp rag, everything. And while he did look better, he still slept for four straight hours after that, obviously recuperating from the ordeal. Gave me a bit of time to hop in the shower. :P

So we decided, that's it, we're done. At that point, he became an exclusively formula-fed (EFF) baby, and he's been doing so much better.

I asked Matt several times while feeding him if we were terrible parents for deciding to EFF. While switching did wonders for the onset of that PPD, it still screwed with my mind -- it's not what I wanted for Tycho! I was planning on EBFing him for at least a year, if not much longer. Choosing formula destroyed any chance of that, especially since I decided we would never go back and would let my milk supply dry up. I was a failure, a crunchy hippie mama who could have an all-natural birth but who couldn't -- and eventually wouldn't -- feed her baby breastmilk. An utter (udder?) failure!

Gods bless my husband, my doula, and the woman who did my placenta encapsulation, who all kept reassuring me that it was for the best, both for my mental health (as it started to steadily improve after this decision) and for Tycho, as he clearly didn't do well after that expressed milk. Matt kept saying, we were formula-fed, we turned out fine, he would do great as well. And he needed a healthy mom.

Tycho is now almost three weeks old (as of tomorrow!), and we're very happy with how everything is going. We did end up switching his formula under the supervision of his pediatrician, from Similac Sensitive to Gerber Good Start Gentle, and he's doing great on it. I also love that Matt can help with the feedings, and like me, he enjoys gazing into our son's eyes as he looks up at us with his "Thank you, oh giver of life!" look. :)

In the end, I found that I was my own worst enemy when it came to switching to EFFing. I had always been a "breast is best!" pragmatic... asshole (I'll admit it!) when defending breastfeeding, so you can imagine how much an asshole I was to myself when we ended up making the switch. I beat myself up terribly, blaming myself for his latch and my production and the way he reacted to the expressed milk when he had already gotten used to formula. I didn't feel like a terrible mother, I was a terrible mother.

Now that he's been on formula for almost two weeks and I see just how much he's thriving, I've loosened up a bit. I no longer feel like I'm poisoning my son when I go to feed him, I don't feel like I have failed him in some way, and I take joy in the way he gazes in my direction as he eats. At this point, you could even call me a fearless formula feeder... many thanks to Melissa for that site!

Formula feeding does not mean you've failed your child in any way. Whether it be due to lifestyle, inability, or PPD as in my case, or whatever other reason you decide to EFF, you're not screwing over your baby. After all, my mother didn't fail me when I went on formula at 6 weeks, and Matt's mother didn't fail him when she started formula-feeding at 2 weeks. If anything, they've still raised two perfectly capable, intelligent, healthy, striking individuals... who have now created an individual of their own and are feeding him in a similar fashion.

And I know Tycho will grow up to be just the same: Capable, intelligent, healthy, and striking. All qualities we plan on feeding him not through formula, but through our parenting. :)

(Now a photo dump... as I just can't get enough of this kid!! <3)