Nourished: A Feeding Story

I thought my previous blog post about formula feeding was going to be my first and last. It wasn't.

Two nights ago, the high school schoolmate of whose Facebook post became the trigger to me finally blogging about my thoughts on infant feeding wars said she wondered why I was even justifying myself to her.

This addition to our already lengthy exchange about the merits of breastfeeding took me aback. It was her Facebook post, her Facebook wall, after all.  She is definitely entitled to her beliefs and has just about every right to to shush anyone whose opinions go against hers. I mean, I've felt the same, myself, in the many times in the past that someone in my Facebook circle felt the need to bravely go beyond an unwritten social media etiquette of contradicting me, even discrediting or making fun of me for a post for which I feel strongly.

Going back to her question, after giving myself a few minutes to compose myself, I simply told her I felt the need to present the side of formula feeding mothers.

While I am neither a medical nor a statistics expert and that the only credit to my name is currently sleeping in front of me after his 7 am feeding, peeing/pooping and entertaining session that's been on repeat for the past almost six months, I know this much is true: Formula feeding moms are not against breastfeeding and a majority would have wanted to breastfeed had things been in their favor.

Now for the loaded question:

If it is a fact that the female species are biologically designed to feed their offspring, why is there an existing inability to unlock that level of motherhood for some women?

Again, I'm not an expert and even I have devoured God-knows-how-much-literature on why women formula feed, I don't want to fall into the danger of overgeneralizing. I will answer instead, on my behalf:

MY SPECIAL BABY

My mom and my dad got married in April of 1971. With several miscarriages before and after I was born in July of 1984, I ended up becoming their only child. Because my mom's blood pressure shot up during a routine OBGYN visit at more than seven months pregnant, I had to be delivered immediately via C-section. The verdict in that Manila hospital? I had to be formula fed because of my mom's hypertension medication.

Well, with a university degree that I got after four years in college, an admission post-university to one of the top Philippine law schools, 10 fingers and 10 toes, and 31 years later, I suppose I turned out physically, emotionally, and mentally well.

Unfortunately, things didn't turn out so well for me in the pregnancy department. Some medical literature say that infertility issues can possibly be passed on. I was, therefore, afraid that after a miscarriage in year two of my marriage and after a series of unsuccessful infertility treatments, I was going to either not get pregnant or end up waiting as much (or more) like my parents and suffer heartbreaking consequences. In year three, my dad, who was afraid history might repeat itself with me, died waiting for a grandchild.

So after all those stated above that compelled additional lifestyle changes for me (a 60-lb weight loss, among others), in year four, a day after my birthday and two days after my husband's, I found out I was pregnant again. It was, suffice to say, the best birthday gift. Ever.

Just like the first pregnancy, I had scary episodes with this one. But my baby boy was a fighter. And an eager one at that. Sebastian Gabriel Prieto was born on February 24, 2015 at 34 weeks and five days, 10 days after Valentine's Day and an entire month after our fifth wedding anniversary.

MY SPECIAL CHOICE

I was never clinically diagnosed with Hypoplasia or Insufficient Glandular Tissue (IGT). In the craziness that accompanied our son's early birth and wanting to catch up with everything else, getting a diagnosis for such was the last thing in our minds.

At the most, on a very good day when my son was already three and a half months old, I managed to express close to a total of nine ounces of breast milk. But of course I would be lying if I had said it's the reward I got from breastfeeding and pumping every three hours from the time I gave birth. Heck, no. In fact, my average total output for the entire day for both breasts was a measly five ounces.

But before I get ahead of myself, let me just state the following:

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1. I wanted to breastfeed. In fact, I never really paid that much attention to that aisle in Target dedicated to breast pumps. Hubby and I just discussed in passing that we'd buy a cheap one. 

2. Because my husband and I were between business trips, work commitments, and house renovations, and because I gave birth at my 34th week of pregnancy, I didn't get to attend any of my prenatal classes including my breastfeeding class, that were all scheduled on my 37th up to my 39th week of pregnancy. Whatever I know about breastfeeding, I learned from Dr. Google and from the actual medical experts, themselves, who graciously assisted me when I gave birth.

3. At the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in San Francisco, I must have been helped by and interacted with no less than FIVE lactation consultants, not excluding the NICU nurses who assisted in latching and pumping, and that one OBGYN who taught me how to really massage, no, squeeze, my breasts.

4. Either I read somewhere or I was told by one of the nurses or the lactation consultants that the reason why I was not at the expected milk flow curve during my newborn's crucial first 72 hours was because my body still had not caught up with the fact that I had already given birth. As such, I needed to pump and practice getting Sebastian to latch "whenever I could".

5. I gave birth at 3:20 am on a Tuesday. I was discharged, without my son, on Thursday. In between daily six-hour visits to the NICU from our house that was 30 minutes away by car on a good heavy-traffic-less day in San Francisco (click ME), we were trying to tidy up our abode and scrambling to buy the remaining baby essentials that we still had not bought/received. At this point, I was ready to stab my eyeballs out every time I heard well-meaning people telling me to get a lot of rest since I just gave birth. So "whenever I could" meant leaving my equally exhausted husband to fill the gaps while I squeezed the life out of my breasts in order to be able to take a whopping day's worth of an ounce of liquid gold to the hospital.

6. Though Sebastian was born with a healthy pair of lungs, his weight was on the low end. He was not underweight but he was tiny. He also had jaundice. The NICU doctors and my husband and I were certainly not going to wait for my milk flow curve to stabilize AND risk the condition of our otherwise healthy first baby. Yes. There was an IV line. And formula. I remember staring for the first time, filled with motherhood bliss, at my voracious baby while he sucked Similac Neosure formula from a hospital-provided feeding bottle.

7. Eventually, I did end up using a hospital-grade Medela rental and owning a manual Ameda that was part of the hospital newborn welcome kit, a Medela Pump in Style Advanced when we eventually needed to return the rental motor but was left with the pumping kit, two manual Medela pumps (no judgment, please), and a swanky Spectra S1.

8. Oh! I gobbled oatmeal cookies, avoided caffeine, drank lots of water, and hoarded Fenugreek capsules and lactation tea boxes.

9. And oh! I also eventually just used our once a day breastfeeding sessions to stimulate my milk glands as getting him to latch and stay latched almost always made my head want to explode. I pumped. Whenever I could. As much as I could. Which was six times a day at the most.

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Going back to that glorious nine-ounce-day, how was I able to reach that? When Sebastian was born, we were in the very early stages of transforming another house, our former rental property, into a primary residence. Every few weeks or so, we'd have to go on an hour-long drive, sans heavy traffic (it was more or less far), pack the essentials we needed for a brief stay, on top of packing our household items that we wanted transferred to the other house. Such routine took a huge toll on my pumping sessions. Getting the baby ready alone took an hour. Washing the dishes, his bottles,  and my pumping kit, and packing my own clothes took two hours. That one nine-ounce-day happened after I had to sacrifice a multitude of pumping sessions the previous day. Ouch.

The day I stopped pumping happened during one of those back-and-forth drives between houses. We had visitors. My mother-in-law and her sister traveled to the US from the Philippines to briefly stay with us for vacation and to help prepare for Sebastian's July baptism. To make things cost-effective, we decided to combine his christening reception and our birthday celebrations (refer to my pregnancy story). Doing all these while catering to our visitors, taking care of the baby (even if they were doing their share of helping with him) and pumping? Not going to happen. And my body was already starting to feel the stress. My milk output went downhill as the days passed.

So, okay. I fully know that at this point, I'm starting to sound like I'm making a lot of excuses for my decision to feed my son with formula. But like what I told my high school schoolmate and a number of friends who are either kind or intrusive, while it's a universally accepted fact that us women are hardwired to feed our babies, our similarities in body parts end where the differences in our situations begin.

See, living in the US did not provide me with the luxury of being able to hire either a house help or a nanny for less than $100 per month. Nannies here have higher hourly pays than the measly $13.27/hour that I received as a ground crew for Air France. When I gave birth? It was just my husband and me. We did not have the luxury of having trusted friends or relatives living within a few miles come over to give us the breather that we desperately needed. In fact, we were not able to see a relative until Sebastian was two months old. And that was a birthday party of that relative's son.

In short, I was stressed out.

Sure, first-time motherhood IS stressful. I entered it fully knowing that it does not get any better with time. But being already spread out too thinly due to everything that I mentioned above, I was almost pushed to the brink of postnatal depression by people who found it worthy to emphasize why I was making a huge mistake introducing formula to my preemie.

I did not, and still do not, have the luxury of locking my baby and me in a room for two straight days, as suggested by another high school schoolmate, to "bond", let alone enjoy our practice breastfeeding moments "stress-free". It is a matter of personal choice that I certainly am not going to lose myself to breastfeeding or pumping while my husband, my partner, the father of my child, is struggling to provide for us and do all the household chores (on top of washing the pumping kit and the bottles) at the same time.

For a former grade school classmate to say that our doctors did not know anything and then to suggest that we insist that the formula be ditched while our firstborn was at the NICU? Unacceptable. Looking back at my parents' and our own experiences at infertility and miscarriages, we knew we were going to play it safe and exhaust all our immediately available resources to get our little man to thrive. I mean, we already got this far. Getting my husband and me from infertility treatments to pregnancy scares (I had subchorionic bleeding during my first trimester with Sebastian) was no mean feat. We certainly were not going to wait for our baby boy to get used to a gradual increase in my supply especially while he was a fragile preemie barely half a week old.

But after his first 72 hours, his second week, first month, and second month well-baby check-ups, what else is left that's preventing me from returning to practicing breastfeeding (I know it's not too late, I've read the journals and the blogs) and pumping?

Well, we still have not fully transferred to the house I mentioned. So there's that. But over and beyond that is my decision to be an emotionally and mentally present mom to Sebastian. I am not saying breastfeeding and pumping moms are not emotionally and mentally present to their babies. All I'm saying is that it's just the way I've managed to cope and stay sane.

I want to continue holding my son with his eyes locked on mine as he feeds with contentment. I don't want to do this with the thought of when my next pumping session is going to be or when I could wash the dishes, the bottles and the pumping kit looming in my head. I don't want, anymore, to freak out, if my just-washed pumping and nursing bras fall on the floor while I'm folding them. I don't want to end up being diagnosed as clinically depressed and physically unhealthy all in the name of getting me to exclusively breastfeed or get my supply up when I have a loving and supportive husband and an otherwise healthy and happy baby who need, want and love all of me.

All I truly want, as is with any formula feeding, mixed feeding, even pumping moms, is to be supported and to not be looked down and harshly, and not to be met with any "you're on your own", "I told you so", and "you're an inferior, selfish mother" safely tucked in "I understand" or "I respect your decision".

Again, as it is with any baby, my son is special. We do the things that we do because he holds that extra special meaning to us that no other parent, other than us, that can understand. It is in the same way that I can't hold any judgment for any parent who chooses to nourish their offspring in their chosen way.