Silicon Valley Moms Blog

OPEN THREAD: Breastfeeding - Share Your Stories

We are so excited that breastfeeding is a topic so many moms are jumping to talk about. Infact, we are even receiving emails from our readers sharing their breastfeeding stories with us. So READERS, here is your chance to share your story. This post is an open thread so feel free to share your breastfeeding experience with us by SUBMITTING A COMMENT BELOW. We would enjoy hearing from you.

Extreme Breastfeeding: Only Attempt With a LLL Friend

Before I get to deciphering the "LLL" acronym, I have to say that I am writing this post with a lot of scary backflashes.  The first four months of being a new mom were hellish for me because breastfeeding was so difficult.    I often refer to that dark passage into motherhood as being pushed past my limits, going beyond what I could handle.

It's not that I wasn't prepared to breastfeed.  Like a dutiful student, I took a breastfeeding class at the hospital.   Within two hours, I could whip that baby doll in a cradle hold, football clutch, and even cross-cradle positions, all within 10 seconds flat.   I was pregnant with my first baby when I was thirty-four, so I had witnessed plenty of nursing sessions from girlfriends who had children earlier in life.  And because my cheeks felt a bit flushed at the sight of a baby suckle at my friend's boobs, I even went to attend a few La Leche League meetings before my due date, to get acclimated to the whole nursing experience.  With nursing children all around me in a kumbaya circle, from newborns up to 3 year olds running over to lift mommy's shirt to "comfort" feed, I was quickly introduced to a community of very experienced women who were hard-core nursing moms.

So, it came as a blow out from left field, when after a very triumphant first nursing session in the delivery room (YES!), that I found myself practically nursing upside down, laying back in my glider.  Yes.  My husband had to lift and tilt my rocker off the ground and place a couple of big fat pillows on the other end, so that I could nurse, inclined at a 45 degree incline.

Reluctant Lactivist

I found out sometime last year that I'm a lactivist or at least the NY Times told me so.

Ironically when the article came out, much of my breastfeeding was a very private affair.  You see, I was almost exclusively pumping due to my son's health problems.  And there's really no discreet way to pump in public. Only Madonna wears huge breastfeeding horns in public.

My son would breastfeed once a day but only in the most private of circumstances.  A dream (not a wet one) of those who would ban breastfeeding from public places.

But I never felt dirty or embarrassed breastfeeding. I've never received any comments or dirty looks or been asked to stop. Most of the time the world seemed oblivious to the fact that I was breastfeeding. With my daughter who has always been healthy and focused on food, we breastfeed anytime anywhere she was hungry.

Maybe it's living in Silicon Valley. Maybe it's because my Burmese mother taught me that breastfeeding was normal and natural and I watched both of my siblings breastfeed. Or maybe it's because I'm

The breastfeeding cheerleaders

My youngest child stopped breastfeeding about seven years ago (he's nine now), so, for me, breastfeeding is a distant, though fond, memory. Back when I was breastfeeding, however, I was also writing a weekly newspaper column about motherhood, and the subject came up. A lot. Here's one of those columns, revisited for breastfeeding topic day.

Congress recently approved legislation allowing women to nurse in public on all federal property, including parks and museums. This was inspired by outraged tales of harassment of breast-feeding mothers. One mother, for example, was reportedly told that she couldn’t nurse a baby in a federal park because the breast milk would attract bees.

I’ve tracked breastfeeding rights legislation since the landmark New Jersey food court case several years ago—a woman in a mall was asked by a security guard to leave the food court, where she was nursing her baby, and go nurse in the bathroom. She responded that she wouldn’t expect the guard to eat his lunch in the bathroom, so he shouldn’t expect her baby too eat in the bathroom, either. For several years I was hoping to be confronted in California so I could use that line myself and, maybe, get my name in the law books.

California passed its breastfeeding legislation a few years ago, and I still haven’t had an opportunity to stand up for breastfeeding in righteous indignation. No security guard has asked me to close up my shirt, take my baby, and move on. Instead, I attract the breastfeeding cheerleaders—they buzz around me like the bees that park ranger was so concerned about.

The cheerleaders are typically older women who nursed their babies at a time when it was distinctly unfashionable. I admire them for that and would love to hear about their time in the trenches when breastfeeding was a guerrilla war. But they don’t want to go there. Instead they go on and on about how

Breastfeeding Legislation Is The Answer, Not Warning Labels On Formula

The post below was published on June 2006, here is another link on the same topic. I thought it was relevant to look at the past and also celebrate the present breastfeeding support legislation. Here is a link to a post called "California Working on New Bill to Support Breastfeeding" and here is another link to a summary of Breastfeeding legistation across states. The most interesting as SB 22 Senate Bill that included providing breastfeeding education, support and access to breast pumps for low income women.

As my twins were napping, I made my cup of tea and thought I would have a relaxing moment while reading the New York Times. Instead, I felt those feelings of mom guilt all coming back to me. Then I started to get mad.

The article I was reading, called "Breast-Feed or Else", was in the NYT Science Times section. It began by discussing a “two-year national breast-feeding awareness campaign that included a television spot of a pregnant woman clutching her belly as she was thrown off a mechanical bull during the ladies night at a bar – and compared the behavior to failing to breastfeed”. And the article mentioned a “proposed warning label on cans of infant formula similar to those on cigarettes by Senator Tom Harkin”. I have one thing to say to Senator Tom Harkin: "You just try pumping breast milk in a public bathroom". Maybe we should look at putting warning labels on public bathrooms to notify moms of the dangers of breastfeeding in them.

Let me start by saying that I do agree with the article's premise that breast-feeding is the ideal method for feeding and nurturing infants. I also agree that breast milk is more beneficial to infants then formula. What I don’t agree with is 

Breast is Best - But can I have mine back now?

Before I had kids, I never thought I would breastfeed. On second thought, I never really thought about what I would do when it came to feeding my child until I was close to 8 months pregnant with our first daughter.

Like it so often happens in life, I found myself pregnant at the same time as 5 co-worker friends of mine who were also expecting a child. For four of us, it was our first. Naturally, since we were all professionals who were all due around the same time, we kept each other abreast of all of our lastest findings: the safest car seats, the best rated cribs, the "must-read" pregnancy books, etc. And in our search for "the best" we all were in agreement that the best nourishment for our new bundles of joy would be breastmilk. And so each of us was committed to giving it a shot.

To Nurse Or Not To Nurse…That Is The Dilemma

I don’t know about you but nursing my babies was not my forte. Now, I know it takes two to make this work (the baby and me) but still. One of us was only a few hours old! She certainly didn’t get much instruction and had to totally rely on instinct alone. Couple that with a new mother who had only read books and gone to traditional birthing classes and well, it’s no wonder I did not experience the legendary euphoria I’d heard so much about.

Latching on? Pumping? Football holds? Double nursing pillows? After reading what I could find on breastfeeding, I arrived at the conclusion that none of the potential issues I’d studied would make sense until I had baby (babies, in my case) in arms propped onto my breast. After all, wasn’t most of this instinct on the baby’s part?

Sometimes, Breastfeeding Sucks

When I was pregnant with my son, there was a mini-baby boom in my office.  That year, no less than five women gave birth, which was pretty remarkable considering that only 22 people worked in the office at the time.  Of the preggos, four of us were committed to breastfeeding, and one decided early on that she would not, under any circumstances, breastfeed her baby.  Her rationale was that she had given over her body for 9 months to this baby, and that was her limit. She wanted her body back and that was that.

Around the watercooler, this became a topic of ongoing conversation.  No amount of research (she was herself a trained biologist) or emotional appeals about mother-child bonding would sway her.  I'm pretty much a "to each her own" kind of gal, but this was puzzling to me. 

I entered into the breastfeeding business a bit naively, I must admit.  I had this vision of a blissful scene of mother and baby bonding and gazing lovingly at each other in blissed-out harmony.  I thought, "How hard could it be?" and defiantly scoffed at the training video provided by the hospital.

The Breastfeeding High Horse

Breastfeeding is great, really, if it works for you, then you should by all means breastfeed away. What you should not do, however, is judge another mother giving her child a bottle for two very valid reasons: one, it may be pumped breast milk; and two, even if it is not breast milk, you have no idea what has gone on behind the decision to use formula. My children both had to be supplemented with formula from a very young age because I could not produce enough breast milk to sustain them. I am incredibly thankful for formula because without it, my children would have been in bad shape.

Along the way, I found myself facing heaps of judgment from breastfeeding moms which was particularly painful with my first child, especially during the early weeks when I was struggling to stay afloat with very little sleep as I adjusted to life with a newborn. I remember my first real trip out to run errands with my daughter. My sister joined us for lunch at a restaurant and at some point I mixed up a bottle to give to my little squirming bundle. A woman across the room very loudly said to her friend that she only breastfed her children because that was what was best and that formula was akin to poison. The restaurant was crowded, but the announcement was clearly meant for me and the diners at the table next to us even looked over at me. My sister looked down at her plate while I tried not to cry. If only this woman knew what I had been through, I thought. I am much more confident as a mother now - five years later - and if it happened to me at this stage, I would have immediately confronted the woman, but even then, I don't think it would have helped. This woman was one of the dogmatical breastfeeders who seem to believe that formula feeding mothers are either ignorant, lazy or don't care about what is best for their children.

Breastfeeding in the NICU - it can (or may not) be done

I had two very different breastfeeding experiences. All three of my kids started out in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit), so none of them attempted breastfeeding right after birth or even anytime in the first two weeks following birth. However, this does not determine the outcome, as I found out.

My first children were twins. They were born 9 weeks premature, at 31 weeks. The suck/swallow/breathe ability does not develop until 34 weeks gestation, so that was when we started feeding not via a tube. I would try to nurse and then also try to bottle feed. It was tough juggling the schedules of two babies in the NICU. The nurses want them on their determined schedule, but (as all Mommies know!) sometimes the schedule just doesn't work out. Their schedule was 30 minutes apart, every 3 hours. So, first to one baby and then to the other. Oh, and then I would pump afterwards. And throughout the night at home, while they were bottle fed by the night NICU nurses. Exhausting. And then they came home! Anyway, it was truly amazing to see what happens to a baby who is nursing while hooked up to heart rate monitors and oxygen sensors. Especially with my son, everything would go perfect when he was nursing.

But...