I knew that I was the only one who could provide this for my children and that what I was doing was only going to benefit my kids, both immediately and later.
I had a somewhat difficult pregnancy. The first part of my pregnancy was pretty average, but at around 24 weeks I was put on immediate and indefinite bed rest (which was frustrating and difficult). After 8 weeks of being bed-bound, a series of events (which involved, oddly enough, lunch and multiple dentist appointments in one day) led me to an emergency c-section at 33 weeks to deliver my beautiful son and daughter. Thirty-three weeks is way early for a singleton, let alone twins, and so my kids were not strong or healthy enough for this world at birth and were immediately sent to NICU. Although I had already decided on breastfeeding them, it seemed even more important because they were premature. I told the NICU nurses “NO FORMULA” and they promptly handed me a pump.
For anyone who is not intimately familiar with a breast pump, it is just what you would imagine (only worse). It takes a good twenty minutes to effectively release all the foremilk and hindmilk, so I had to pump both breasts at the same time or else I would be spending half my day pumping (instead of only a quarter of it). And let me tell you, I have never felt more like a cow than I did when I would listen to the “shrunsh, shrunsh, shrunsh” of the pump, though strangely I never felt like more of a mother either. I knew that I was the only one who could provide this for my children and that what I was doing was only going to benefit my kids, both immediately and later.
The pump was supposed to be temporary; I had every intention of nursing my kids as soon as they were strong enough to. While they were in NICU we had many practice sessions with the kids on the boob, often not successful, but we were trying and they were getting stronger. When the kids did finally leave NICU at 15 days old, but still preemies and hardly 5 pounds each, they struggled with the strength required to feed from the breast. The bottle was so much easier for their weak little bodies.
And so it went. We would try to nurse, fail, then feed them bottled-breast milk. Next time will go better! Only it did not ever get better. I talked to lactation nurses, went to La Leche meetings, met with other nursing twin mothers, and just tried and tried and tried. One day (the kids were about 6 weeks old) I was talking about this to a lactation nurse when she told me that it was “too late”. I had been told earlier (maybe even by this same nurse) that preemie babies often aren’t ready to nurse until they are closer to their original due date, which would have been 7 weeks old. But now the nurse was telling me that if they aren’t nursing by 6-8 weeks, they aren’t ever going to. It was a damned Catch-22. Wait long enough for them to be developmentally ready to nurse, and I will have waited too long for them to learn to nurse. Dammit all! Whether or not this really was the case, I also had the immediate problem of my maternity leave running out. How could I work on nursing while I’m at work all day? Still wanting them to have breast milk, it was then that I decided that I would just keep pumping for them.
Now pumping, like nursing, is quite a commitment. The mother still has to do all the work either way, but pumping seemed to be the worst of all worlds, with none of the intimate bonding during nursing and none of the convenience one has with formula. I had to nurse a machine but still wash all the bottles and do all the prep and storage of the milk while keeping a nursing schedule so that my supply would not waiver. Skip a few pumpings and supply drops. So there was never a “Honey, can you feed the kids while I sleep” time. Even if my husband fed the kids, I still had to get up and pump. And boy did I pump. Since I was making milk for two babies, to keep my supply going I pumped every 3 hours round the clock for 6 months. I never had the opportunity to sleep for more than 2 or so hours at a time for those 6 months. You would be surprised just how well you can actually function as a chronically-sleep-deprived individual, although I wouldn’t recommend it even to my enemies. I finally gave up night pumping and just pumped during the day around the time we started the kids on cereal (about 6 months) and continued until they were a year old, still pumping about 5-6 times a day.
However, at about 10 months into pumping, my supply could absolutely not keep up with two growing babies. I had low supply issues earlier on, but I had always found ways to overcome them. This time, the kids’ growth rate was just outdoing my production rate, and none of my previous tricks were helping. Everything had gone so well up to this point as far as giving my kids breast milk, but now I had to make a decision, although there really was no decision about it: I was going to have to use formula. I continued to stress about this. My freezer supply of pumped breast milk dwindled away. I did finally supplement with formula (one or two bottles a day), but the bulk of what my babies got was breast milk for those last few months until they turned one (when supply issues again reared their ugly head and forced me to stop altogether).
With working full time, having only part-time daycare (we can talk about that later!), all the pumping, sleep deprivation, dealing with not one but two infants, and my eventual willingness to use some formula, why didn’t I just use formula more? It came down to what I felt was more of a responsibility to my children than a choice for myself. After all I read about breast milk and formula, I could not give my kids formula as their primary source of nutrition when breastmilk was available. Yes I was tired. Yes I hated the pump. But this wasn’t about me. This was the only opportunity when I could provide this nutrition, these antibodies, these benefits to my children who were developing at one of the most rapid rates in their lifetime. I came from the perspective of “I’m going to breastfeed until someone can show me that formula is at least equally beneficial for my babies,’ but since no one really knows all that is in breast milk (and therefore can’t fully replicate it), and since formula does not contain antibodies or change with babies needs plus all that other “special stuff” that makes breastmilk so wonderful, breastfeeding was it. For me, any costs were heavily outweighed by the benefits.
I would like to think that now that my kids are almost 5 years old, I am still seeing the benefits of my work. My kids were hardly ever sick as infants (let alone preemies), maybe one or two ear infections and the usual colds that go around, but for 2-month preemies that is a great. As they have gotten older, they still are hardly ever sick (I think in the past year we have been to the pediatrician once), they are smart, they have no developmental delays, and are just as “normal” as any full-term child. Would they be this way if they only had formula? I don’t know, but why should I even wonder? I know that they were given best thing for them. Now that I am pregnant once again, I look forward to the opportunity to do the same for my new baby. I so hope that nursing will go easier this time, but if I have to, yes I will pump again.
Whatever it takes.
I don’t intend to pepper this post with a lot of data about breastmilk or formula. Every person can do their own research if it is that important to them. But even just doing a quick Wikipedia (yeah, I know, but it can be a good starting point) search as a form of preliminary investigation shows some basic information on the two approaches:
Infant Formula http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_formula
Breast Feeding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breastfeeding
I encourage anyone stressing over this topic to look into as many resources as they can to find what is best for them. Any mothers looking for resources on breastfeeding (or pumping!) may want to start with:
KellyMom http://www.kellymom.com/
La Leche League http://www.llli.org/
Breastfeeding.com http://www.breastfeeding.com/
- Laura Orsetti
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