When I was pregnant with Jake I received a mysterious “congratulations, new mom!” package in the mail from a company whose name looked vaguely familiar to me. Nestled inside the box were two shiny blue and white cans of Similac formula.
I was appalled. Outraged. And yet too lazy to pack them up and send them back to the evil perpetrators of formula-fed babies.
Instead, I dumped them in the trash and wrote a satisfying letter to Similac declaring exactly what I had done with their offering and self-righteously berating them for encouraging pregnant women to formula feed. Though I don’t remember the details, I feel certain the letter contained plenty of unrealistic declarations about how my baby would be exclusively breastfed and lots of the semi-informed political stuff I picked up in law school from women who were, like me, a long way from having babies about how the formula manufacturers were dumping their product in developing nations so as to maintain their profit margins at the expense of the health of underprivileged infants.
A week ago, when my pediatrician handed me a can of Enfamil, I knew better.
Because, it turned out, Jake drank the equivalent of those two cans of Similac and many, many, many, MANY more. Yep, for all my high mindedness about breastfeeding, my son drank formula. Lots of it. And my twelve-day-old daughter has had a taste of it as well.
What They Don’t Tell You About What’s Natural
It will come as no surprise that I approached both of my pregnancies in the spirit of yoga. I watched what I ate (okay, Lily got a whole lot more ice cream while in utero than Jake, and it wasn’t all organic), I kept up my yoga practice (a personally developed prenatal practice for Jake but it was hard to quit the regular classes with Lily), and I avoided breathing in contaminants or pumping my own gas (though couldn’t quite bother with Lily to hold my breath for about a whole block when I spotted a termite-tented house like I did with Jake; second children just get gypped, that’s all).
Along with all this all-natural stuff (and, yes, if you’re wondering, that included natural childbirth as well) I obviously planned to breast feed. In fact, from everything I’d read, it’s the only choice. Don’t you know that breastfed children are smarter, have better eyesight, avoid obesity, and are just way cooler than the kids sucking on bottles? According to my subscription to Mothering magazine — a gift from my sister-in-law — any breastfeeding difficulties can be overcome with hard work and determination. Premature triplets with hairlips? No problem. Just pump until your nipples bleed while they’re in NICU and by the time they make it out, you will miraculously be able to feed all three. At once. Pictures not included.
This indoctrination made it doubly devastating when, at three days of age, Jake was plainly unable to get any food from me. We rushed to the lactation consultants, foggy headed from lack of sleep and with me jellied by postpartum hormones — and jumped right into the rabbit hole of doing anything and everything to get breast milk into my child: A supplemental nursing system — an evil contraption of tubes, a bottle to hold formula, and surgical tape attached to sensitive areas that should never have to feel the daily tug of adhesive being removed. Clipping of the frenulum, that little piece of flesh that attaches your tongue to the bottom of your mouth (a decent Scrabble word and a pretty good piece of useless knowledge with which to wow your friends). Ingestion of contraband lactation drugs banned by the FDA but widely and sensibly available in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries with up-to-date medical knowledge but a less powerful pharmaceutical lobby. Hospital grade pumps used countless times each day, breastfeeding clinic twice a week, an eternity shut inside the house feeding, pumping, washing bottles and tubes and starting all over again.
As I used to say with a weak smile, at least my postpartum depression had a definite source.
We got through it of course. And I’d like to say I’d do it all over again. Except that I won’t.
Of that I was certain when, last week, my Mama instinct told me Lily just wasn’t getting enough to eat. Instead of wailing about my inability to feed my child, I picked up the phone and called the local lactation consultant. She mentioned the supplemental nursing system. I cut her off with an emphatic NO. She suggested pumping after every feeding. I insisted it would do no good and would make me lose my mind.
We walked out of her office with a plan. Lactation drugs, breastfeeding, and a bottle. A bottle filled with — you guessed it — Similac formula.
I wouldn’t have been so quick to dispose of that “congratulations, new mom!” package this time around.
Bodily Limitations Are as Natural as Breastfeeding
A lot has changed in the two years since I beat myself up trying to feed Jake.
For one thing, I’ve dug myself out of the hole of lost self in which those feeding efforts left me, and I’m not anxious to jump back in. For another, I’ve heard from more and more women who couldn’t produce enough milk for their children either and received reassurance that, yes, this is a natural state as well. (Where oh where were they when I needed them two years ago?) And, perhaps most importantly, I’ve spent some YogaMamaMe time figuring out how to feed my own soul without feeling like I’m somehow not a good mother for it.
In particular, one of the yoga precepts that has arisen over and over in my YMM ponderings is the fact that we all have limitations. And that learning to accept them is one of the most difficult and soul-opening aspects of surrender.
An asana practice, in one sense, is exactly about locating your physical limitations, embracing them, testing them, and learning to make them a beautiful part of yourself. Sometimes we can transcend them — like my friend from those breastfeeding clinic days who coaxed her body into producing enough milk to throw away the supplemental nursing system and make it through an exhausting year of breastfeeding. Sometimes, on the other hand, the best we can do is learn to embrace where our limits are and to celebrate them as much as our abilities.
This idea is much more manageable for me when, for example, we’re talking about the slim possibility that I will ever be able to do a forearm balance in the middle of the room. I’m close, and I’m happy to work on it. But, as the years of trying pass along, I can easily accept that my bodily proportions are not conducive to wall-free forearm balancing, that my strength does not lie in balance poses, that my life will not change in any significant way based on whether I am able to pull the pose off or not.
It’s a bit more difficult for me to say I just can’t produce abundant breast milk. That idea is so tied up with the intangible concept of “good motherhood” that it’s hard to think clearly. What does a mother do, after all, but feed and nurture her infant? What is wrong with a mother who can’t rise to that most basic of tasks?
For some women, these questions might be easy to get past. For me, not so much. But, of course, that’s the beauty of the lesson — the challenge to apply a precept in which I believe to a challenging situation. There is no discernable reason for this physical limitation of mine. We’ve examined the possibilities of my children’s role in it, but, as the lactation consultant observed, we don’t know which is the chicken and which is the egg. And we never will.
So my mind must take a break because it will never break the case. And because I won’t let it instead turn its energy toward self-castigation. Nor will I let some idea of what I should be able to do once again drive me to push my body to do something it can’t.
This time, when my daughter protests that she’s not full after a session of breastfeeding, I cuddle her close against my chest and we venture into the kitchen together to make a bottle of formula. Does she love it? Nope. Does that make her try harder on the breast? Sometimes. Does that give me hope that maybe we won’t need the formula for long? Surely it does. Does that mean I will be sad and disappointed if we are using formula six months from now? I hope not. Because that means I will have learned something about grace from this experience.
And it is that grace that I wish to share with other mothers who feel like they should be doing something for their child even though it starves their own soul — holding off on daycare instead of going back to work, moving their tiny love into a different room in order to return to full nights of sleep next to an oft-neglected partner, refusing to have a night apart from children until the children are old enough to babysit the neighbors’ kids.
Our souls are important too. In fact, what better example to set for our children than remembering ourselves, treating ourselves with respect, and trusting that we can be ourselves and be good mothers at the same time.
Even a mother with a bottle of formula in one hand and a good, strong grasp on the beauty that lies in recognizing her limitations in the other.
Opening Gently — Some Ease-y Heart Openers
During these weeks of postpartum recovery, when I am forgoing my asana practice, I find myself searching for ways to maintain the yoga balance even while hunkering down with an infant. And as I hunker — hunched over piles of pillows in different configurations as I search for the most comfortable feeding position for both me and Lily or nodding off to sleep as I feed her at four a.m. — I find it so easy to close inward, to surrender to my out-of-commission split abdominals, to let my shoulders round to protect my daughter from the dangers still lurking out there in a cavewoman part of my brain.
So I offer these simple heart openers as a way to just plain feel better, alert, able to embrace whatever the world offers. They are great for those hunched over a computer instead of a child, or as an asana warm-up, or just when you need to stretch and turn to face the world.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Saw your comment/link on the momversation blog–my story is very similar and I appreciate your post here more than I can say. Thanks.
Thanks so much, Samantha. What was absolutely the hardest thing was not knowing how many women go through the same thing. Even in breastfeeding clinic, I was the only one who hadn’t had a C-section or breast augmentation or something known to interfere with lactation. I just … couldn’t. Still on the domperidone, but living with it much better on my second go round.
I’m so glad you found your way here from Momversation. I was just bawling as I watched that video & read the comments. I’m even feeling a little teary here from your comment . . .