I quit nursing.
I didn’t have a low supply. I didn’t have an infection. I wasn’t on medication. Or even going out of town.
One day, while my 7.5-month-old was using me nonstop as a pacifier for the millionth time, I realized I was just breaking. I had been nursing on demand since her birth, and I had nursed my older daughter on demand for a year. But after HOURS of nursing that night it was time for bed. I couldn’t tell when the last time she actually got milk was, versus just soothing, and I was so nervous to put her down without a full feed.
Exhausted and desperate to have some form of sleep, I decided to give her a bottle of formula so I could “rest easy.” What a joke. The emotional breakdown was real.
Time and time again, I had encouraged friends that fed was best. Time and time again, I had reminded friends that I was exclusively formula fed, as well as my sister. I had comforted friends repeatedly, reminding them that we don’t grow up innately knowing how we were fed as babies. We have to ask. But still, the mom guilt swallowed me for weeks. It absorbed my conversations, my girls night, my Facebook posts. And the reactions from each mom were emotional at best, defensive, and some even hurtful, at worse.
But what I couldn’t shake was the fact that when I bottle fed, I was looking down at this sweet angel baby without anger or resentment.
I wasn’t annoyed by biting, I didn’t feel drained. My postpartum anxiety was melting away. Suddenly bedtime was a bonding time I refused to share. When previously I would cry wondering “when can someone else do this?”
What I learned during “quitting” was that my mental and emotional health was just as vital. I could preach the oxygen mask theory until the cows came home, but I wasn’t putting it into action. Breastfeeding while angry wasn’t helpful. The energy was becoming toxic. And for me, it was time to find an alternative.
That timing is different for each mother, but it makes you no greater or no less.
If you need medication and need to stop nursing. Stop.
If you needed a surrogate and could never breastfeed yourself. Your baby is loved.
If you want to nurse your toddler because you hate the idea of stopping. Keep going, Mama!
Motherhood bubbles up every emotion. You will battle your own and you will battle others.
Even those with the strongest of wills will wonder if they are messing it all up.
But when deep in your gut, you know which option is best for you and your baby – do that.
To some, I may have quit. To some, I “lasted way longer than them”.
But to me and Julia, bedtime is better than ever.
Photo by Hannah Lozano
