No More Milky-Milks

Don't ask why, but for some reason I started to refer to my breast milk as "milky-milks", as in, "Does Alia want some milky-milks?" Anyway, this is something I meant to write about earlier, but never got around to.

My milk came in as soon as I left the hospital. I had an abundance, so much that it was painful. We went strong for four weeks with no supplementing, and then suddenly things started to go downhill. At first I thought, "Well, she must be going through a growth spurt and my body just can't keep up with her feeding demands." But then it only got worse. I had to start giving her formula more and more often. I would try to not give her the formula, and would instead just try to breastfeed her more often, thinking, "This will teach my body to make more milk." But it didn't work, and just left both of us feeling frustrated instead. The horrible thing was, I would always breastfeed her first, and then finish off with formula, but after having breast milk, she would fight the bottle. It made me feel horrible, like I was forcing her to eat something she hated.

But gradually that changed, too. By 8 weeks, I was down to only being able to feed her breast milk once a day, and by the point, she would have trouble latching on because she was more used to a bottle. I would try to breastfeed her, and she would jerk her head from side to side, getting frustrated, as though I was teasing her or something and denying her food. After that, it went downhill pretty fast. Soon I could only feed her once every two days, then every three days, and by the time she was 10 weeks old, I stopped making milk altogether.

I'm used to being a "formula feeding mom" at this point, but I still feel like people judge me when I pull out a bottle in public for Alia. Plus, formula is horribly expensive. It's like the formula companies know that you have no alternative, so they can raise their prices as high as they want. I've heard that most of the time there's a reason behind having a low milk supply, and the only reason I can think of was the birth control I was using. The doctor gave me a prescription for the mini-pill, which is supposed to be safe for breastfeeding, and isn't supposed to affect your supply, but my supply started to drop right about the same time that I started taking the pill. When I realized that, I immediately stopped taking it, but by then the damage was done. Next time we have a baby, I will make sure to avoid all forms of hormonal birth control and see if there's an improvement.

Until then, I'll just remind myself that a mother's love comes from her heart...not her breasts.