In the interest of full disclosure, motherhood has been a blessing, and all the stuff I wrote last week is true. But there are some hard things, and we definitely struggled and continue to struggle in some areas. The biggest challenge for us was feeding.
I was warned that breastfeeding is hard and doesn't always work. And I thought I had prepared myself for that, but there really is no preparing yourself for it. I've said it over and over, breastfeeding is the hardest thing I've ever done.
E and I struggled a lot. I am incredibly grateful to a lactation consultant that spent hours with us and still answers my questions by email.
I know there is a lot of criticism these days about elevating breastfeeding as the ultimate standard of being a good mom. But there is no judgment from me. E and I worked hard to get it to work for us, but I also know that we could have worked that hard and still ended up switching to formula.
In the first week when every feeding was a fight, and we were supplementing, it felt like all I did was attempt to feed her, pump and sleep. At one point through tears, I looked at my mom and said, "I feel like I don't even get to enjoy her." My mom said to me, "If that's the case, then it's not worth it." And she was right. The most important thing was that E was healthy and growing, but it was also important for me to be happy. We did move past that stage of fighting quickly enough that I didn't feel like I needed to quit, but that possibility often lingered in the following weeks.
But by six weeks, E and I found our groove and 95 percent of our feedings are successful with limited crying (from either of us).
One of the best moments came a few nights ago. We've been experimenting with giving a bottle of breastmilk at night in hopes of filling her up to sleep. I was giving her the bottle, and she didn't want to take it. She wanted me and that felt like such a victory. I thought back to when she was four days old, I sobbed while giving her a bottle that she sucked down as fast as she could because she was so hungry.
Now, she's over 10 pounds with her cheeks getting chubbier by the day.
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About Lizzie
I'm a Southern girl who enjoys visiting new places. After growing up in Tennessee, I went to college in the Midwest, returned to the Deep South to work at a newspaper, moved farther north to Virginia and then returned to the Midwest in the fall of 2011. I've been living on my own for six years, but I always struggled with cooking for myself. In 2010, I decided to join a local co-op to challenge myself to cook more, eat healthier and overcome some of my pickiness about food. And it actually worked. I've found that I love cooking, and there is a lot of good stuff out there I had been missing out on. In June of 2013, I married J, who I met thanks to this blog and my sister. Now I'm learning to cook for two and figuring out married life. This blog is about my continued adventures in the kitchen and other life adventures we enjoy.
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