My stress level has been mounting slowly. Getting little man on any kind of schedule is proving to be futile, since i don't have much time to devote to him when i'm not doing something else, like dishes, or laundry, or keeping the monster out of the DVD closet. Then i found this article on La Leche League's website, and i feel a little better. I could have written it myself, but i didn't so i must give credit where it is due! I'm only posting a few excerpts here, the ones that especially apply to me.
So I Nursed Him Every 45 Minutes
By Elizabeth N. Baldwin, Esq.
I nursed my first child every 45 minutes--big deal. Boy, was it! I never expected a child of mine to be so demanding. He had to nurse every 45 minutes or else ... else he'd scream till the end of time. Or so I thought; I never found out. After all, if I let him nurse every 45 minutes, he was in seventh heaven, so who was I to complain?
Luckily, for my son's sake, I trusted those darn instincts I didn't think I had, and I let him just nurse and nap in my arms whenever he wanted to by day, and nurse and sleep beside me whenever he wanted to at night. Those instincts, however, were not easy to distinguish from messages I had carried since childhood. These were ingrained so deeply that they felt like instincts, yet they were really more like old tapes running over and over, criticizing, judging, and blaming at every provocation. My instincts told me to keep my thoughts to myself. And I learned to do just that, and to let my instincts guide me.
My instincts told me that my precious little baby needed to nurse whenever he wanted to. After all, he had spent nine months inside me, and I was all he knew. Whenever I looked at the peaceful, happy expression on his face as he nursed, I could imagine him feeling as though he were back in the womb--hearing my heart beating, my stomach gurgling, the sound of my breathing, and feeling attached to me! Yes, my instincts told me that if he was happy in my arms, then that is where he needed to be.
After I figured out what my instincts were, I came upon a greater challenge: learning to trust them. How hard this was amid the advice I was getting from family and friends, even from hospital staff and doctors. "That baby couldn't be hungry again--you must not have enough milk!" I was told, and "Maybe he wouldn't be so needy if you'd go longer between feedings." Nearly all their counsel went against my instincts, and suggested that I was doing something wrong.
Several critics cast doubt on my own well-being. Some said that remaining constantly available to my son would make me nervous and anxious, and would stop my milk from letting down. Others suggested that if I didn't allow someone else to take care of my baby from time to time, I would get stressed out or depressed, which would "mess up" my hormones. Yet, for me, depression would result from not responding the way my "hormones" were telling me to; it seemed as though nature was screaming at me to listen to my baby. I felt much less stress as soon as I realized that it was OK for him to be needy, and OK for me to be responsive. If anything was making me anxious and nervous, it was their words. Being responsive felt right--more right than anything I had ever done in my life.
And yes, I was even accused of being a martyr, of suffering for my child. This one amused me as I watched non-nursing friends sterilizing bottles, preparing formula, carting around small kitchens in their diaper bags, and treating constipation, diarrhea, and other common side effects of formula. On the flip side, I was accused of taking the easy way out, as if something so effortless for a mother could not be good for her child! The insinuation was that because my son fell asleep at the breast in 30 seconds, I was breastfeeding because I was lazy.
As for me, I continued to listen to my instincts. I let the dishes, work, and social times slide, knowing that they would always be there whereas my baby would not. I let the nights go by with varying amounts of sleep, and the days roll on with little sense of accomplishment. And looking back, I want to shout with joy that I did. My precious infant who nursed every 45 minutes grew and grew--into an independent, happy, intelligent, and confident nine year old with compassion in his heart and affection in his acts.
It's not easy to find insight at 3AM when nothing you do seems to make your angelic baby happy, and instead you're left with this demon child, who seems to be suckling the very life right out of you. Hormones and the demands of irrational toddlers muddle up the mess even farther. This thing they call motherhood is far from easy!! I'm really glad no one told me that though, because then I would never get to hear "Ma maaaaaaaaaaa" for an alarm clock. I think i'll have to come back and read this a lot over the next few days, just to remind myself. Again. and again.
