Switching to Formula

The choice of how to feed your new human is one of the most fraught choices in a life that is suddenly full of them. The options are to breastfeed or to use formula. There are pros and cons to each. There are people who have strong opinions about both and are eager to share those opinions with you. Even if you haven't asked for them. Even if you've specifically asked them not to share.

This is true of every decision you make as a new parent, of course. Which stroller is the best? How do you pick a car seat? Is it actually necessary to pay more for the special laundry detergent? How many toys is too many toys? But the breast milk vs formula decision is harder. It's much more personal and gets tied up with all sorts of body image issues and what it means to be a good mom. Which is probably why so many moms are so quick to defend their own choices. Kevin has been absolutely wonderful and a partner in every way during this whole process, but there is a point where this becomes my decision and my struggle and he simply can't be there with me the way he was when we picked a stroller.

On some level it's been similar to the natural child birth vs cesarean section decision we faced early on. Gavin is big, and he has a big head, and we suspected from the beginning that this would be true. Even before I got pregnant I was mentally preparing myself for the possibility that I would need to have a c-section. I got push back from any number of surprising places, and it contributed to my nightmares the night before I was induced. But ultimately the decision was placed in the hands of my doctor, and my labor was relatively quick and easy as these things go.

There are two key ways in which feeding my kid has differed from birthing him. First, there's no doctor who's going to be the ultimate authority on this. There shouldn't be. It makes it hard to wash my hands of responsibility, even though I know there isn't a wrong decision. Second, the breastfeeding vs formula has proven to be a much more ongoing source of stress. It's not a decision I could push off into the future, actively engage with for a few hours, and then move past with hardly a second thought.

No; this conversation has been happening for weeks, both in my head and with Kevin. Strangers are quick to offer their opinions, and doctors have been reluctant to say anything definitive. I have opinions and feelings of my own, as does Kevin. And then there's Gavin, who is now old enough to have and express opinions but not old enough to argue or reason.

But perhaps the hardest thing of all is that this dilemma and my reaction to it have taken me completely by surprise. I really thought I'd be above it. My brother and I were both formula-fed and we turned out fine, so I know there's nothing wrong with feeding my son formula. Back when I was pregnant I told myself and Kevin that I would try breast-feeding but I wouldn't kill myself over it. I said that if the process of breast-feeding ever reduced me to tears I would switch to formula then and there, because it wasn't worth it.

Kevin gently reminded me that I would be hormonal and susceptible to crying in the first few days, and that this was probably not the best metric to use.

Breast-feeding was hard in the beginning. Gavin's mouth was too small for my nipples, and sometimes it felt like I needed three hands to wrangle both him and my boob. But it was actually one of the few things that didn't cause tears in those first few days when I cried at the drop of a hat. Every problem that came up had a solution, and those problems came up one at a time. I used a nipple shield. I fed him every hour until my milk finally came in. I dealt with chapped nipples and bleeding nipples, with clogged ducts and milk blisters, with a lopsided milk supply and a baby who occasionally ate for an hour straight.

By the time Gavin was six weeks old, I looked back at everything I'd dealt with and told myself that if I'd seen those problems looming six weeks earlier, I'd have gone with formula from the beginning. But we made it through, and breast feeding became easy and convenient and wonderful.

And now we come to the beginning of the dilemma. Breastfeeding is amazing, and pumping is arguably the worst thing in the world. At some point, the bad outweighs the good.

I would like to continue to breast feed my son until he is a year old at least.

I would like to never pump again.

My brain is at war with my heart, and it's taking all I have to muddle through this transition without tearing myself apart. And of course it's not even as simple as that.

Breastfeeding is so convenient, especially in the middle of the night. Preparing a bottle of formula adds time to the feeding, precious minutes when I could be sleeping. On the other hand, Kevin can give him the formula, allowing me to get even more sleep than I would otherwise. Moreover, the formula takes longer to digest, which should result in Gavin sleeping longer, making this a moot point.

I want to get my time back. I currently plan my life around the fact that I need to either feed Gavin or pump every three hours, both of which take roughly 20 minutes during which time I can't do anything else. I'd like to attend a 5 hour work event next week without having to leave to pump halfway through. I'd like to go to my friend's bachelorette party in a few weeks (and her wedding a few weeks after that) and leave my son with a sitter and not spend the whole night obsessing about how much milk he's drinking while I'm gone and whether I'll be able to replace it before he goes to daycare. I want this part of my life back, and that's a perfectly reasonable thing to want, but I still feel selfish for wanting it.

Every reasonable argument points to transitioning my song to formula. That's why we're doing it. The problem is all the unreasonable arguments, many of which are tied to how I relate to my body.

Before I got pregnant, it seemed like I was losing control of my body. I started gaining weight around my 23rd birthday, and there was nothing I could do to lose it again. I could stop gaining weight for a few months if I went to the gym religiously, but I could never lose any. I did okay with strength-training, but I always struggled with balance and flexibility. My weak ankles and knees and back (souvenirs from a decade of ballet lessons) kept slowing or halting my progress.

But then we decided to have a kid, and I got pregnant almost immediately. For the most part I enjoyed being pregnant and my labor was easier than it had any right to be, considering the size of my kid. Finally, my body was doing exactly what I wanted it to do. I've wanted kids for my entire life, and my body's cooperation in this (when it seemed to fight me on everything else) was incredibly affirming. Even at my largest, I felt like a goddess. I felt like a mother.

Breast-feeding was easier than I expected it to be. I was going to be one of those mothers who breast-fed until the 12 month mark and then easily transitioned to a diet of solid foods. It didn't hurt that, for the first time since I'd been on a liquid diet, I was losing weight. Effortlessly! Not quickly, but steadily, the number on the scale kept going down. I weigh less now than I did when I got pregnant, less than I did on my wedding day, less than when Kevin proposed.

And so the feeling of failure is twofold. That I can no longer provide enough milk for my son goes to this primal part of my brain and says that I'm not as good a mother as I thought I was. Which is completely untrue, but you can't argue with a feeling. There's also a nebulous fear that I will stop breastfeeding and immediately put on all the weight I lost and then some.

At least one facet of this is anger that my body is taking this decision out of my hands. A sense that I am once again losing control, that my body and I are no longer united in a common goal. It's like the opposite of when women talk about getting their bodies back after pregnancy.

After much back and forth, we've reached a compromise. We'll be giving Gavin formula instead of breast milk once a day for the foreseeable future. I'll still have to pump. I'll still get to breastfeed. But it's a step I can't take back. The less I feed him, the less I'll be able to feed him. Before I know it, breastfeeding will be in our past entirely. I feel like I'm losing something that I can't quite articulate. I didn't expect the sense of loss to be quite so profound.