I Stopped Breastfeeding After Only Three Months
How caring for yourself first ultimately helps your child — despite the mom-shaming.
Just like all my other hopeful (i.e naive) plans about becoming a mother — natural hypno-birthing, only organic cotton clothing, chemical free soap and lotion — I planned on breastfeeding my baby for at least a year. Of course. No questions asked. And then I got hit by a mack truck of postpartum anxiety.
It all started with the traumatic (for me) birth of my daughter — not to mention the 5 1/2 years it took to get pregnant. From my water breaking but labor not starting to the power struggle between my nurse and my doula to 3 hours of pushing to the unexpected caesarean to my uterus not contracting down after birth and having clots pulled out by hand to my husband standing there holding our baby wondering if I would live — things did certainly not go as planned.
Then, I had a little trouble breast-feeding in the hospital. I had help from the nurses and a lactation consultant, for sure, even my pediatrician. They would all grab my breast and shove it into my daughter’s mouth until she properly latched. They adjusted my arms until I was holding her at just the right angle. They also gave me a latex nipple shield that she could nurse through and that seemed to work well. But…
