Part 11: 'It's not our fault if you feel guilty'

But that’s how I feel now, after a long time of wondering what should I, what could I, have done differently.  There’s an awful lot of ‘what ifs?’, and I don’t know whether following a different path would have made any difference to the ultimate outcome.  But I do know that much of what I was told to do was unhelpful, and I can allow myself a little anger at that. Two years ago, though, things felt very different.  As far as I knew, the advice I had been given on around the clock triple feeding was the right advice to get me back on the road to a full supply and my goal of exclusive breastfeeding.  And, as far as I knew, anyone could breastfeed if they just tried hard enough.  And yet there I was, formula feeding despite it all.  So the only conclusion I could draw from it all was that I had failed.  I hadn’t tried hard enough.

And if that’s what I thought about myself, I naturally assumed that that would be what any successful breastfeeder who saw me formula feeding my baby would think of me.  My first foray into the world of postnatal socializing did not help with this assumption.  I’d signed up for a baby massage course and our first session was when my son was 6 weeks old.  There were only two other mums in the class, one breastfeeding and one formula feeding.  As we sat and chatted at the start, the breastfeeding mum discretely nursing her baby girl, and me cuddling my son close to my breast as he sucked on his dummy (we’d introduced one the day I’d stopped breastfeeding), the third mum confessed what a failure she felt she was, because her daughter had never latched properly and consequently she was formula feeding her baby.  ‘Look at the two of you, with your calm babies happily breastfeeding.  That’s how it’s meant to be’.  I turned and showed her the dummy, explained how it hadn’t worked for me either, and was glad to be able to show this woman that she wasn’t alone in her grief. Later, as we all swap phone numbers while talking about our birth experiences, it turns out that the breastfeeding mum had a similar long drawn out birth story to myself, also ending with an induction drip and ventouse delivery.  ‘Gosh,’ I say, ‘well done you for establishing breastfeeding after all that.  I sometimes wonder if the difficult birth contributed to the hard time we had with it.’  ‘Thanks,’ she responds. ‘I suppose I was just determined’.  The words hit like bullets and I want to scream right back at her, ‘But I was determined.’  Instead, I just mumble a response, and accidentally forget to save her number to my phone.  Back home, as I sit licking my wounds, my husband reminds me that it’s all very well being determined when the milk is spilling out of your breasts.  But I’ve not yet learned the crucial lesson: Never compare. No one else has had to walk your path in your shoes.

As it is, my experiences colour the friendships I am able to make. When I meet other new mums I’m relieved when I discover them bottle feeding, and wary – and insanely jealous – if they put their baby to their breast.  I’m convinced that, on some level at least, the successful breastfeeders must see me with my bottles of formula and think to themselves, ‘There’s an intelligent woman.  She must have known breast is best.  She just couldn’t have cared enough for her baby to keep going with it.’  So I preemptively try to explain to all who will listen.  ‘I did want to breastfeed.  We tried really hard with it.  We just couldn’t get a milk supply established.’  I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not like that. You don’t understand. I do love my baby.  Just as much as you love yours.

At home, when left alone and to my own devices, I beat myself up incessantly.  And when I finally tire of beating myself up I go online and discover no end of people who are ready, willing, and able to do it for me.  At first I lurk the bf/ff debates silently, tears streaming down my face from behind the anonymity of the computer screen.  I hear people saying again and again what I’m assuming everyone who successfully breastfeeds is really thinking: ‘Anyone can breastfeed if only they try hard enough’.  I discover a league of women for whom ‘failure was not an option’.  A league of women who profess themselves to be sick of all the excuses they hear from formula feeders. ‘Why can’t they just admit to themselves that they weren’t willing to put the effort in?’ ‘Of course they feel guilty about their choices – so they should.’  And a league of women who, admitting that there are indeed some women (perhaps those who have suffered the misfortune of a double mastectomy) will genuinely not be able to breastfeed, will say, ‘Well if I was in that position I’d hire a wet nurse.’  They’ve read The Politicsand they think they know it all.  ‘Human milk for human babies; devil’s milk is not for me.’

After a while I can’t stop myself from answering back: ‘How can you say these things?  I went through this hell.  What more could I have done?’.  But my emotional outbursts, my endless attempts to explain myself, fall on deaf ears.  Some are ignored completely; others find themselves consigned to the dustbin of deleted posts.  Those that do merit a response are answered with ‘It’s not our fault if you feel guilty about your choices’, or, somewhat better in intention at least, a well meant variation on a Rooseveltian theme: ‘No one can make you feel inferior/guilty/shitty/judged without your consent’.  Well maybe so, Eleanor dear, but here I am feeling all those things nonetheless, and it helps me not one iota to know that, not only is it all my own fault that I didn’t succeed with breastfeeding my son, it’s also all my fault that I’ve allowed myself to feel this way when I read these things.  I’ll just add it to the list of things to beat myself up about.  It’s a compulsion, I readily admit.  As though I’m picking at a scar to make it bleed again and again.  I’m wounded, but I’m not ready to let myself heal.