Part 9: 'Today's the day I've given up breastfeeding'

It’s Sunday night, day 27, and the longest night of the year.  We’ve been at my parents’ house for dinner, and when we get home I feed Tommy and then get out the pump.  For once, though, I stay in bed rather than retiring to my pumping chair, propped up with pillows, and my husband stays with me while Tommy dozes between us.  We chat and I pump, and the time goes by, and before I know it I have about 25mls – my best yield ever.  Maybe it’s working? Maybe we’ve turned a corner?  It’s not been a bad day – Tommy has latched, he’s stayed on the breast, and though he’s had top ups it’s felt like he’s been feeding too.  Perhaps we’ll do it?  I go to bed feeling positive, and though we pump and feed through the night as usual, I think, ‘Perhaps tomorrow we’ll babymoon again?  Maybe it’s time?’  

Monday morning comes and I’m ready to go.  I let Tommy wake with hunger and put him hopefully to my bare breast.  But there’s nothing for him; he thrashes and screams and refuses.  ‘Shall I get the SNS?’ my husband asks gently.  ‘It’s not ready.  He’s desperate.  Just get the bottles.’  Tommy downs them both: the good and the bad.  And finally something snaps.  I can’t do it any more.  We can’t go on like this.  My son is four weeks old that day, and the thought suddenly strikes me: I only have six months of maternity leave before I have to go back to work, and one whole month of my six has gone by already.  Instead of enjoying my baby and treasuring our precious time together, I’ve spent most of this time chained to a breast pump, dreading the moment that he wakes and I have to struggle to feed him.  I’ll never get that time back, and I don’t want to waste a minute more in this nightmare.  It’s Christmas day in a few days, and I want to be able to enjoy our first Christmas together rather than worrying about how I can fit my pumping sessions around Christmas dinner.  So that’s it. I pack up the pump, the SNS, breast pads, and nursing bras, and become a formula feeder.

I’d like to say that I never looked back, but of course I did look back, a lot.  The day I decide to stop I initially feel liberated.  Tommy sleeps contentedly between feeds, falling immediately into a textbook 4-hourly routine, and I can finally start taking control of my life – and house – again.  The Christmas decorations come out at last, and I’m able to focus my attention on something other than breasts, that damn pump, and the measly bottle slowly filling in the fridge.   A funny thing happens from going cold turkey on the breastfeeding – some time in the afternoon my breasts feel for the first time a bit firm, and I’m shocked to discover (for the first and last time) a wet patch maybe the size of a 20p piece on my t-shirt over my left breast.  But that’s it for ‘engorgement’.  By the next day my breasts are back to their normal selves.    I finally have the time to phone friends and chat, and tell them it’s been hard work, but all feels a lot better since we finally decided to give up on breastfeeding.  But my oldest friend, who’s over from Australia, comes over for a visit, and when I tell her, ‘Today’s the day I’ve given up breastfeeding’, I break down.

And that’s how it is, for some time.  On the surface I feel great.  I have a gorgeous baby boy and I’m totally in love with him.  But then it hits and I’m in floods of tears again.  Christmas day is a disaster, and instead of our happy first Christmas together, as I sit at the dinner table the tears roll down my cheeks and onto my turkey.  Occasionally I wonder whether I should start all over again – try to relactate – and I unpack the pump or try in vain to put my son to my breast.  But although I continue to be able to squeeze out a single bead of milk from each breast (something that remains with me, it turns out, until I fall pregnant again eighteen months later), actually pumping is of course entirely unproductive and simply depressing, and my son is just bemused by my offering my breasts now he’s used to his bottles.

When the health visitor visits next and I tell her we’ve stopped breastfeeding she sees the tears in my eyes and makes me fill out the PND questionnaire – but the truth is that apart from those moments where I let myself think about it, I really do feel just fine.   She asks if there is anything they could have done differently to support me better, and to be honest, at that moment I really don’t know.  I feel as though there must have been things that could have been done differently, but I really don’t know what.  All that I know is that I did what they told me to as best I could, and in the end I just couldn’t keep going with it. What more is there to say? I failed.