I would love to follow up my last post with a post about how I’ve become calm and collected, gentle and lowly like Jesus, but no. I have been experiencing major mom rage, and a lot of that has to do with how nursing is going with Woori.
Probably because at this stage of infancy, all I ever do is feed this baby. All day long. No sooner have I finished nursing, bottle-feeding, then pumping, do I have to start the process all over again.
Woori is 5 weeks today. Which means we’ve been stuck in this hell cycle of triple feeding for five weeks. I would go five more weeks if there were signs that she’s improving, that one day I can exclusively breastfeed her without worrying if she got enough, worrying about pumping, worrying about my milk supply.
But then I go to a lactation support group, weigh her after a 45-minute nursing session, and find out she had sucked only 1 ounce.
Forty-five minutes, and we get 1 measly freaking ounce. I guess that’s better than 8 ml (0.27 ounce), which was what she ingested the first time I joined the lactation support group. But still. I want my 45 minutes back!!!
“She’s…at least getting better,” the lactation consultant Mary said pityingly. She asked me how much I’m pumping.
Two to 5 ounces, I said, depending on time of day.
“So it’s not your milk supply,” she said. “How many times do you pump a day?”
Eight, I told her. Almost every feeding session.
“Well, I’m worried about you. That’s not sustainable,” Mary said.
Nope, it is not.
Mary suggested going to an occupational therapist. But for some reason, the thought of going to another appointment with a specialist that might not work, that might be another waste of time, money, and hope, felt overwhelming to me.
“I just worry about you,” Mary repeated. “What you’re doing is not sustainable.”
I fought to blink away tears. Up till then, I’d been pretty stoic about this triple feeding process. I complained some, but it was a routine I did, day by day, without thinking too much about it. But it was wearing me down. And when I came to this lactation support group, I had had hope that Woori was finally nursing much better. So to see that number— 1 ounce— felt crushing. I wanted to throw myself on the floor and weep.
“Let’s try again,” Mary suggested.
So I went back to the nursing pillow, and tried to rub Woori awake, but she was drowsy from all the calories she spent nursing without getting much calories in return. We stripped her down. We turned a fan on her to keep her awake. She squirmed and pushed but I kept her plastered on me.
Thirty-five minutes later, we weighed her again. She had just under another ounce of milk.
Two hours, 2 ounces. A baby at her age needs about 20-24 ounces a day. That’s 20 to 24 hours of nursing I have to do to get her what she needs, if I were to exclusively breastfeed.
Unsustainable, indeed.
Two evenings ago, I lost it.
We had just finished eating dinner, and as always, David wanted to go for a walk. That’s been our daily routine since we met, but since we’ve had Woori, more often than not, David has been going out for a walk with Tov while I stay home with Woori, nursing and pumping.
This evening, I really wanted to go for a walk too. I had been cooped up at home all day. I had not been able to get my regular workouts in that week because Woori’s naps have shortened to barely half an hour, and when she’s up, she wants to be held. And then of course there’s her feeding schedule.
But come 6:30 pm, I was still stuck in the chair nursing Woori. I had passed out, so I couldn’t tell if Woori had even been sucking or simply suckling.
David stuck his head into the room. “Are we going?”
I opened my bleary eyes. “I don’t think I can go,” I said. I still needed to pump, and it was getting late, and our walks are usually almost an hour long.
So David got ready to go for a walk with Tov without us.
We were alone at home. Again. Man, I really wanted to go out for a walk.
By then I had maybe been nursing for a good 45 minutes. Surely she’s gotten something out of this, I thought.
But no. As I lifted Woori up and walked around the house, she began sucking on her fingers— cues that she’s hungry.
I groaned— a deep, guttural burst of livid frustration. How. HOW! How is she STILL freaking hungry?! Did my milk ducts dry up? What the heck have we been doing for the past 45 minutes?!
In a whoosh, I felt rage boiling out of me like fresh hot lava. I felt resentment that David got to keep all his routine— a 90-minute workout every morning, walks every afternoons and evenings, hot coffees, work and conversations with adults— while I was chained to this never -ending cycle of feeding a baby who had a piss-poor suction. I could feel the hours we spent trying to nurse flattening my butt into a Swedish pancake, all my hard-earned muscles softening like butter. I felt fat. I felt unproductive. I felt utterly demoralized and discouraged and deflated.
I burst into angry tears. And then, because tears were not enough, I picked up the first thing I saw— a big-ass plastic dump truck filled with blocks that a very kind friend had gifted Tov that day— and hurled it across the room. Red and yellow blocks scattered across the floor. That was still not enough, so I kicked his plastic fire truck across the room, too, and it somersaulted in the air and skidded next to the other giant truck.
I calmed down a little then. Or rather, guilt and shame tampered my rage. I felt bad that Tov’s toys had to bear the brunt of my lack of self-control. I checked on them and was relieved they weren’t broken.
Then I warmed up 4 ounces of pumped breastmilk and bottle-fed Woori. Sure enough, she gulped that thing down as though I haven’t just spent the last three-quarters of an hour trying to feed her. I could have cried again.
At that moment, I remembered what a woman had told me after helping watch Woori for an hour: “She’s so easy! All she does is sleep and eat and poop!”
I knew she meant it as a compliment or something. But when I heard it, I felt triggered and irritated. I thought, Of course she’s easy, after you’ve golfed all day and shopped at a farmer’s market and all you do is hold her for an hour in the evening. Of course she’s easy, when that bottle you’ve fed her was squeezed from someone else’s dairy farm. Of course she’s easy, when you get to hand her off so you can go home and sleep when you like, for however long you’d like.
I knew I wasn’t being fair. But I wasn’t in a mood to feel gracious and rational. I felt like my struggles were belittled. And then, on the flip side, I belittled myself: What are you whining about? Why is this so hard? It’s so easy. Just suck it up.
I dried my tears and gulped down my frustrations and picked up Woori and spoke to her gently. Something will have to change, and we’ll figure it out together.
Later, while I was bathing Woori, I heard David and Tov return from their walk. Tov stomped up the stairs to greet his new truck. “Argh! Oh nooo!” I heard him exclaim to see his dump truck turned upside down and all the blocks skittered across the room. I felt guilty, but also tickled at his dramatic reaction. I heard him gather all his blocks again and put them where they belong into the dump truck.
He pushed that truck into the bathroom where I was bathing Woori, and he greeted cheerfully, “Hi!” He had no idea the tantrum I had thrown just 20 minutes before. I pulled him close and kissed his cheeks, penance for throwing his toys, though he had no idea what I had done. If only all the moments of my mom rage could be as easily remedied as picking up plastic blocks.
An hour later, I was back in my nursing chair with Woori, restarting the process again.
Of course, all this could end if I stopped being stubborn and just gave up on breastfeeding. I’m keeping this cycle going because at the end of the day, I still have the privilege of choice. I told myself I’ll keep on going for as long as I can, and maybe that breaking point is coming.
I hired a personal lactation consultant who lives nearby to come visit me. It’ll be the fourth lactation consultant I’ve seen. She’ll visit me next week, and maybe it’ll help, maybe it won’t.
But I need a new plan. Tov’s toys don’t deserve my mom rage.
