My kids were bottle-fed and lived to tell about it

I read a blog post today called "You're not a bad mom." The author used her little corner of the internet to call a truce between the breast- and bottle-feeding moms and to tell her own story. While my "babies" are 17, 14 and 11, I was instantly transported back to the newborn days when I, too, felt betrayed by my own breasts. The short story is that I breastfed every one of my babies until they were good and dehydrated.

Of course I planned to breastfeed my firstborn baby. That's what all good Mommies do. And breastfeed I did, until she was well under her 10 lb. 4 oz. birthweight at her one-month check up. Well, that just wouldn't do. I rallied my troops, determined to sit around my home unclothed from the waist up and hook myself up to a milk machine to encourage more flow.

This happened to occur about the time we were due to take Annie on her first roadtrip, so I dutifully packed up the breast pump and headed to Ohio. I don't remember exactly where it all fell apart, but I think it was shortly after that weekend trip to Ohio that I abandoned breastfeeding all together, feeling at once relieved and humiliated that my baby seemed only to be satiated after a bottle full of formula.

Round 2. That came when Charlie was born. I was ready this time. This boy would be a breast man. I'd had such a beautiful, New Age-y birth experience (even if you do count the 40 hours that led up to the actual birth), a beautiful breastfeeding experience was sure to follow. Then he turned dangerously jaundiced just a day or so after we arrived home, which earned him a 5-day stay in the NICU, where breastfeeding was forbidden because it was (allegedly) contributing to the extraordinarily high levels of bilirubin in his blood.

When he was discharged from the NICU, I rented an industrial-strength behemoth of a breast pump. This was not the rinky dink one-horned pump I'd used when I was trying to make Annie a breast-fed baby. This was a Cadillac of a lactation machine. Unfortunately, it did not come 100% guaranteed.

He was sleepy, too tired to care to eat. So I stripped him naked, hoping the breeze would keep him awak to eat. I held him to my breast and then the other and back to the first for what seemed like ages. And still he wailed. And lost weight. But I was not going to wave the white flag that easily. I called the lactation consultant from the NICU. She was so nice, so encouraging. She was pretty sure a supplemental nursing system (SNS) was the cure to this ailing situation.

To paraphrase Ouiser Boudreaux from Steel Magnolias, the SNS is a boil on the boob of humanity. You hang a flask of formula or breastmilk from your neck. A tube leads over to one of your breasts, where you tape it down. When you try to get the baby to latch, you shove the tube in his mouth at the same time. Just typing this is giving me PTBFS -- post-traumatic breastfeeding syndrome. One night, after Charlie and I sat up watching 6 back-to-back episodes of the Brady Bunch on Nick at Night, trying to get him to take 2 ounces of liquid gold from the plastic flask, I had had enough. I just couldn't keep up.

So I called the lactation consultant and told her as much. That's ok, she said. She had a bottle that would do the trick. It would train his suck and we'd be in breastfeeding euphoria in no time. "Great," I said. "Leave the bottle at the desk and I'll swing by to pick it up."

That's when she told me she'd have to teach me how to use this bottle. Now, I don't claim to be brilliant, but I am a college-educated woman. The idea of having to be taught how to use some new-fangled bottle was more than I could manage. As it was, I was beginning to resent my baby every time he cried out of hunger. I feared "mealtime" and was ready to call it quits. So I abandoned the "breast is best" dream and dove headlong in to postpartum depression, only in part because I considered myself a failed mother.

Ever the optimist and suitably medicated, when Robbie came along, I was all set to give it another college try. I had the lactation consultant on speed dial. I had the mammoth breast pump rented and all set up. I had laid in a large supply of Mother's Milk Tea and fenugreek and some prescription whose name escapes me now.

We brought Robbie home on a snowy Sunday. On Monday, Charlie was singing into one horn of the breast pump.

"Charlie!" Annie, all of 6 years old, yelled. "THAT is not a microphone! THAT is a BOOB sucker!"

By Thursday, I was on the phone with the lactation consultant. Fussy baby. No real feelings of let-down. Not a whole lot of wet diapers.  "How long should I pump on each side?" I asked.

"Well, until you feel empty," she said. "Probably 4-5 minutes per side."

"I just pumped 20 minutes on one side and got 1/2 an ounce." To which she replied, "I'll bring some samples of formula today." We decided that I am one of those women who truly is incapable of breastfeeding. It seemed like such a crisis of identity then. Now, it's just a story I tell on a blog I share.

I'm not really interested in a historic review of where I went wrong. I tell the story because it was such a guilt-laden experience that I call still recall it with so little nudging. And I tell it because I have 3 terrific, healthy children. Three kids who today, still don't care if I feed them from a pizza box or from a casserole made in my very own oven.

Squeezed

I had my mammogram yesterday. I really didn't intend to get one this year; since I had a baseline screening mammogram last year, I figured I was good to go for a few years. But my doctor encouraged me to do it, especially because I did have to have a repeat scan last time around.

It was also not my intention to make my mammogram coincide with national breast cancer awareness month. It just kind of worked out that way. My doctor's appointment was in early September. It took me three weeks to get around to scheduling the mammogram, which by then they were scheduling two weeks out, which landed me smack dab in the middle of breast cancer awareness month.

My appointment was at 7:40am -- crazily, my 3rd stop of the day. So I got up bright and early to shower. After I did the shampoo and conditioner thing to my head, I started shaving my legs. It wasn't until I was finishing up the second leg that I remembered I was having a mammogram today, not a pap smear. I was concentrating on the wrong lady parts. I totally could have gotten away with hairy legs for this occasion.

The entrance to the hospital was decked out in so much rosy pink that I laughed as I thought of the scene in "Steel Magnolias" where Shelby, describing her wedding, said "My colors are 'blush' and 'bashful.'" And her mom interjects, "Her colors are pink and pink. It looks like the sanctuary's been sprayed with Pepto Bismol."

The lobby of the Women's Diagnostic Center was empty, except for the receptionist, who was wearing pink, of course. She was quite friendly and we chatted about the fact that it's almost the middle of October and I don't have enough of my Christmas shopping done yet, but that she is finished with the shopping for her 3-1/2 year old daughter, though has no idea what to get her husband. She took my information and printed out a wristband for me to wear. As she put it on my arm, I glanced down and lost my breath for just a moment.

There, just under my name, it said "Age: 40." That's the first time I think I've seen that number, in reference to my time on earth, printed right in front of me. It wasn't "Happy 40th Birthday!" It was just a cold, hard fact. Age: 40. I think that might have been the hardest part of the whole experience.

Shortly after I'd re-gained my breath, Andrea came to lead me back to the exam area. I think she might have been the one to do my mammogram the last time, but if she remembered me or my breasts, she didn't say so. She opened a little dressing room for me, set out a gown, instructed me to remove everything from the waist up and put the gown on so it opened in the front.

I did as I was told, neatly folding my clothes and leaving them on the bench, as if I would be awarded points for tidiness. I slipped into the gown and was pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn't one of those flimsy cotton jobbies that leave you freezing, which is not exactly the way you want it to be when some stranger is going to be deliberately handling your ta tas. No, this gown was soft -- like Karen Neuberger jammies soft -- and warm. It made me want to curl up and take a nap.

Napping, of course, was not on the agenda. Rather, the agenda was full of small talk and instructions to lean forward, chin up, hold here, don't breathe and let me know if that's too much pressure. The chin up instruction was possibly the most annoying because I really wanted to see if, like last year, my breast flattened in the machine looked like chicken in shrink wrap. In the quick glance that I got, I did notice that breasts look bigger all squished like a pancake then they do when they are free and reaching for the floor.

When I was finished, Andrea told me I should hear about the results by Thursday and gave me a complimentary nylon backpack in honor of breast cancer awareness month. I wished she'd given me that snuggly, warm gown instead.