the cost of breastfeeding

it's only free if a parent's time means nothing

Today is the last day of World Breastfeeding Week and this is a post about breastfeeding. Before I say anything else, I want to make something very clear: whatever way you feed your baby is great. There are no wrong answers, there is just what works and makes sense to you. Making choices about how your baby gets fed, no matter what those choices are, is hard & complicated sometimes. I know how much shame surrounds feeding babies/children but there is truly no judgement here. I am breastfeeding because it’s a thing that has worked for me, my son, and my family so far and a lot of that is due to factors outside my control - so much of it (like the fact that he figured out how to latch and that my supply has been adequate) are just luck. Nothing I did “right” and if that’s not the case for you and your baby, it’s not because you did or are doing anything wrong. It’s just because there is vast diversity among humans. And if you are someone who has or is currently breast/chestfeeding, you might have different experiences than what I talk about here and of course, that’s okay too.

I didn’t have a whole lot of preferences during pregnancy (I went into labor with exactly two items typed into a birth plan word document that was still open on my laptop at home when my son was born) but I knew I wanted to try nursing him. Being able to provide nourishment for my baby in that way was something I wanted to experience if I could. I previously worked in a pediatric clinic as a dietitian where I often saw babies and nursing parents and I started to look into what it took to become a lactation consultant. Besides this and the brief inclusions about chestfeeding in pregnancy books, I didn’t think that much about it. So it wasn’t until my son was actually born and I was in the postpartum recovery room that I realized 1) my baby couldn’t go longer than 2-3 hours without eating and 2) I was solely responsible for doing that. I knew both of these things intellectually but I would be lying if I didn’t have a holy shit I will not be able to sleep more than 2.5 consecutive hours for the foreseeable future. It seemed (because it was) incredibly overwhelming after doing the most physically taxing thing I’d ever done.

To be clear, I have loved the experience of breastfeeding my baby. I wouldn’t trade it or wish it away. Even when I’m bleary-eyed at 4am, I am grateful for my body and for this tiny little sleepy human with his milky breath. I’m grateful for every quiet moment with him. It’s been a profoundly special experience.

But if I hear someone say “breastfeeding is free!” one more time, I’m going to scream. Breastfeeding is free but it has cost me hours of sleep, setting alarms for every 3 hours in my phone around the clock for the first few weeks at home (although most of the time we weren’t making it that long before he wanted to eat again). Now almost four months in, I’m waking up to feed him less frequently but I haven’t had a “normal” night of sleep since before I had him. People love to tell you to just pump and make your partner take over some feedings! But you can’t do that without worrying that your supply might tank and/or that you’ll wake up with your bra, PJs, and bedding covered in milk, no matter how absorbent your nursing pads supposedly are.

Breastmilk itself might be free but breastfeeding is far from it. It’s the cost of nursing bras, especially when you realize that they will often be covered in breastmilk by the end of the day and unwearable for more than one day or night (and sometimes not even that long) so you need to have several. It’s the cost of nursing-friendly clothes - not even necessarily nursing-specific clothes, which I have learned are not really made for convenience as much as modesty (personally, I find it way easier to pull up an oversized t-shirt and leave my soft tummy and back exposed but I understand that not everyone wants to do this), but clothes that allow you to comfortably feed your baby. It’s the energy & water it takes to do frequent loads of laundry so you can have nursing pads and bras and PJs that aren’t soaked in milk. It’s the weird body stuff that pops up when your style is dictated by access to your chest and not what you actually want to wear.

It’s the constant math and mental gymnastics of planning the next feeding (a struggle regardless of how your child gets fed)- where will we be and where will I have a comfortable place to nurse him? Should I plan to nurse him while we’re out or should I structure my day so I can just do it at home? It’s the gas to keep the car and AC running so I can feed him in the backseat when we’re in a pinch. It’s the backache from nursing anywhere that’s not the two setups I have at home with the perfect pillows - from the floor of a mom’s group to leaning against a wall in a Target bathroom.

It’s the time I missed out on with my friends as I took breaks from a wedding to pump in the bathroom. It’s the panic I felt standing in a bathroom stall in the thirty minutes before the wedding, breasts full, bridesmaid dress around my ankles, stress sweating when my pump wasn’t working right and all my troubleshooting wasn’t fixing it. It’s the anxiety of planning for that weekend, figuring out how much frozen milk to pack, bringing enough so he could be fed while I was away but not so much that we waste it. It’s the having to say no to things because feeding logistics make it too complicated.

It’s the prolonged hormonal fluctuations after birth because your hormones don’t regulate until you stop breastfeeding and the impacts that has on your body. It’s the weird looking nipples and the acne that won’t go away and the voracious appetite (I have never been hungrier in my life than I have been while breastfeeding, including when I was pregnant). It’s not having full autonomy over my body because right now, it’s someone else’s body too.

These sound like complaints; I promise they’re not. I have accepted that these things just come with the territory. I say this all to say anyone who says breastfeeding is free or easy has clearly never done it. And that’s not even to talk about how little support mothers are given or how many barriers there are to chestfeeding for many people.

When my son was 6 days old, I saw a lovely lactation consultant at his pediatrician’s office. She asked me how long I planned to breastfeed my son; I told her if I could get through this week, that would be good. I still feel that way. I don’t know if I’ll still be breastfeeding at 6 months, at 9 months, at 12 months but it’s working for me this week and that’s enough for me.