I Was a Failure As a New Mom

At thirty-eight, I finally carried a baby to term. After three miscarriages, my dream came true. I owe it to some incredible physicians and to prayerful women. I held my baby in my arms the day I delivered via C-section, and I was in awe. It’s an amazing thing to hold a human being in your arms who grew inside you. I still can’t wrap my head around the concept. New Mom.

Birth

The adventure was not unscathed. I had a not-so-good experience with the hospital. Okay, a couple of them; I’ll share another time. This experience I am about to share was the worst.

When I had E (I won’t give his name to protect his privacy), I first laid him skin-to-skin on my chest. They told me skin-to-skin contact was important, so I did it.

He was so warm and squishy, so little. He came in at 6.9 pounds and 20” long. It was love at first sight. My husband was in love before I even got a crack at it.

In the operating room, he was handed the baby first, and I turned to watch them. I could barely see our son, but I saw the look on my husband’s face. He would not take his eyes off our baby.

I have never seen so much love in someone’s eyes before. And maybe it was abject awe and utter fear, as in, “What the heck did we just do?” or “Oh my god! Now what?”

Back in the Room

After the delivery, I held him for a while as he slept. The nurse told me to go ahead and see if E would eat, so I tried to breastfeed him. He didn’t eat right away, but in subsequent attempts he seemed eager to eat.

I fed him a few times, but he didn’t eat much at all. I had envisioned a baby would be hungry after the ordeal of entering a completely new world. But he nibbled. Maybe he was a light eater.

The nurses kept track of how often and how long I fed him. There wasn’t much to track. They all insisted babies begin to eat differently. One of the nurses said if he didn’t want to breastfeed, I could use the formula they had left on the counter. They left a case of it there while I delivered.

I was concerned, so I supplemented with the formula, and the baby took to it well.

The next day, the lactation specialist came in to talk about breastfeeding. She examined my breasts and said I had inverted nipples. What the heck?

Apparently it’s a thing. She said it was mild, which meant I would have to stimulate the nipple to get it to stick out so the baby could latch on. Then she left me a bag of goodies, including some kind of things to use on the nipples to get them to pop out or stay out.

I really don’t know what they were or how they worked because she never showed me how to use them. She left, and I never saw her again. Okay, no worries.

I continued to bottle-feed E. The nurses said to continue breastfeeding until he stopped, then give him formula. He was supposed to have two ounces of formula at a time, if possible, but breast milk was best.

It contains colostrum, which is essentially a baby’s immunity transferred into his system. The initial breast milk is pure colostrum. Then the milk comes down, a term for the onset of milk production which begins after a baby’s sucking draws the milk into production.

It’s all scientific and mind-boggling. The human female anatomy is fascinating. It knows what to do even when the woman herself doesn’t.

Home and Foreshadows

We arrived home, and I walked into our bedroom and placed our son in his new crib at the foot of the bed. I sat on the bed and cried. What the hell did we just do? Everything flashed through my mind.

-Would he be healthy?

-The fear of failure and of not being able to be good providers

-The idea we could screw up another human being

- Were we even worthy of this child?

-What were we thinking, bringing a child into the chaos of this world?

It all hit me right then and there. I cried silently, then I wiped my face and went back into the living room, where my husband and father were, as if nothing had happened. I should have known this was not the reality of the journey ahead.

More Breastfeeding

The hospital gave me a breast pump when we left. I was told to pump as much as I could if E was not latching onto the breast, and to bottle-feed him first and only then give him formula.

I did pump. I wanted to make sure our baby had the best immunity. There wasn’t much to pump. The milky substance wasn’t abundant. I didn’t know whether it was the milk already or the colostrum still coming out.

This is one of the failures in modern teaching. No one talks about any of this. It’s glossed over, but never examined or truly explained to us as young women or even to new moms. We need to do better.

Failure

No matter how I tried, I could not get the baby to feed from my breast for long. He would then cry from hunger, and I would have to resort to the bottle. I was a failure at feeding my own child in the best and most natural way.

I wanted to breastfeed. I wanted a bond to grow between mom and son. I wanted love and intimacy a mother shares with her baby. The basic need to feed my child was one of the most important roles I felt I was meant to fill. But it wasn’t happening.

I spent day after day crying in the shower. What was I doing wrong? Was my baby starving? Was he getting what was best for him? I felt the weight of failure every moment of the day, and yet I hid it. I didn’t even let my husband know, for fear of his judgment. I was fragile in a way I had never anticipated.

We didn’t have any family around us. I never had a real mom, and my dad was no help. Then one day I broke down. I had to talk to someone I trusted, so I called my sister.

I sobbed to her and told her about my failure. Then she said this.

“Alex, just feed him formula.”

“He will be fine because he at least got some colostrum.”

“There are far larger battles ahead, so don’t let this small, insignificant moment in his life get to you.”

“At least he is eating.”

I hung up, only slightly relieved. Then came the evening.

Emergency Room

It was 2:30 in the morning one night when I was feeding the baby, and he just would not eat. I pumped, but he would not take the breastmilk from the bottle either. Then I offered him formula, and he was fussy about drinking it. So I put him in the car and drove to the E.R.

In the emergency room, they did what the hospital where I gave birth never did. They examined my son carefully and discovered the reason for all of these woes. He was tongue-tied. My son could not latch because he could not move his tongue the way he needed to clasp and draw milk from the well.

The nurse there was so incredibly kind and understood my soul. She told me to stop trying to feed him in the three ways I had been trying. She said to go ahead and bottle-feed the formula. He had probably taken enough colostrum, and he would be fine.

Babies don’t need much of it.

The nurse examined me and said my milk had not come in. She suggested I keep pumping to try to get it to come in, but added it was more likely it would not come in anymore. We were at six weeks post-delivery, and my milk was more than likely drying up since it had never come in to begin with.

She set us up with a pediatrician to have his frenulum clipped the next morning.

Emotions

That night, I was many things. I was so angry at the hospital where I gave birth. I was angry at the doctors, nurses, and lactation nurse. None of them ever examined my baby’s mouth. This could all have been avoided.

Aside from this, there was a sense of relief. I was not the failure in this equation. I was not a bad mom. I was the consequence of lazy, inexperienced professionals.

I bottle-fed him formula from this point on and put it all behind me. My son grew up completely healthy, well-bonded to his parents, and strong. This battle was done: others would come. For now, I was at peace.

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