This week’s piece from Dispatches from New Motherhood is MILK by Zoe Robinson, an honest and beautifully articulated account of her breastfeeding journey. In clear-eyed prose the author writes of the challenges, the anxiety, and the support she received – and the therapeutic benefits of writing it all down.
Zoë says, ‘My son was five and a half when I wrote this - he's now six and a half - and my breastfeeding journey with him remains the most challenging thing I've ever experienced (and I've climbed a volcano in the dark). Telling this story was cathartic for me, but hard in itself because it is so personal and tinged with feelings of guilt and sadness. Unfortunately, my story is not an uncommon one - I've met many other women who have had a similarly traumatic experience of breastfeeding, made even worse when we're told 'it's easy - it's the most natural thing in the world'. But perhaps my story can offer some encouragement, hope or just relief at hearing a shared experience to others who are finding their way through.’
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Milk
Zoë Robinson
I would have given birth ten times over if I could have avoided the pain of breastfeeding. I’m not talking about physical discomfort – I had that too, but it was nothing compared to the feelings of grief and inadequacy that gripped me each time I tried to feed my baby.
Giving birth was no picnic. Instead of the home birth I’d dreamt of, meconium in my waters meant I ended up in hospital, hooked up to synthetic oxytocin. With no epidural it was intense but months of prep and hypnobirthing helped me keep my calm. When my baby was passed to me through my legs I felt powerful and proud – in awe of my body and this incredible, beautiful creature that had landed in our lives.
But we couldn’t get the hang of breastfeeding. He found it hard to latch. I lost count of how many midwives demonstrated how to hand-express colostrum to feed him through a tiny syringe. Once we were home he cried a lot. I thought it was normal. We had dedicated support from caseload midwives, visiting almost every day and soon the feeding seemed to be improving. On day five one of the midwives weighed him. ‘Hmm, that can’t be right,’ she said, ‘let’s try again.’ She weighed him a second time and did the maths. He’d lost almost 20% of his bodyweight. How could I not have noticed?
That night he was sent to NICU and a tube was put into his stomach to get fluids in fast. The nurse asked me to pump and when I presented my efforts to him in a bottle, he said something that I remember now as, ‘Well, that’s not going to be enough.’ Never in my life had I felt so inadequate. Never had anything ever mattered so much.
This was over five years ago and I’m crying as I write this.
We spent a surreal five days in St Thomas’, falling like clockwork into the prescribed three-hourly routine – feed, formula, pump, sleep. He had his tongue tie snipped, his weight was deemed good; we were allowed home.
He regained his birth weight within the month but I continued to have difficulty breastfeeding him. My husband was our saviour. He got up with me every night for months and sat with me while my son and I still struggled, both desperately trying to find the right position, tears of failure and bewilderment tumbling down my face. He came with me to a cafe the first time I attempted – crippled with anxiety – to feed our son in public. Had it not been for his constant care I couldn’t have done it. As it was, I persevered, and I continued to breastfeed our boy until he was 18 months old.
My youngest son is now 18 months old and breastfeeding has been … calm. I hadn’t realised how much a baby’s temperament can play a part, and of course I have the wisdom of experience this time around.
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Milk by Zoë Robinson appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.