Breastfeeding and child rearing

I am pretty goal oriented person and not to sound too full of myself since it is really anal compulsiveness when I set my mind to a goal I usually get there. When I was pregnant with K- I looked at internet and parent book literature (I add this becasue I think one of the main points i will be making here is how a lot of that is usually a load of crap and is opinion over fact) and decided that of course since breastfeeding was best that is what I would do for my little girl to be. Well remembe I am compulsive so I went to the breastfeeding class, got some books, talked to my friend who had successfully breastfed 2 children and was about to for her third. Now If I always just listened to Val when it came to child rearing my life would be better because she said about most of these parenting and breast feeding books- don't bother they make you more stressed then they help. So I knew it could be "hard" but I thought I'll do it for at least 6 months after all when I set my mind to it it happens.

Now it is hard to say I followed all the rules because no doubt you can read 5 different books and talk to 5 different people and get 10 different "hard and fast this is the way to do this sucessfully answers" But for the most part I fed K on demand the first 2-4 weeks, I had nurses at the hospital and the lactation specialist check our "the most important thing in the world the latch" it was great she was eating and we sucessfully initated a breast feeding relationship. Hooray- hooray, hooray. Then comes the kicker - it is hard, I am tired and beat and though there are things I really enjoy about it I'd love a break for at least one feeding a day. Then you get the introduce a bottle if you are going back to work at 2 weeks - not 4 weeks, no 6 - well that is hardly helpful since I had to go back to work at 6 weeks. Then you get how in the world can I pump milk for my husband to take over a feeding when I feed her 12 times a day - really where do you find the time. Pumping stinks I get nothing but still- it is hard but I will do it. K loses weight, doesn't regain to her birth weight by 2 weeks like they want, so lets see her in a week. Well she gains nothing and is becomming increasingly fussy and difficult to deal with. Ped say supplement, OB says hey breastfeeding isn't that important there are more important things you'll give your baby. I say where were you when I was reading how this is the end all be all of being a mom. Medical community get your act together either it is critical or it is optional but don't tell me all these different things. So we are left supplementing after every nursing session. She does well and gains but still seems unsatisfied when eating just from me. After 6 weeks and returning back to work I guilty chuck the whole thing. I think this is when I finished falling in love with my daugther. I loved her from the moment I saw her and enjoyed her but the stress of the newborn stage and the problems with feeding were making me crazy. Once that was gone I felt more like me and since I was me again I could love her all the way. I was more relaxed more happy and started enjoying being a mom.

Flash forward to today. I am going to try nursing this baby because I still beleive that some of the benefits that are touted are important and worth trying to give him. I don't think this is a critical part of my success in mothering this little boy but if I can help him out with some of these things I'd like to. Plus as awful as breastfeeding was for me and K it was really becasue she didn't eat and grew lazier and lazier on the breast. See she would fall asleep and no matter what I did she wouldn't wake up. So she ended up in this vicous cycle of always being a little hungry and cranky and not gaining weight right. But the times she did eat was heavenly. I liked having her close to me like that. So everyone swears every baby is different and this one could eat like a champ. But I don't expect books to have the answer and I actually don't much expect the medical community will support me. None of this helped before so why will it this time. This time if it doesn't work I am going to just let it go. I still ideally would like to give him 6 weeks of some breast milk but if we need to supplement we will, if I need a break from a feeding I'll give him formula and if this ruins my supply or our breastfeeding relationship - "oh well"

See this is all back in the forefront for me again because I did go to the breastfeeding class last night. It was so eye opening after having had a child and listened to many women I know successfully breast feed. They still talk like everything is a fact and their way is the only way when I know for a fact that - if I was speaking to someone other "expert" they'd say something different, my baby was different then what they are talking about and women who have done this with 2 children now had a different experience then their pefect formula.

For instance we got the lecture about how breastfeeding prevents obesity because of the horrors of bottle fed babies "just eating and eating and eating and not being able to stop."
1. From a research perspective I don't doubt that there is a correlation between breast feeding and lower obestiy rates but obesity is such a multifaceted concept that it is ridiculous to say that it has such a large impact. Also I doubt highly that they know exactly why this relationship exists.
2. They never met my daughter- she was about as fussy as eating a bottle as she was breastfeeding. That kid has never ate an ounce of milk or piece of food that she didn't want to eat. My poor husband desperate to help us break the poor weight gain cycle used to spend hours trying to coax her to eat an extra oz or two of formula. Never happened so don't tell me I can bottle force feed a baby. That is silly and wrong.

So I have come to the conclusion that almost all parenting books are opinions not backed by much research. Hospital classes on labor prep and breastfeeding, I don't know quite what is wrong with them but I never got a lot out of them. I think they may try to distill information to such a simple level to make it easily understandable that they lose the complexity of the whole process. There isn't one way to have a baby and there also isn't one way to sucessfully feed a baby.

We'll see maybe I'll end up going to the other side if Baby boy is a champion nurser. But I now feel like this was a big lesson that K blessed me and her father with. She is her own person and will do things her way. We can go with the flow or we can try to make her be what we want her or expect her to be and be miserable and have her still be herself. Hmmm option 2 looks like I gain nothing but stress.

So to all you moms and mom to be out there - love your child and the rest as they say is just background noise.