Fed up/ sad/ angry

*trigger warning*

This post is a bit negative, so please don't read it if you're in a bad headspace. I switched to EP about 5 weeks ago after absolutely breaking myself trying to make nursing work. My daughter had a very painful, shallow latch in the beginning and tore up my nipples. It was like hot knives every time she would feed, for the ENTIRE feed. I was so desperate to breastfeed I kept going, trying to unlatch and relatch her over and over to get it right as per the advice if midwives. After a few days of this I was crying in agony during feeds, and so I was desperate for another way to feed her my breastmilk. I was given a pump by my hospital and pumped and syringe/ finger fed my daughter for her first week or so of life. I was then given a nipple shield to try to see if I could return to nursing, and my baby latched immediately and with significantly reduced pain for me. I was so relieved! I fed her this way with nipple shields for the next few weeks, but she'd nurse for hours at a time and come off screaming and crying. I barely slept and was nursing her 10+ hours a day thinking that was normal. She was always crying. The crying and lack of sleep was causing me to become very anxious and depressed. We discovered at our first checkup that my daughter was not gaining weight well, and was not transferring milk well during feeds. I was told to ditch the nipple shields as that may have been the problem. So I spent a week desperately trying to wean her off them while she screamed and cried. It was SO hard but we did manage to do it, and miraculously she latched pain free. I thought everything would go well from that point. Unfortunately, even without the shield she wasn't transferring milk well, and we discovered she was getting around one ounce for an hour session of nursing. I saw an IBCLC who suggested that pumping might be the way to go, after we had tried lots of positions, techniques etc.

So! I switched to pumping. I did tonnes of research on pumps, flanges, tried several sizes, tried to follow optimal schedules etc. In the beginning I had an undersupply, possibly from her poor nursing, and by pumping round the clock 10 times a day and power pumping, following as many tips and tricks as possible etc, I've managed to take my supply from 20 oz p/d to around 40 oz p/d. I was starting to feel really good about EP and that I had managed to breastfeed my daughter in spite of all the challenges (mastitis twice, also) and proud of myself and the Herculean effort I have made, when I made the mistake of looking up "is pumped milk the same as nursing" on Google this morning. There are SO many articles about EP being "the lazy way out for rich westerners," that pumped milk isn't the same and not nearly as good, that it's uneducated women who EP, etc etc. It really made me feel awful this morning, and I got in my head and felt like everything was my fault and I'd chosen this and "failed" at nursing etc. I decided to try to nurse her this morning and it was an absolute DISASTER. She was screaming and flailing, so distressed, didn't want anything to do with it. It made me feel so awful I started crying and had to console her while pumping and then giving her a bottle to calm down.

And now I just feel extremely ANGRY. I actually really like EP so far. I'm a super organized person and have figured out a routine of sterilizing, making up her exact amount of bottles/ feeds each night, have started a freezer stash, have built up to a good supply/ slight oversupply. I have travelled with my pump and sorted how to do that with her milk/ bottles. She has gone from falling off her growth curve, to gaining at the top of the optimum weight gain range per week, and is becoming a happy, smiley, chubby baby now. Everything is GOOD, and universes better than it was when I was trying to nurse her. When nursing wasn't working I had negative comments from midwives that I shouldn't supplement with any formula, and the smallest amount possible if I did, and now there's all this noise shaming EP too and it's utterly toxic. It makes me furious how much judgement and shaming women have to deal with as new mothers.

If anyone read that wall of text, thank you!! I guess my point is that I recognize how toxic and unhelpful the judgemental noise around feeding babies is. Pumping is unbelievably hard work, and I should be super proud of myself and so should everyone else trying their hardest to feed their baby, that goes for nursing and formula feeding too. x