Well, at 9 months, 3 weeks, and 5 days, I no longer have enough milk to exclusively breastfeed Drake. Today he will have his first bottle of formula. This is very hard for me because I was so good at producing milk. Initially I had trouble and Drake lost a little over a pound in the first few days after birth. Then we found our groove and at the ultimate high, had 63 six-ounce bags of milk in the freezer. In the last couple of months, my production has drastically dropped and in order to keep up with his needs, we have depleted the freezer supply.
I am still going to nurse Drake in the morning and at night and then pump three times a day as I have been. This should produce enough for one milk bottle a day and one formula bottle a day. Some days he may just get formula; I doubt there will be any days when he just gets milk.
I did not realize how upsetting this would be for me. I have already made it past my goal of stopping in November. I know that only about 8% of babies are exclusively breastfeed at 6 months and we made it well past that. I just feel like I have somehow let him down; I feel like I have failed. I know he needs to eat and this is the only way that he is going to get the nutrients that he needs. Just like when I was told that I was going to have to have a c-section due to placenta previa, it was not what I wanted, but in the end I realized that it was what was what had to happen.
Actually, just writing about this makes me feel a little better; I know that I am doing all I can. Just as a side, formula smells really bad! I do thank our friends Jermile, Haley, and Caleb who had a canister of formula left from Caleb's baby days that was still good which they gave us. We can make it two months of formula eating...
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