Name: Sarah Mier
Age: 36
Number of kids and ages: 1 son, he’s almost 1 year
Location: San Francisco, California
The most surprising thing about being a first-time mom is I had so many friends go first into motherhood and I heard their stories—so I thought I was mentally prepared to come home from the hospital. But those first few days recovering were so, so hard. My son wouldn’t let us set him down in anything at night for the first week without crying. My husband and I stayed up all night taking turns holding him and not sleeping because we were so afraid of the dangers of co-sleeping. The recovery, the crying, and the lack of sleep was brutal. The main thing that kept me going was the amazing outpouring of texts from my friends checking in and sympathizing and listening. That part was so beautiful to see how my community came in to support me and my new family.
My expectation vs. experience breastfeeding was I had actually really low expectations going into breastfeeding. I heard that feeding can be surprisingly hard and I also knew after maternity leave I’d go back to a hectic job with a lot of work travel. So I told myself going in that breastfeeding exclusively for six months was a good goal.
Fast forward to being in the hospital in San Francisco where breastfeeding was very much pushed by care providers, and I was struggling to get a good latch and feeding was incredibly painful (bleeding, the whole deal). Despite my thoughts going in, my mindset immediately flipped and I felt an intense amount of guilt and pressure to “get it right” for my new baby. With some lactation support, I pumped to bottle feed to let my body recover and eventually used nipple shields to help with the pain and viola! Problem solved (or so I thought).
The second month of my son’s life was super difficult—a lot of crying and fussiness and I would breastfeed for what felt like 50%+ of the day. It felt like he was never satisfied but it’s impossible when breastfeeding to really know how much they are getting. Every time I googled about low supply, I read about how all women think they have low supply but almost no one actually does. I felt like I was in my head but my mom senses were up—something was off. And in the end it was. My son didn’t gain any weight between month one and month two. When this news was delivered at the pediatricians office it was like a bomb went off. I felt like a complete failure. Not only had I been (in my brain) starving my son but my body had failed me. I wasn’t making enough milk.
We started triple feeding—breastfeed, top off with formula and pump after to increase my supply. After about a month of this truly absurd schedule, I was back to about 80% of his nutrition coming from milk vs. 50%. But all of this progress came crashing down when he started nursing less at night a month or so later.
Despite this, I kept at it — a mix of pumping and nursing — when I went back to work full time at five months. I pumped four times a day and get 12-15 oz total if I was lucky. And I would pump in horrible locations on work trips—the airport bathroom floor, the rental car while my coworkers went into lunch, etc. I couldn’t give it up! I was addicted because my failure felt so intense when we started out, I wanted to make up for that and last as long as possible.
My supply really started dwindling at about 9 months and we called it quits. I had never worked so hard at literally anything and still felt like a failure. But I had to remind myself—I went way longer than my original goal and we were lucky to have the bond of nursing for so long despite the need to combo feed. Now being on the other side with a happy, healthy formula-fed baby I have given myself way more grace—it was all fine and I pushed myself way harder than I needed to.
The best piece of advice about motherhood is related to feeding — formula is amazing!!! It is a perfectly awesome way to feed your child! Don’t get bogged down by as I describe it “big breast” making you feel like you are less of a mother for doing that. Do we make moms who do IVF or C-sections feel othered because of their experiences? After talking to other moms, I realized how common low supply actually is, despite what the online forums and chatter may tell you. Sane mom, fed baby is actually best. Thank god for modern science.