There is no “right” way to be a mom
The first time I saw my son was in a text from my husband.
He was in the NICU - an area of the hospital I never imagined we would see - even when it was pointed out to us on our hospital tour a few weeks earlier. I was in a room recovering from a C-Section - something else I had not imagined in all the eager, first-time parent planning and research done the previous nine months.
My husband took the photo just inches from our newborn’s face. His big eyes stared at me from the screen, just above a bright orange pacifier. The words, “He is a hungry boy. Took 30 milliliters of formula already,” bubbled up below the photo. I clicked the screen dark and pushed back into the pile of pillows keeping me upright. The plans for a perfect, natural birth– what I had come to understand as the “right” way to have a baby—had become a cascade of interventions ending with the ultimate wrong: a C-section. Or as I had been told, the “easy” way out.
Read CityMom Kira’s story: My daughter’s birth was super traumatic and it’s not fair.
Nursing was my last chance for something to go right. All the research online, at the library, and even in the messaging from the hospital told me nursing was the way to do it. It would be hard, but it was the right - and good - way to care for your baby. I knew that a nursing mother should not introduce bottles or pacifiers unless she wanted to risk confusing her baby and their entire nursing relationship.
And yet, there was my new, precious child full of formula and sucking on a paci within the first minutes of his life.
After everything went wrong, to nurse was to prove that I was mom enough— woman enough— to have a child. And so, I moved forward with gusto. A nursing relationship developed thanks to the help of a lactation consultant and my stubborn ego. I dove head first into more blogs and more books. There were methods and so much energy spent focused on sleep, making our own baby food, reducing chemicals in our home, and more all while maintaining a corporate job. Add a second, nursing baby 18 months later and it’s no surprise to anyone that another 18 months after that, I was burnt out.
RELATED READING: What is a milk bank?
Perplexed with how everyone else seemed to be managing “it all” and still in the quest to do things right, I turned once more to researching for answers. This time, I found them in Eve Rodsky’s New York Times Best Selling novel, “Fair Play.” It is written as a guide to help solve the complexities that almost every couple is responsible for in maintaining a home, family, work, and harmonious life together and as individuals.
With a critical eye and a few years removed from reading it, I can see areas of the book and its concepts that could use improvement. One thing that has stuck with me is that so much labor is really valuable work in a home, relationship, and raising children, is not just the labor that brings in dollars.
But, what if it did?
As the formula shortage made headlines in recent months, infographics from countless motherhood platforms shared the true costs of breastfeeding to combat the idea that breastfeeding was the easy solution. “It’s good and natural.” “Breast is best!” “And, not to mention free,” the internet would chatter with other sides clapping back that the true costs are equivalent to that of a full-time salary: $38,194.00 based on a report from “Undefining Motherhood.” There they argued that to not give breastfeeding a monetary value is to not assign value to a mother’s time. And so the thought pervaded, to dub breastfeeding as “easy” was wrong.
Then, because it is the internet and “mommy wars” are so ingrained in its participants, women who bottle-fed their babies and those who used formula got in on the chatter, too. Feeding their babies was time-consuming - and perhaps even more so than nursing. Wasn’t their time worth dollars, too? And, how about the mental costs of being unable to nurse due to physical challenges in a mother or baby? To paint bottle feeding as the “easy way” was wrong.
Brave new motherhood: Why celebrate National Breastfeeding Month?
With more wisdom from my own experience and that of my peers, and less noise from the books and blogs, I have begun to realize that perhaps none of it is easy. All of it is hard. All of the work of motherhood is valuable work - even the stuff that isn’t seen. Maybe both the unmedicated, natural birth and the c-section are good and right. Nursing and formula. Bottles and boobs. All of it is good, hard, important work.
