This post was phenomenal. You write about breastfeeding with honesty, compassion and power.
As a doula, I witness many moms journey through this terrain and there is often a great deal of black and white thinking and guilt and shame and doubt. I will be bookmarking this post and sending clients your way to read such a beautiful rendering of one woman's experience and your ability to hold both sides of things.
Much thanks.

Ben is such a beautiful little big boy! :)

What a great picture of you two! So Joyful. Wow! I think back to the photo of you as a young teen cheerleader and flash forward to you today as a loving mother with Ben. Your story has had a very lovely outcome!

Glad you've found a path that works for you! I too was horrified at the idea of not being able to breastfeed. Even though we struggled for months (another one w/ latch issues along with some rowdy dairy and soy allergies, but a dear friend told me to eliminate those foods because I so badly wanted to avoid formula), I still feel that the struggle was more than worth it to continue breastfeeding. I still don't think I could have forgiven myself for formula feeding (though of course I don't hold everyone else to this standard, YKWIM?).

Why don't we have milk banks here so we can feed our babies donor breastmilk? Some countries make that a priority (donor milk) - wish our country and culture did the same. Then I think it wouldn't be such a dilemma, wracked w/ guilt, to be faced with the idea of supplementation because then there would no longer be the issue of breastmilk vs formula because it would all just be breastmilk.

Anyway... Ben is beautiful, as are his parents. I'm glad you're all feeling more peaceful now!

I can't say enough how much I LOVE this blog! Been reading for a while and it's both a joy and a comfort. Something that really stuck out about this entry: when you talked about the opportunity to take another path. I've been feeling like that in my choice on whether to stay in New York or to move back to my hometown. I've been worried about making the "right" decision when (like you wrote) the truth is each choice will have it's own joys and challenges. That takes some of the pressure off! So, as always, thanks for sharing!

And Happy 9 months to Ben! He's the cutest!

Happy 9 months sweet Ben!! :)

You are one lucky little guy to have such a great Mom who spreads so much of her positive vibe thru this blog.

To many more months....years....decades...filled with love!!!!!!!!!

xoxo glo :)

My baby is 14 months and to me there was no option but to breast feed that is what I told myself in order to get through the many tears...you are not the only mom who cried or had a hingry baby. I was that mom too. You are just a much better writer then me! :)

oh....::: wiping away a little tear ::: that was beautiful. i wrote a little note to my son as well on my blog (actually a digital page i made for him a while back that is on my blog). ok thought it was time to introduce myself and come out of the 'lurking zone' to say hello! i have been a big fan of your jewelry and you, since my first SARK book "experience", way back in the early 90's.

so great to get to know one another thru this land of blogging huh? well, i have been tagged and am off tagging all my favorite bloggers, and thought it would be nice to tag you...(sorry) ::giggle::.

if you feel like joining in the fun, see my blog for the sorted tagging details. take care and have a blessed day!

Happy 9 mom and baby ben!!!! I am always amazed at how we as mother's often parallel each other in our trials, tribulations and celebrations! I applaud your honest words about breast feeding and what you "got" out of that whole experience...Motherhood teaches us so much, and empowers us at times to learn how to truly "live" and let go...I have learned so much from it and continue to do so...sometimes pulling out half a head of hair and other times just releasing myself into the "swirlling" rollercoaster ride of it all....

Thank you for reminding me how much motherhood has taught and empowered me...I continue to peek in at your blogs not only because of the cuteness of Ben...but I feel connected in motherhood to you and all women who travel this path..

xxo Kathleen

BEN Ben Ben!
Happy 9 months big guy! Hurrah for you and your Mama - who has provided strength and wisdom to all of us other new Mama's.
We think you may want to come see what we got up to today- all in the name of a smile.
love from London,
claire and Isla

Simply precious.

Hi Andrea,

Thank you so much for sharing this. I keep coming back to your site and finding that I can relate to so many of your experiences, if not in the exact particulars, in the spirit of them. In the first two weeks of my son's life (he is now five months) I got mastitis that developed into an abscess because I waited so long to get antibiotics and then the infection was resistant to the first two types I used. Finally I had to get an incision, which although acutely painful, actually relieved all of my other symptoms. I had worried so much about taking care of my new baby properly that I had forgotten to take care of myself and that led to far more difficulty for both of us. As a mother I keep coming up against my desire to do everything "the right" way and lose sight of the many possibilities that could work. A friend sent me a link to this article in Mothering about "good-enough parenting" and so I pass it to you, in case you have not seen it. Thanks again for writing!

http://www.mothering.com/articles/body_soul/inspiration/good-enough-parent.html

You know I viist you more often than I say hi - which is not so polite! I loved this post - the celebration of nine months and your happy Ben. But I was also totally blown away by your insightful, gentle, honest take on breast feeding. Eight years ago my sister had her first child. We were both relatively young and close. I got a close up look at how incredibly hard breast feeding can be. In the end my sister decided, at six weeks, to switch to the bottle and my fabulous nephew finally learned to feed, sleep etc. I still notice how much judgement there is around women who don't breastfeed after those months with my sister. Your post is maybe the nicest thing I've ever read on the topic.

You know, when I come here, I spend so much time just nodding. Eric is a couple of months older than Ben, and it's eerie how similar the experiences are. Eric was a wee one (15th percentile) until we switched him to formula at 6 months. And now, MONSTER BABY. And much happier too, I think.

Your post on travelling really hit home too. It's so nice to know that I'm not alone in these thoughts. Thank you so much for saying all the things that I struggle with saying.

I'm proud of you just like I am proud of myself for working through the same breastfeeding ordeal 4 years ago. Only it took me 3 months to fully heal from the bad-latching injuries I sustained. I went on to nurse #1 for 17 months and #2 for 15 months - and the second time around came with NO bf problems - so you, too, may have it easier the second time if you have another! I felt just like you, I HAD to do it. I'm still glad I did but I wish I had been easier on myself. Oh, my first was tiny (but very long) too - still is - likely no reflection on your quantity of milk. Sometimes they are the way they are meant to be right from the very start. Thanks for another beautiful post; it was like reading a piece of my past.

Thank you so much for writing this! I wish I could have known about the "two paths" when I was struggling at the beginning as well.

You know, I love that we are in the same stage of our lives. I love coming here and reading about you and your family. My son cried the entire first two months...why, because he had a milk and soy protein allergy, and while i was trying to breastfeed him I had no idea. Everything I gave him was so incredibly painful for him. We finally gave in and switched not just to a formula but to an expensive hypoallergenic formula. It was like a light switch...after a week with the new stuff and the combination of prevacid because zantac wasnt working, we now had a happy baby. which meant we now had a happy family. no more spit up out the nose and projectile vomiting...no more squirming and crying all the time. It was amazing. My husband and I felt like we were the worst parents in the world and that we had the most unhappy baby in the world. I knew parenting would be hard, but I don't think I realized how hard on the heart it would be. To love someone so much it scares you. ok, I know this is your blog, lol...but I wanted to write you and say its a help to hear other parents who go through similar situations. and to say...the path of least resistance totally resonated with me...thank you

Does he have any clothes that aren't cute? I doubt it! Ben has to be the best dressed baby on the internet. I love all these pictures!

And good for Ben for taking a bottle. By my third child I was ready to stop nursing on the early side -- of course she was the one who NEVER took a bottle or pacifier. I was her human pacifier for three years! Funny thing, now that she's six, she's way more independent than my boys ever were -- one who was a bottle baby from birth and one who weaned himself from the breast at two-and-a-half. Go figure! I love all these babies with their individual personalities! And I love reading your sweet love letters to Ben.

Seeing Ben's smile is indeed a whole day's worth of happy. Thanks, Andrea, for sharing him and all your adventures together. *You* totally rock!

i still think it's so magical seeing you both!!!

Sweet sweet letter.

And thank you for talking about the two good paths of feeding. I felt like the black sheep of the modern mothering world when we gave up breastfeeding (both times). I'm not sure where the blame lies. Bad latch, sticky tongues, bad nipples, who knows! I do know I tried for far too long. But the self-inflicted torture was awful...my first bout with mother guilt.

I always take the time to compliment a friend/mother who bottle feeds. They need it.

Ben is looking adorable, as always!

I'm sure some of you ladies will probably have more babies. If you give breast feeding a go again and have latch challeges with your babe, you may want to check out a cranial sacral therapist along with the LC. They can sometimes work miracles...have a friend who said it was like night and day with the latch once the therapist made a few gentle adjustments. So often, there is so much emphasis put on the pregnancy and birth and just an assumption that breastfeeding and infant care in general will be easy or come naturally...I feel so sad when I see mommies suffering and thinking they are failures for having difficulty. You all did great by your kids, no matter your path. :)

I'm sure some of you ladies will probably have more babies. If you give breast feeding a go again and have latch challeges with your babe, you may want to check out a cranial sacral therapist along with the LC. They can sometimes work miracles...have a friend who said it was like night and day with the latch once the therapist made a few gentle adjustments. So often, there is so much emphasis put on the pregnancy and birth and just an assumption that breastfeeding and infant care in general will be easy or come naturally...I feel so sad when I see mommies suffering and thinking they are failures for having difficulty. You all did great by your kids, no matter your path. :)

dear happy ben,
thank you for hanging in there with your momma and working as a team to find what works best for both of you.

your momma sharing this story is going to touch so many other momma's that feel alone in this and need to hear that there is no perfect way. all ways can be good.

i miss you. i often think of that sacred time when i rocked you in that awesome slider and bottle fed you as you looked out on your momma and her girly friends. holding you put me at ease about my own journey to conceive. you are the first baby i have allowed myself to hold in the last three years. so in a sense, i am thankful you were balancing milk with a bottle so that i could get some ben lovin in too!! ; )

i needed practice for when your future wife is born, that is assuming i'll get pregnant with a girl soon. oh...did i mention we'll be arranging a marriage?

hee hee. kidding.

love you and your beautiful momma.
xoxo

ps. you are beaming. so good to see.

I love this one. It's fun that you're talking to him more like a small but grown-up person this month. I love the high-five, and also the assertion that he rocks (which it's clear, from his pictures, he totally does).

ben,

could you please, please come visit me when you visit your auntie denise in san diego? because i want to squeeze your little cheeks so badly! you are a dream.

you are so lucky to have such a beautiful mama,
no wonder you are so happy.

with love
mccabe x

You are so wonderful. And that photo is a whole day full of happy for me.

xoxoxo

double comment because i thought the first didn't make it...whoops. :)

thanks for the read, it is so good to know we all have our challenges and how we face them and respond shapes our days. you are a wonderful mama and generous writer and i love seeing ben and you looking so happy. 9 months, i having been reading since he was born, found you via mighty girl, i cannot believe it was that long ago that i clicked on her link. so very glad i did. smiles.

what a wonderful read, even if it bored ben. i too had to let go of breastfeeding, mainly because of the twin thing. it was hard, they were doing okay but i had to pump 5 oz a breast each feed because they would not nurse of the boobie...that made me feel like a class a failure. well, once we switched over to formula they have grown like weeds and i cannot believe they were ever as tiny as they once were. you are such a generous woman, both to us your readers and to your little one. it is great that happy baby syndrome has invaded your house....he looks just beautiful.

I often have to remind myself that "there is no such thing as perfect"... thanks for the reminder!

as alway, andrea.
grateful for you...the sweetest superhero i know ;-)
blessings to you, matt and ben!
love always,
kirsten
xoxox

Love your letters to your loved. :)
And I have always loved the idea of the path of least resistance. My yoga teacher always asks: What can you soften? And now that chimes in my head all the time as I try to make each day as good as it can be. I wrote a post about it here:

http://penelopeillustration.com/blog/?p=1690

Hugs to you and Ben!

xo

Now that I'm five months into being a momma myself, it really amazes me how many of us seem to have this same impossibly difficult breastfeeding experience -- especially since I had never questioned breastfeeding before my baby was born. Your description of your early weeks with Ben sounds exactly like my early weeks with my daughter -- the screaming, the constant nursing, the whole thing. I had plenty of milk to begin with but had latch problems, and it turned out that my girl wasn't nursing efficiently at all and I was starting to lose my milk as a result. I didn't find out that this was the real problem until she was two months and still at birth weight, and they told me that I had to start supplementing with formula. I felt terrible when we gave her that first bottle of formula. I was so determined to breastfeed that not doing so felt like failure to me. At four months we were able to reinstitute the occasional nursing, although she still gets some formula because my supply never fully recovered. But the thing I had to keep reminding myself is that the primary goal was not breastfeeding, the primary goal was for a happy and healthy baby, and boy did she cheer up as soon as she was well fed. Breastfeeding is a great and wonderful thing when it works, and it's worth some extra effort, but we as moms should cut ourselves a little slack when it doesn't. It shouldn't become an oppressive burden.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your experiences with us -- and allowing us to share ours with you.

You are both so beautiful I can't even believe it! Thanks for the sweet post. It's so nice to be able to read women's real experiences. I want to be a mom and I'm so glad there is this online network of support and information.

Thank you so much for this post. My daughter (who was born only a few days after Ben) and I went through the exact same struggle--no milk, terrible latch, so many tears--and I chose the other path. I gave up nursing after just a few weeks. And I know it was a good choice for us because once I let go of that huge sense of failure I could be a better mother and be more present for my daughter, but I felt so terribly guilty, like formula was bad for her, and even now at 9 months I think of it as "quitting." Even though she is healthy and happy and in some ways the choice saved me, when she was colicky and I could hand her to her dad and say, "Please let me sleep for five hours." So it's just very comforting to hear someone say "either path would have been good."

this post is a little ray of sunshine all in itself...

look at those bottom teeth! (*swoon*)

How truly lovely.
Kiss the little Prince for me.
Love Jeanne