Before anything, I want to make it clear that I respect, admire, promote, and understand all of the wonderful and excellent matters that exclusive breastfeeding brings for our children. However, there are women, like me, that we don't get to live the dream of exclusive breastfeeding, and on the contrary, it results in everything but a dream, this is what I want to talk about today.
To be completely honest, I always thought that exclusive breastfeeding was something intuitive, that it was going to be easy, and it wouldn't be necessary too know so in-depth about the subject to be able to do it, and that was my biggest mistake: THE MISINFORMATION. Unfortunately, women are the only mammals that have problems to breastfeed our children, throughout history, there have been many circumstances that have caused us to be the only mammal that can't lactate their breed.
My story, summarized, is that when my son was born I was clueless on what to do, I stuck him to my breast thinking he was being fed properly, and he wasn't. My baby was about to suffer dangerous hypoglycemia with the risk of convulsion because I didn't know how to attach him to my breast and during all that time that I thought I was feeding him, ate absolutely nothing. So you can imagine, a newborn that had been through 8 hours of consuming absolutely nothing... fortunately it didn't become serious but I had to recur to formula, because as I found out I wasn't breastfeeding him properly and an indescribable fear invaded me thinking it could happen again, and I wanted to "make sure" that with a bottle and formula milk this would NOT happen again. I wanted to have full control of the number of ounces my baby was eating.
Days went by and I also tried breastfeeding at times, but my baby got used to the bottle quickly and he rejected my breast, and one day, when he was only 2 months old my milk dried out completely, nothing came out of it, clearly it wasn't being stimulated, so my production stopped.
I know that many other moms must have gone or are going through a similar situation because almost always we fail as a lack of trust in each other and in our nature, and of course, there has to be the opinion of some "opinionated person" that ends up bringing down any try we have at lactating our child.
To those moms, I want to say that, from my experience formula milk is okay too, it doesn't make you a better or worst mom giving your baby formula milk, and I'm sure that in every bottle you've ever prepared your baby you've deposited all your love and delivery, the principal ingredient will always be love, the love you put in each and every one of the things you give your baby, every late night, every caress to make sure he's breathing.
I want to tell you that you are strong, you are the best mom your baby can have, and even though the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding are natural and innumerable, formula milk is not the end of the world, my son is 10 months now, he's thrived 90% since his birth with formula milk and his development has been excellent. He's a healthy, strong, and happy baby because as a mom I decided to put aside the finger-pointing and focus more on giving him the free demand ingredient most important there is, a mother's love.
And to those moms that are still waiting for the arrival of their babies, I want to tell you that you are capable, inform yourself and don't believe everything you're told, and trust your nature ♥️
Juliana Daza
I reiterate my respect and my position of exclusive breastfeeding, defending it always as the principal food for babies, I never want to lessen its importance or put formula milk on top of breastmilk 💜