Breastfeeding: The Inconvenient Truth

con·ven·ient (kən-vēn'yənt) Pronunciation Key
adj.

1. Suited or favorable to one's comfort, purpose, or needs: a convenient time to receive guests; a convenient excuse for not going.
2. 1. Easy to reach; accessible: a bank with branches at six convenient locations.
   2. Close at hand; near: an apartment that is convenient to shopping and transportation.
3. Obsolete Fitting and proper; suitable.

Don't get me wrong: there's definitely advantages to breastfeeding, good, scientific reasons to do so. For one thing, this is the way nature intended us to be fed for the first few months of our lives. For another, it's free. But those who want to get young first-time mothers to believe that breastfeeding is more convenient than bottle feeding obviously either never breastfed or never went anywhere. Case in point; it takes two or three pages of instructions on breastfeeding away from home for Dr. Sears to make his point on the convenience of breastfeeding away from home. Anything that takes that much work cannot possibly be "convenient," or this is a completely different definition of "convenience" that I have not previously heard of.

There will now be a chorus of mothers who have breastfed their children until they went off to college who will now berate me. They will tell me perhaps that I need to relax, go with the flow, slow down, enjoy the time I spend with my bundle of joy, et cetera, et cetera. They themselves have breastfed everywhere; while shopping, while dining, while walking down a busy street. I suspect though, that none of them ever tried to breastfeed their infant while playing catcher in a softball game. Clearly you can't just duck in for a quick snack between innings, so you have two choices; let your infant scream her head off during the entire game, or, have someone else give her a bottle while you play.

Enter the breast pump.

The breast pump must be purchased or rented and therefore makes your breastfeeding experience somewhat less than free. Plus there is the indignity of being milked like a cow. Pumping takes some practice. The standard instructions: "relax, and think about your baby" do not work for someone who's corniness detector is still intact, so you have to come up with something else to get the juices flowing (for me: waterfalls full of jumping salmon.) Then there is the timing: exactly when do you try to milk yourself during the five minutes of down time you might get between feedings (every two hours?) But you do it because you know that there will come a time when your infant will not be with you and will be hungry. Or your infant will be with you and, since actually feeding at the breast is not all that convenient while in public, you'll feel the need to give her a bottle instead.

Except now you've missed a feeding, and you can tell. Not because you're feeling guilty about depriving your infant or missing the closeness of the experience, but because now you are bursting at the seams. You have gone from breastfeeding mother to porn star in two hours. And you're leaking. It's all you can do not to rip off your shirt, grab your now well-fed, sleeping infant and force feed her then and there to relieve the pressure. This is a sight I hope none of you ever have to see. It's not pretty.

Despite my annoyance at this inconvenient feeding method, we're still gamely breastfeeding. It doesn't help that Sydney has a definite preference for one breast over the other (the left), that she talks while she eats (mmmyummmrrrrrmmmmyum) and that, when we do try to feed in a public place, she is somewhat less than cooperative, repeatedly popping off and yowling at me for some unknown reason. But I'm hoping to last a while yet. Solely because it's good for her and for me and no other reason, we're doing it the old fashioned way.

For now.