I fed you your first bottle of formula this week. You chugged it right down with no problems and didn't seem to mind one bit. I, however, had a little harder of a time with it. Which surprised me. It was my idea. I wanted to do it. And I was totally fine until I poured powder into water. POWDER. I don't even feed myself things that come in powder form, how could I do this to my baby?? What is in this stuff? How can this be nutritious? Worst mom ever???
I don't know what it is about feeding you, but even before you were born I only had dreams about feeding you. Usually in my dreams I would forget or not know how and I would wake up nervous that I wouldn't be able to tell if you were hungry or not (HAHA! silly meg. )
Then you got here and feeding you was the most natural thing I could do. It was seemingly so simple and we seemed to have it all worked out. Well we didn't, and within a week I realized breast feeding wasn't going to be an option for us. I started pumping- determined to feed you breast milk for as long as I could.
And just like breastfeeding, it was going fine until it wasn't. All of a sudden my right side completely stopped producing any milk and my left side decreased by at least half. I was drying up and you were growing up. You needed more food just as I was making less of it. Luckily I was able to freeze quite a bit at first and I have been able to keep you powder-free despite my inability to make enough milk.
(side note. Even though it seemed like I dried up overnight, I tried for several weeks to get my supply back. I added pumping seasions, ate tons of oatmeal, drank water, took fenugreek 3x a day, pretty much anything you google asking "how to increase your supply" I tired)
Finally at your doctor's visit this week I asked about formula since it seemed like an inevitable step. He told me to start introducing it to you now with just one or two feedings a day so you can get use to it.
Which brings me back to the powder. As I sit here pumping for the 83745th time and getting less than half of what you eat in one sitting, I know formula is going to have to happen. I know formula is great for babies and honestly, I don't have the energy or mental capacity to stress about something that is out of my control. You are happy and beautiful and healthy and eat like a hungry hippo. So I will feed you formula, and the world will keep turning and I won't have any mommy guilt (at least not about this)
I love you squish.
Xoxo
Mom
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