a hard look in the mirror

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

It's all I can do not to scream some days. At myself, not anyone else. You'd think 2.5 months later, equaling out to about 600+ bottles, I'd be used to it by now. But I'm not. I've got the hang for being a mom, learning to tell the difference between my son's cries, and keeping him on a healthy growing track of the 95th percentile. I can handle juggling my job, my husband's job, and family time ((the little that we do get)). I am doing great at keeping everyday life interesting for my three month old, making sure he's meeting his milestones, and getting out of the apartment at least once a day for fresh air. With all of this, feeling like I have sacrificed my entire life, my art and photography, and my marriage, I'd still do it all the same. I absolutely love everything I have given up for this little one. I only have one major regret. And it kills me everyday.

I hate hate hate more than anything  I have ever done in my life, that I gave up breast feeding my baby. The pregnancy and delivery were nothing I planned on them being. Being pumped with drugs and having my son come into this world in the most unnatural way possible was hard for me to deal with. However, I could care less about those things now.  I just wanted some part of the beginning of his life to be au natural. Breastfeeding was the only thing I could have probably controlled. But I gave up. He wouldn't latch. Pumping became a very painful and difficult task. It was an emotionally draining and mentally exhausting journey those few weeks I tried to keep supplementing. But then I just gave up. Now I am kicking myself every day.

I cry reading friend's posts and blogs about their sleepless nights because of feedings. I would give up sleep for that now. I also get emotional reading other mom's blogs about how they still breast feed their 18 month olds. Before, I would have thought this was absolutely insane. Once a child can walk up to you and say "I want mama milk" I would think that's when to pull the boob. However, now I want to be that woman. I don't care if people would look at me as that crazy mom. Given the chance, I'd do it. A few weeks ago I was in Babies-R-Us, in the little separate area for women to change and feed their babies. As I bottle fed my absolutely beautiful and content baby boy, a woman sat next to me with her daughter, who was nine months. She whipped out her boob and started feeding. And I started crying. In the middle of Babies-R-Us, next to a complete stranger, I stared down at my son and cried. In my head I was saying, "I'm so sorry. I love you so much and want to be the best mother to you. But selfishly I gave up feeding you like that because I couldn't deal. I could've just sucked up my own feelings and pain and kept pumping and kept trying to get you to latch. It's a bond now you and I will never have and I'm so sorry for that. I am so so sorry."

Now even though our pediatrician reassures up again and again that Vedder is growing amazingly in the 95th percentile, I cannot help but think my selfish decisions have hurt him. The doctor has told both me and my husband that our son is impeccably healthy. His verbal skills are even beyond his level and he's as "strong as an ox." But I keep thinking, What if I just tried harder and dealt with the pain? How much farther along would he be? I am not a person who has really ever lived her life asking "what if." I have always just done what I wanted, taking chances, blowing down barriers, because if I didn't try then, what if would rule my life. And now that is exactly what it is doing.

I have written this blog not for a need for sympathy or even apathy. I am just a new mom and this is the journey most of us are thrown onto - the crash course of parenthood that we are supposed to just figure out while holding a fragile life in our arms and not fumble. Making sacrifices is a daily norm for parents. My parents did it. Their parents did it. And so on. But what if I sacrificed the wrong thing, his health for my emotional sanity? This is just something that I struggle to forgive myself for. And probably will for a while, maybe forever..

"Like ten minutes. I'd just like him to appear."

-designer Rachel Zoe, on what her ideal delivery would be.

When I watched this episode of her reality show, I laughed hysterically! I would actually consider having another child soon if this is how delivery went. I'd consider even have five more!! Instead I'll take my still healing uterus and keep it dormant for another, lets say, three years. Then maybe I'll start to think about another one.

Another misconception that many people let me believe was that I could plan my delivery. November 12th, 2010 was the day we found out we'd be plus one nine months later. Both my husband and I cried staring at the five ((yes, five)) pregnancy tests lying on the counter. One of the best days of my life. From that day on, I planned exactly how I wanted to have the baby. I know I am not a very tolerant person when it comes to pain. I am one of those people who will cry for three days about a stubbed toe. So I knew I would have an epidural. Which was fine because I was determined for that to be the only drug to go in me when I was delivering. Even though I was not the happiest person throughout my pregnancy, I was so very excited about giving birth. I would day dream about being home, or at work, and starting to feel contractions. Then after my water would break, I would excitedly call my husband at work and say "ITS TIME!!" He would run down to his locker where my hospital bag had been so patiently waiting for this moment since May, and then head twelve blocks uptown to wait for me at the Labor and Delivery entrance at Mt Sinai Manhattan Hospital. We would hug and kiss and head inside where we would then go into a room and wait for the doctor to say "Its time to push." I would scream at the top of my lungs, swearing at my husband for the pain I was in. And then BAM! We would hear that little cry of life just emerged from inside me. My husband would kiss me and then go to cut the umbilical cord and then they would hand me my beautiful baby boy.

Well lets just say not one of those things happened. Instead for the last four weeks of OB appointments the doctor would say the same thing.. one centimeter dialated. The week before I was due I tried every natural way to induce pregnancy: hot sauce, accupressure, sex, herbal teas, everything!! Then July 23rd came and went. The next week I walked an average of 3 miles a day. ((I would like to remind the readers that this was also during that 100-113 degree heat wave here in NYC.)) Nothing was working. Our Little Lang was not budging. So came the last OB appointment where we had to set a date when I would be induced. At this point I knew my hopes and dreams of the "ITS TIME" phone call were shot. So the night of July 31st, we took the subway to 96th Street and walked two blocks uptown to the hospital. I was induced at 1 AM on August 1st. I had held off on the epidural due to the fact that I wanted to have control of something. I figured all the other drugs they had given me we're already ruining my "au-natural" plan, so I would take the pain. Well after my OB had to manually break my water ((I will spare the details of this horrific thing which still scar me and my husband to date)), she told me it was time for the epi. I asked her if there was any way I could do without it. She said no and sent the other doctors in to give me the comically large needle to the back. By 6 PM I had not dialated fully enough but Little Lang decided he was going to push thru anyways, causing him to get stuck and to go into stress. Another doctor came in and said they would be sending me to the OR and I would be having a C Section. There was no time for me to come to grips with the fact that I would not be seeing my son get born, that I wouldnt be able to push this life I had made out on my own, that my husband would be able to cut the cords and then hand me our beautiful baby boy. As they wheeled me out of the delivery room towards the OR, I looked at my husband and said "I'm going to be sick." The nurse handed me a bedpan and I proceeded to puke out all of the water and soup I had eaten in the last 18 hours.

I couldn't believe it. It was time. But not the time I had prepared for for the last nine months. Forty-five minutes after arriving in the OR, I heard that adorable little cry but couldnt see anything. The surgens cut the cord and handed him off to more doctors to clean and examine him. Then I heard words that would make me cry harder than those sleepless nights months before combined. "His glucose level is low. We need your husband to feed him some formula." What? Formula? NO! I had all of these hopes and dreams of putting him to my chest and finally feeling that bond that mothers always rave about. As I watched him feed our son a two ounce bottle of formula, I cried. Everything I had planned, everything I had daydreamed about. None of it happened. It was another 12 hours before I actually was able to try to breastfeed and when he didn't latch, my heart felt like a bullet had shot thru it.

Now with my son turning a month old tomorrow, I have officially given up breastfeeding. I tried to get him to latch, but it didnt work. I pumped for a while, bottle feeding him both breast milk and formula. Then when I had to take a few days off from pumping because of bleeding, my breast milk slowly depleated to nothing. I have cried over this so much. I dreamed of introducing my son into the world the most natural way possible and giving him life's nutrients all natural too. But dreams have been shattered. Even though his pediatrician has reassured me that he is completely healthy and will not go blind or grow a third arm due to formula feeding, I am still having a hard time coming to terms with it. It's something that makes me think, when he's crying and I dont know what's wrong, "maybe if we had that bond thru breastfeeding, I could figure out why he's so upset."

I guess this is one thing that is going to have to just settle with me overtime. However, no matter how he came into this world and what he eats, I am so thankful to have this big beautiful baby boy in my life.