formula baby

My baby drank formula yesterday. I knew this was coming for awhile, and I should be glad that I put it off for as long as I did. But, still, I feel guilty.

I’ve been nursing her for the past ten months. When she got teeth in December, she started biting me, which affected the quantities of available milk. Because really, who wants to keep letting your baby eat when she keeps biting you? But regardless of the pain, I stayed with it.

After the first of the year, my supply started to come back, even though it was nowhere near what it was with my first child. I must have been engorged the whole time with her, since we froze tons and tons of milk. We froze so much, we had to take some over to my in-law’s deep freezer. Months after she had turned one and could drink cow’s milk, they found a gallon bag full of milk cubes beneath some frozen taquitos. We had to just throw it all away.

So we have been able to make it through the past two months using the frozen cubes. But now the cubes are gone. Now the baby will have to drink formula. I’m much more okay with this in March than I was in December. Back then, I cried half the night at the thought of not being able to fulfill my motherly duty of feeding my baby. I wasn’t ready to give up this one thing that only I could do for her. I was always one of those people who was never going to give my children formula. But my body had other plans. My mom told me that nursing was only one part of being a mother, and how kids don’t even remember it. It took awhile for this to sink in, but it finally has.

Now I will continue to pump, as usual, which should give the baby milk about half the time when I’m at work. Formula will have to fill in the other days. She seemed fine after her first formula day. But then again, she has bitten me every single time I’ve nursed her since. Maybe that’s her way of protesting.