Jealous of a piece of plastic, a new low.
I pumped (what a weird experience, by the way) a couple of onces of milk this week and my husband attempted to feed our baby from the bottle for the first time. Instead of encouraging this process, I was quietly upset about being replaced. Feeding was our thing, something mommy and baby shared with no one else. Weaning off the breast also heralded the approach of my return to work. I know this is a necessary step so that baby can be nourished when I'm away, but I'm having a hard time accepting it.
My son, Philippe, took to the plastic nipple for a brief moment and then balked at it. -This means of course that mommy is superior! *Hmph*
(Someone, anyone, please help me deal. . .)
4 comments:
I always formula-fed my kids, so I wish I had something more helpful to say! But, I think your return to work adds to the difficulty of this process of "letting go" a little...even if it is to a piece of plastic!
I felt the same way when I was weaning my kids. Looking back, wacked out hormones and sleep deprivation contributed a lot to the guilt factor. I got over it quickly when I realized how nice it was to be more free. It was nice to take a week vacation when #2 was only six weeks old. I slept most of the time and came home able to cope with his reflux/fussiness. I would say try and get away, even just to wander around Target, and remember it's the snuggling and holding and eye contact that (I think) are a huge part of the mommy bond.
This isn't going to make you feel any better, but its our experience: We occasionally bottle fed our son when my wife was still at home (if he was spending time with his grandparents, or if my wife wanted to have a glass of wine, or whatever). But after my wife went back to work, our son started getting most of his meals from a bottle, while being fed from the breast at night and on the weekends. After a couple of months he started to refuse the breast and would only eat from a bottle. During a standard visit we asked a pediatrician about what we could do, and he said something like, "Eating from the bottle is easier, some babies just figure that out early. There's not really anything you can do." That rejection was hard for her.
Thanks everyone, I'm getting a little better at accepting the bottle. So is my boy, for that matter.
@ Trent, Tim crawled into bed at 2AM and declared: "I tried The Trent Method and it worked." That is what he calls your technique to let the 'junk air out' during a diaper change to avoid an unexpected shower.
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