“So, are you breastfeeding?”

When I was a new mom, I got asked that a lot. It’s the kind of question — along with How much weight did you gain during your pregnancy? and Are your nipples chapped? — that even complete strangers feel is well within their rights to ask if you’re toting around a baby. And given everything we know about the health benefits of breastfeeding — the higher IQs, the lower risk for infections, allergies, and a host of other problems including obesity and diabetes — the expectation was that I’d say Yes. Because of course I’d be foolish . . . make that down-right selfish, to deny my baby the precious elixir of breast milk.

Funny, though, how some things are so much more black and white before you actually have the baby. Before I gave birth, I was firmly, completely (some in my family might say ridiculously) on the breastfeeding bandwagon. Formula? For my baby? Never!

“You and your sister were formula-fed, and you turned out fine,” my mother would remind me whenever I’d start going on about my plans to breastfeed till my son was at least . . . well, I figured I’d wean him sometime before preschool.

“The World Health Organization recommends a year of breastfeeding,” I’d respond. “And two years is preferable.”

“By all means try,” she’d say. “But if you can’t do it, that’s fine too.”

If I couldn’t do it? That thought never crossed my mind. What was to do? It wasn’t calculus (or balancing my checkbook for that matter). Wasn’t this what breasts were designed for — I mean apart from attracting the fathers of our children in the first place? And really how hard could it be if at one point the survival of our species hinged on cave moms doing it? Besides, with all that expectant moms are told about how much better off physically, emotionally and mentally breastfed children are compared to formula-fed kids, not doing it seemed akin to handing the little tyke a book of matches and telling him to go play in traffic.

So I was surprised when a friend who was due a few weeks after me mentioned she was stocking up on formula. She’d given up breastfeeding her first child after a month, she told me over decafs. With her second, she wasn’t even going to bother. “That stuff’s expensive,” she griped, digging into her fat-free pound cake.

“Breastfeeding’s free,” I tried wooing her back. “You burn 500 calories a day.” Feeling like I was dangling bait, I ticked off a few more mom benefits I’d heard about — a lower risk for diabetes, some cancers and fractures, not to mention the emotional connection with the newest member of your family. And then the kicker: “And you know, it’s just so much better for the baby.”

“I wasn’t into it,” she shrugged, and moved on to debating the relative merits of Bugaboos versus Peg Peregos. The subject was closed. But as far as I was concerned, she might as well have been talking about whether it was better to let the baby play with electrical outlets or razor wire. I thought about giving her the freebie can of formula that had shown up in my mailbox. After all, I wasn’t going to need it. Sipping my venti decaf, I felt . . . yes . . . superior. Women who claimed they couldn’t breastfeed, I thought smugly, just weren’t trying hard enough. Or they were looking for an excuse not to. Meanwhile, I’d taken the breastfeeding class. I’d read the breastfeeding books. I knew all the benefits my darling boy would reap. I was prepared — no, make that determined — to breastfeed my baby for at least a full year.

Until . . . I couldn’t do it.

Things had started out so well. My newborn son, Fletcher, latched on within hours of making his debut. There was no hassle, no pain. When the lactation consultant dropped by to check on us, I proudly showed off how we’d gotten the hang of nursing so quickly. I hadn’t felt so triumphant since I’d been accepted early decision to college.

In the hospital and when we got home, I nursed constantly. But after a few days, I realized something wasn’t quite right. During baby care class it had been drilled into us that we were to see about six wet and three to four soiled diapers daily. I tracked Fletcher’s output more vigilantly than the ups and downs of our stock portfolio. With all that was supposedly going in, there should have been more diapers to deal with. A lot more.

Panicked, I went to the pediatrician. “Maybe your milk just hasn’t come in yet,” was her take on the situation. “But you might have to supplement with formula,” she warned. “You know, some women just don’t make enough milk.”

Not enough milk?

Now that ran contrary to every thing I’d read or heard in breastfeeding class. Our teacher had assured us that every woman produced enough milk to feed her child, and if we ran into problems, well, it was just a matter of trying hard enough to get past them. Whatever might be going on, I was pretty sure I could overcome it.

Later that day, I was relieved to see that while I was napping my breasts had grown to the size of a Vegas stripper’s. My milk had finally come in. Okay, now we were on the right track. But a day or so later at Fletcher’s next well-baby visit, the pediatrician had gone from mildly concerned to mildly alarmed. “He’s lost 12 ounces,” she said. Now I was alarmed. Losing eight ounces or so after birth wasn’t unusual. But 12 ounces was way too much.

We raced to see the lactation consultant, who promptly diagnosed a weak suck reflex for Fletcher and poor production on my part. A double whammy. “You’re going to have to give him formula,” the consultant said, popping a nipple on a premixed bottle. When the lactation consultant breaks out the formula, you know you’re out of other options. And as Fletcher gulped it down like a ravenous man at an all-you-can-eat buffet, my heart broke for my hungry baby.
Driving home, my diaper bag filled with formula, I burst into tears. “He . . . was. . . . hungry!” I sobbed to my husband, Stewart. In my zeal to feed him the perfect baby food, I’d practically starved him.

Still, I held onto the slim hope that Fletcher would get some breast milk. The consultant had sent me home with a high-tech, hospital-grade breast pump and instructions for taking two herbs — fenugreek and milk thistle — that she said might, if I was diligent, restart my milk production.

So I redoubled my efforts. The thought was that if I pumped as often as I fed the baby, my milk would come back. So I took my herbs, hooked myself up like a Guernsey cow to the electric pump and willed my milk production to increase. The day I got two full ounces out of my breasts, I did the happy dance. At last, I thought. It’s working!

But, unfortunately, ‘twas not to be. No matter how long I pumped, those two ounces were the most I ever got. And the teaspoon or so my efforts were usually rewarded with was just … depressing. A constant reminder that I wasn’t up to the most important responsibility a mother has to her child — giving him the best food possible.

But though I felt like I was spinning my wheels, I still vacillated about stopping. The thought lingered: Maybe if I just keep trying! But finally, even I had to admit that it was like squeezing blood from the proverbial stone. And with so much else to do with a newborn, it hardly seemed worth the time. And I confess, I was so bone-tired, I couldn’t face getting up at night to pump every time Fletcher ate, especially when it was far easier for Stewart to make up a bottle and feed him while I slumbered. So, gradually, lured by the promise of full bottles in the fridge and the security of knowing exactly how much Fletcher was eating, I succumbed to formula’s seductive ease.

For a while I felt guilty about stopping. Especially when I’d been so arrogantly gung-ho. And because I often found myself giving long-winded explanations — to total strangers in the supermarket checkout line who inquired — about why I couldn’t breastfeed. Assuring them that I had tried my hardest. Honest.

But as I watched Fletcher regain and then surpass his birth weight on formula, my guilt and disappointment eventually gave way to relief that at last he was getting enough to eat and as far as I could tell, was thriving. And I was thankful that I hadn’t given away that freebie can of formula. After all, that stuff’s expensive.

This essay originally appeared in American Baby (October 2007).