Weaning Baby off

It's that time of year. Time when I have to start thinking about weaning Bojjandi off mother's milk and put him completely on formula and food. Time when I have to wean myself off from feeling the warmth of his plump little body as he nuzzles in for a meal. Time when I have to wean myself off the excuse to drop everything and just sit down quietly and concentrate on being with my baby. It's too soon, I feel, and wonder if I can prolong it.

For me, I haven't once resented having to sit up/ wake up and feed my baby at odd hours of late night or early morning, or in the middle of a party. Because I am so happy and - yes, proud – at being able to do it. I know, it's something millions of women all over the world are able to do, it takes little more than a healthy body and hormones, and that being able to do it or not is no reflection of my ability or caring as a mom. But here's the back story.

I always, but always took it for granted that this was something I would do with my babies, the most natural thing in the world for a mother to do. To feed her babies. You see it in Hindi movies all the time. Even in serials and sitcoms – a woman gives birth in a bizarre circumstance, e.g. a taxi, and about five minutes after the baby is born, baby is suckling away and mother is happily watching it. You see at every street crossing, poor beggar women sitting and nonchalantly nursing their babies till the age of two or three or more.

So after Chubbocks was born unexpectedly early (3 weeks), it hit me hard that I couldn't do it – that was something I wasn't prepared for. The first day after surgery, I was knocked out with the General anaesthetic. I could barely make out what the baby looked like when I came to briefly, and he was in the nursery that night as I slept off the worst hangover of my life! The next day they moved him into my room, and the nurse asked me to start feeding him. Mom was there to help, but it was an awkward business figuring out how to hold this teeny-tiny, fragile little thing and positioning him. Worse, he fell asleep a few seconds into the process. Then the nurse asked if I could express some milk so the baby could be fed later. I tried, manually, but all that emerged was about a teaspoon of rich, yellow stuff.

"Is that all?" Mom and the nurse exclaimed.

I thought to myself that I had always read that colostrum only came out in minute quantities, but obviously these were two experienced women, so clearly something was not working right. After that it was an endless cycle of trying to position baby and get him to latch on, him falling asleep at the breast and me struggling to express what looked like a reasonable quantity – which, I now know was much more than anyone could expect, but hey, no one told me how much milk I should expect so in hindsight I think I expected to produce about a bottle full at the get-go. Meanwhile, the hospital nurses passed comments about how sad my productivity was and continued feeding Chubbocks formula out of a bottle, since 'he shouldn't starve meanwhile'.

After we went home the situation didn't improve. Chubbocks kept falling asleep, I kept struggling, feeling more and more inadequate as a mother. How was it that I could fail at something so basic, so natural, something the poorest of women was able to do with ease? I looked up the internet, asked around, my mom soaked quantities of fenugreek seeds, I ate fennel seeds after each meal…It didn't help that Chubbocks was born a fairly light baby and lost weight in his first ten days. I panicked. It didn't help that my in-laws would ask A every single day when he called, as to whether Chubbocks had gained weight. It didn't help when, any time he cried when they had come over, even right after a feed, my mom-in-law would say, "He's hungry". It didn't help when my mom asked, out of concern, "Are you sure you're producing enough?"

What was enough anyway? How could I check what was happening? How come my baby, even on formula, was thin and gangly, and lizard-ey looking? I got A to buy me a pump. Naturally, it would turn out to be a mal-functioning one, and the first time I used it I was in agonizing pain and convinced my nipple was going to come off. It was only after 3-4 sessions that I realized that no one could have designed a product to hurt like this. Otherwise, in my irrational state of mind, it was almost a form of penance for me for failing at this. I went back to the store, fought with the manager and got it replaced. So now at least I knew there was some milk, but Chubbocks continued to fall asleep each time I tried to feed him. I'd sneak formula milk into him after I had had an unsuccessful feeding session, not wanting to admit that I had had a failed session again. I'd sterilize his bottles and pretend to mom that that was 'just in case'. I'd cry and agonize late into the night about why this was happening and what I could do about it, and I'm sure that stress didn't help my cause.

Eventually, after four months of struggle, I gave up and put him on formula. I decided it was better for his health that he should get a decent feed, rather than me and my ego struggling along. But the guilt didn't go away, and along with all the challenges of being a new mother, it became a deciding factor in how I reacted to everything, for a while. Each time he cried, be it for a wet diaper, or change of scene, I took it as a judgement on my poor parenting skills. It was almost like I had to make up for not being able to feed him by making him the happiest and (bizarrely) the non-cryingest baby in the world.

Thankfully, despite my idiocies, he didn't seem affected and has turned into a happy, intelligent, secure child. But the guilt factor stayed with me until I had Puddi and was able to feed her. Even in her case, after starting out extremely well with milk coming in a day after she was born, somehow the supply began to falter. I tried all sorts of remedies from herbs and vegetables to homoeopathy. Eventually I turned to Domperidone which is prescribed for this in the US though here no doctor seems to have heard of the solution, and would up being able to feed her, though with artificial aid, until she was 9 months old. In a way, having a third baby and being able to keep him purely on my milk for six months has finally vindicated that sense of guilt.

More than that, I feel the experience of breast-feeding my second and third children gave me the ability to bond with them at a visceral level, and much faster than with Chubbocks. It could also be because when Chubbocks was born, we were both new at our jobs – me as mother, he as baby. By the time Puddi came along, I had job experience and with Bojjandi, I'm a veteran. So I love and cherish that feeling of holding your baby so close, of being the one to unfailingly comfort him, of importance, perhaps, at being the only one who can nourish him. Once I wean him off, I'm going to have to earn my place!