Breastfeeding fucking sucked for me. I would rather have my fingernails pulled out one-by-one. It made me feel like a scabby cow.
And ya know, after 9 months, some women are just ready to have their bodies back to themselves. Great if you don’t mind a baby hanging from your teat, but enough is enough for some of us.
WARNING INDYGRRL! Prepare for attack from the breastfeeding nazis! How did you baby ever survive??!!?? 
nyctea,
I did the same - pumped for about four months while working.
It wasn’t easy for me. I pumped for longer each day than some of my more “productive” girlfriends. My day was: get up at 5:30, nurse my daughter. Get to work by 6:45, pump 'til shortly after 7:00am. Pump for 20 minutes during a 10:00 break. Pump for 20 minutes over lunch. Pump at 3:00. Leave work at 4:00, Pump when I got home, pick up daughter from daycare at 5:00 and nurse. Nurse again at 9:00, nurse once or twice during the night.
One of my coworkers managed to keep it up for a year plus.
It can be done…and it is pretty commonly done for working women for at least a few months. But it varies in ease. And having to pump in a bathroom doesn’t help, nor does living in a state where they don’t need to provide breaks or a place to pump and having a boss who doesn’t allow it.
Now, I couldn’t keep up supply with just the pump - within days of my daughter stopping nursing, I couldn’t pump. But for a lot of women, when they nurse and work, the baby does most of its eating in the evening and often at night.
I’ve heard tales of nipple confusion, but we didn’t have it, nor have any of my girlfriends who have breastfed been restricted to just the breast. Even the most militant has given bottles of pumped milk to grandma so they could go out for the night.
Yes. I nurse when I wake her up in the morning, pump three times during the work day (it works out to every three hours), and pump once at night. I was also nursing when I returned home from work and at her bedtime, but we use bottles of breastmilk for that now (my supply is at its lowest when I get home and she gets frustrated. At bedtime we read to her and she can see better with a bottle). Now she’s just started to eat rice cereal and sweet potatos, so we do that instead of her 6pm bottle/feeding.
I have been really, really, lucky but I can’t say that everything has worked out well. When she was first born in February, I couldn’t breastfeed. I remember being in the hospital and crying in pain and frustration because I Just Couldn’t Do It. The nurses weren’t very much help and we couldn’t seem to get the lactation consultant in (until we were leaving three days later). It was a very tough time. We finally had to go to formula because I couldn’t even pump and we knew how important the colustrum was. So we went to formula. When my milk came in I discovered that I could pump - so I did. It wasn’t until she was almost two weeks old that I found out I had a yeast infection in my nipples -and that’s why it was so bad. Because she was used to the bottle we had lots of latch-on problems when I did start breastfeeding her again (at 3 weeks). Plus, she likes her pacifier, too (a big no-no according to the BreastFeeding Nazis). Then 3 weeks later, I got the yeast again…
So it’s been a real struggle. I’m frankly quite amazed that I’ve hung with it for so long (she’ll be six months next week) because I still don’t like it much. I don’t like being tied to a schedule, I don’t like feeling (as indygrrl so elegantly put it!) like a scabby cow, I don’t like that it still feels uncomfortable (can’t do it in public at all - I need my boppy and I need to sit a certain way and arrange her just so) and I finally had to throw my copy of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding into the attic because it pissed me off so much (as others have mentioned, the LLL makes you feel like it’s all supposed to be SO easy and SO fulfilling and keep that bottle and that pacifier away or you’re a failure). I don’t like that if I get off my pumping/feeding schedule a bit - then my supply goes down and it takes a day or two to get it back up again. Frankly, it’s all a huge hassle. I think of the whole thing as a 12-step sort of process. Just one day at a time. I can stop and go to formula at any time and It’s OK - but just go one more day, one more day. At first I just was going to try and make it to three months. Then just to six months. Now I don’t know how long - though the thought of going to the full AAP-recommended year makes me wither inside. I suppose it’s going to get easier as she starts eating more. I’ve already decided to stop the evening pumping. If it means a bottle of formula every couple of days, then so be it.
I did have some trouble with her wanting a bottle instead of me (I think nipple confusion is more a case of laziness -it IS easier for a baby to get it from a bottle than from the breast), but I was able to deal with that by making sure she only had slow-flow nipples and that I used nipples that were shaped kind of like me. For me- that made all the difference.
I really wasn’t trying to imply with my previous post that because I do it - everyone can do it. I do know that I’m lucky to work in a place that has conference rooms I can use and that provides two breaks and a lunch for a full day. My only point was that working full-time didn’t automatically mean you couldn’t do it. I will say, too, that it’s only recently (very recently) that I’ve started to realize that as much as I dislike all this, I will be sad when she stops. She’s gained weight very well and there’s a sense of pride when I look at her and think “she’s thriving just on what I make for her” and in the early morning when I’m full, latch on is easier and she’s so happy hile she breastfeeds and I can’t help thinking about the fact that I’m doing something for her that nobody else can do. And I’m very proud that I’ve stuck with it, when I remember how terrible it was for me at first.
OK, I’ll shut up now. Can you tell that breastfeeding is a Conflicted Issue for me? 