The Pump, the Pain, and Letting Go of "Breast Is Best"

When direct feeding did not work for us, I decided I would pump instead. Exclusively. Every drop would be breast milk, because the posters and the WhatsApp forwards all said the same three words: breast is best. I treated those words like a commandment.

So I pumped. Every three hours, around the clock, including the dead of night. I washed and sterilised parts until my hands cracked. I measured ounces like they were grades on a report card. I cried over a spilled bottle the way you might cry over something genuinely tragic, because to my sleep-starved brain, it was.

My back ached from hunching over the pump. My nipples were sore in a way that direct feeding never even caused. Worst of all, I was missing my baby. I would hear him stir and feel resentment, then immediately drown in guilt for feeling it. I was producing milk for my son while barely getting to hold him.

One evening my husband found me crying with the pump still attached, an alarm set for the next session, the baby fussing in the cot beside me. He sat down and asked a question that cracked something open: "Who exactly are you doing this for?" I opened my mouth to say our son, and realised I was doing it for a slogan.

We switched to mostly formula with a little pumping when it felt easy, not when it felt like duty. The relief was physical, like setting down a bag I had not realised was crushing my shoulders. Suddenly I had two free hands. I used them to hold my baby, to stroke his hair, to actually look at his face during a feed instead of at a measuring line.

"Breast is best" is a slogan, not a verdict on your love. The research that phrase comes from never asked how it would feel at 3 a.m. with a pump and a sob and a baby you are too tired to enjoy. Fed is best. A present, rested mother is best.

My son is thriving and I am, finally, here for it, eyes on him instead of on a bottle's measuring line. Letting go of those three words gave me back the very thing they were supposed to protect.