How to Breastfeed a Baby

When you find out you’re pregnant, read about 154 books on pregnancy, birth and child rearing, but go ahead and skip the parts about breastfeeding. How hard could it be, right? Then punch yourself in the face.

If someone tells you to toughen up your nipples by flicking them or vigorously rubbing them with a cheap, rough washcloth several times a day, just ignore them or punch them in the face. Your nipples are going to burn like hell-fire no matter what you do ahead of time.

DO NOT, I repeat, do not take that shiny, new breast pump for a test drive before the baby comes. I know you and your other half think it will be fun and just for $h!ts and giggles, but I promise you…one or both of you will go to bed crying in the fetal position.

For the first day or two after the baby is born, you’ll want to pat yourself on the back for making it work. Wait to congratulate yourself until day three or four when your milk comes in and you wake up with two 15 pound cantaloupes that are hard as granite, leak around the clock, choke the baby and anyone within 15 feet and feel like Pennywise is attached to them.

You would assume that the milk squirts out of one neat little hole on each nipple. This is wholly incorrect. There are like 7,000 on each boob and they all point in a different direction like an old, rusty shower head full of calcium build up. Seriously. Watch the eff out.

You will NEVER, ever, ever get a “correct latch”. Those La Leche chicks and lactation nurses are full of straight crap. I’ve exclusively breastfed 6 babies for a collective 10 years and “correct latch” is a damn myth. It’s a unicorn. It’s a lie covered in glittery diarrhea. You just have to wait it out. For real. The magic bullet in breastfeeding is pigheaded stubbornness wrapped in lanolin and time.

Do not be stressed, tired, hungry or freaked out. It will affect your milk supply. I know a human just clawed its way out of a hole in your body that either a) wasn’t previously there or b) wasn’t 25 centimeters in diameter and now that little milk chocolate smelling beast is ravaging your burning hot, scabby nipples 25-28 times a day and your mother-in-law is pampering your husband and breathing down your neck while judging that greasy spot behind the toilet that’s covered in pubes and dust, but do not get upset. This all makes total sense and you’ll want to congratulate the universe for picking you for this role.

Don’t be alarmed when your uterus feels like someone is punching it like a fine yeast bread every time you attach your little piranha. “It’s normal”.

Just know that at some point, you’re going to take a dump while nursing your baby and you’ll feel nothing but pride in your accomplishment. You’ll want a high five and a Slushee for your efforts but you’ll get nothing save a snoring husband and a gassy infant.

Speaking of snoring husband…he will lay there with his useless nipples and slumber away in his blissful dreams and you will want to kill him. You will want to saw off his protruding parts with a butter knife and leave him for dead. But you won’t. Because you’ll remember him doing ‘kangaroo care’ with his naked man-pecks and you’ll melt and let him live another day.

Get lanolin. Smear it on your nipples and every lady part you hold dear. It’s all going to be chafed for the next 18 years. It also works for cuts, scrapes, lips and baby buttholes.

Just give in and buy that gallon size travel mug from Buccees and fill it up with ice water (or Dr.Pepper…wait, what?). You’re gonna feel like someone poured sand and ashes and dehydrated booger powder in your mouth for the foreseeable future.

Forget the fancy nursing bras with shiny clasps and buckles and clothes with strategically placed holes and magic release hatches. Get a giant sports bra and wear your husband’s t-shirts. Don’t even worry about pants.

Pull up, pull down. Boom. Easy.

Buy all the breast pads. In our house, they’re called “Booby Pads” and I had them on auto-delivery from Amazon for like 12 years. If you’re anything like me, your boobs will weep, leak and ooze 24-7. When your milk comes down, it will squirt projectile-style like drunken missiles from your nipples and drench everything within 20 feet. Wear Booby Pads at all times. If you don’t have a booby pad, just remember that milk ducts are like severed arteries…just apply pressure with a finger and you’re saved. I didn’t figure this out till my second baby.

You will be covered in milk, barf and poop for the first year. Luckily, the breast milk doody smells like yogurt, so it’s not so bad.

Your milk will come down when you sneeze, fart, cry, pee, feel happiness, sadness, anger, hear anyone crying and when you’re cold. I don’t know why this is.

‘Come down’ means the moment when a cocktail of wonky hormones and chemicals get the message that a hungry human is gnawing on your boob and release themselves to trigger a ‘let down’ of milk. It will momentarily feel like a shark is yanking on your entire boob with its dagger-teeth and then your eyelids will droop and you and the baby will both go into a milk-induced coma. People will ask you what you’re staring at but you can’t answer because you’re paralyzed with relaxation.

Let it sleep with you. You will sleep, the baby will sleep, your husband will sleep with his useless nipples and everyone will be happier. Unless you’re a drunk or on hard drugs, it will all be okay. More often than not, the path of least resistance is what wins parenting.

At some point, you realize when you just ‘give in’ to it all – mothering, sleep deprivation, milk and poop everywhere, hell-fire nipples and no control over anything or anyone…things become more manageable. Lower your expectations. For probably the first time in your life, it’s not about you anymore and when you let that be, really let it sink in, deep and cold and allow motherhood wear you like an old coat, you’ll feel better.

Eat.all.the.food. You have to eat to make milk. Seriously. You can’t eat Snickers and cereal and Dr. Pepper and expect to produce all the liquid gold like a magical cow. Eat fat, eat protein, eat vegetables and fruit. Drink water like it’s your job. Because it is.

Babies fart and barf. All.the.dang.time. This is the first time their digestive system has ever been used. It doesn’t know what it’s doing yet. You can give them drops and pills and burp them and do bicycle legs and special massages and stop eating chocolate and dairy and gluten and subsist on nothing but Sour Skittles and that little rat is still gonna rip his butthole inside out. It is what it is. They just fart and cry until they’re about five. I’m not kidding.

Be prepared to feel like all you do is nurse it, change it, jostle it to sleep, close your eyes for 16 seconds and repeat. For months on end. Hang in there. Honestly, with your first rodeo, the first 6 weeks are the absolute pits, the first 6 months are difficult and then, quite suddenly it morphs into something truly beautiful and you’re telling all the people how magical it is and how you could go on nursing and smelling that baby’s intoxicating milk-breath for the rest of forever.

Breastfeeding your first baby will be like learning a new language while running across a bed of hot coals and being subjected to Chinese water torture with no sleep. The second and proceeding babies will be like getting out an old, rusty bike and riding it to all your appointments barefoot with a toddler on the back in one of those crazy baby bike seat things. It’ll suck for a few minutes and then you’ll get back in the groove.

Then, after you told all the people that breastfeeding is your life’s work and magnum opus, you wake up to an 18 month old chewing your areolas while lying on your face and you’ll realize you want to have sex again someday, so you’ll Google “How to wean a fully-grown human”.

Then you’ll wake up to a crazed three year old and wish you could just lay there and nurse it for a few minutes and make it milk drunk so it will shut up.

Interestingly enough, your nipples will tingle and you’ll be waiting for a let down of milk whenever you see a infant’s lips for the rest of forever.

You’ll want to nurse other people’s crying babies and creep other breastfeeding moms out by gazing at them lovingly after all your own kids are just giant, fully weaned jerks.

Expect to experience the most intimate, beautiful, incredibly hard, most selfless, difficult, enduring, painful and wonderful relationship you may ever know. When other moms tell you not to give up because it gets better – great, even – believe them because it’s true.

One day after all the heartache and gas and allergies and latching has been worked through and your nipples are like tire rubber, you’ll wake up and realize just how precious it is.

And then, you’ll wake up to house full of children who eat solid food and drink from cups and poop alone and you’ll simultaneously be deliriously joyful and heartbroken. You’ll have a couple of tube socks filled with rocks that roll into your bra and a bunch of kids who want to know what’s for dinner and the next step is boyfriends and cars.

After 15 years of all-nighters and open milk-bar you’ll be like, “Hey, all my kids sleep through the night now! I can finally sleep!” and life’s answer to that is, “Nope, Hag. Now you’re in perimenopause and you’ll never sleep again because your hormones are crap. Don’t forget your progesterone cream, biotch.”

But it’s okay. They’ll pass their driving test and pee in little urinals and make you cry at their violin concerts and get a hard B+ in Algebra and show empathy and tolerance for the world at large and you’ll be so proud of them.

Sometimes…just every once in awhile, you’ll long for that time when solving the “latch problem” was your hardest thing and the answer to every question was food, poop or cuddles and making them happy was as easy as lying in a bed and nursing their tears away.

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