Saturday, July 30, 2011

Already I feel like a bad mother?!

Our little Peanut isn't even born, and already I feel like a bad mother!  I feel guilty about that fact that I probably won't be able to nurse my baby.  I can tell countless moms-to-be about the benefits of colostrum and secretory IgA in helping Baby build its immune system, but I will be stuck giving my baby formula.  Yes, I know moms the world over use formula.  And babies the world over do fine.  But the American Academy of Pediatrics has made it very clear that breastfeeding is optimal.  And yet, for me to produce even a drop of milk, I would need to do relatively extensive preparation and probably adjunctive hormonal therapy with not just our old friends estrogen and progesterone, but also the dopamine antagonist metoclopramide.  (Dopamine inhibits prolactin.)

Then again, it's not as if everything up to this point has been "natural."  From an endocrinologic standpoint I'm a miracle of modern medicine, as artificial as they come.  Levothroxine for my thyroid.  Growth hormone (don't miss that one!) from fifth through eighth grade.  Estrogen and progesterone.  It's amazing and wonderful that we have these medications, and I am glad to have benefitted  But I certainly can't say I ought to breastfeed because it's more "natural," or that I shouldn't breastfeed because it's not natural.  I'll admit the idea of nursing when I didn't have a baby weirds me out.

So I don't know where I stand.  I have plenty of time to figure this out, though.  My best friend is urging me to breast feed but I don't know if all the hormones make sense when induced lactation doesn't usually produce enough milk to feed a baby.  But maybe I should do it for the bonding?

Any experience either way, do let me know!

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