Hoping to finish the story by the weekend;

deb, I couldn't look at anything before next week, so probably only when it's finished, but then, if I can still help with anything, I would love to.

OK, here's my essay. Any thoughts before I submit it?

FORGIVING MYSELF FOR FORMULA FEEDING

The worst moment so far of my life as a parent came when my daughter was ten days old. We were at our second well-baby checkup. Annabel hadn't begun regaining her birth weight; far from it, she was still losing weight. It wasn’t yet an emergency, but it was a crisis.

Having survived a four-day ordeal of an induced labor and ten days with a newborn, I was too drained to cry. But I remember my mute horror and guilt. I’d failed. My baby was malnourished. I’d ruined Annabel’s chances of being a healthy and intelligent person by not giving her enough fuel to grow on at a critical time. An overreaction? Certainly. But the first days of parenthood do not breed rationality.

I’d planned to exclusively breastfeed for at least six months. I’d read all the literature about the nutritional and immunological benefits of breast milk, and I was determined to do the right thing for my daughter. It had never occurred to me that I might fail.

We’d somehow gotten onto the formula companies’ mailing lists. In the weeks leading up to Annabel’s birth, sample boxes of Enfamil and Similac arrived on our doorstep. My first instinct was to take them straight to the nearest food bank. I wouldn’t need them. I was going to breastfeed exclusively, like a well-educated, informed, progressive Seattle mother is supposed to. But at the last minute I decided to keep them. They might come in handy if an earthquake or similar disaster struck while I was separated from the baby.

As it happened, the disaster was my inadequate milk supply. We went home from the pediatrician’s office with orders to immediately begin supplementary formula feeding—from a syringe and tube taped to our fingers, to avoid nipple confusion. So began two weeks of exhaustion as we tried to bring my milk supply in line with Annabel’s needs.

The good news was that Annabel ate like a trooper and started gaining weight right away. The very next day, when we visited a lactation consultant, we discovered she’d gained an ounce.

The bad news was that several factors had conspired to create a perfect storm of breastfeeding difficulties. Annabel was born with a mild tongue-tie. My nipples were at once large, inverted, and excessively sensitive. The nipple shields the hospital lactation consultants had sent me home with to correct those problems were too small. And the lactation consultant suspected my long and difficult labor hadn’t helped.

We tried. We rented a hospital pump, and I pumped around the clock so we could exactly track my supply. We fed Annabel a combination of formula and pumped breast milk using the syringe and tube combination. My husband’s fingers grew raw, since he usually fed her while I pumped. We put her to the breast a couple of times a day just so she wouldn’t forget what it was. And I swallowed fenugreek capsules, since studies have shown them to radically improve milk supply.

It wasn’t enough. At best I could make only fifty or sixty percent of the milk Annabel needed to thrive. And I knew I couldn’t keep up the regimen of pumping and finger-feeding. It was full-time work for two people, and my husband’s paternity leave was almost over. I decided, with our lactation consultant’s blessing, to keep pumping for at least two months, but to introduce the bottle. I still remember how quickly Annabel drank her first bottle, and how grateful she looked.

It worked. Annabel thrived on half breast milk, half formula, all fed from a bottle. She gained so well that she went from an average-sized newborn to a biggish one-month-old, and then a 95th percentile giant of a two-month-old. I began to relax and enjoy motherhood.

After two months, my milk supply was tapering off. I returned the pump and switched her to 100% formula. And it’s worked. As I write this, she’s six months old, and as strong, healthy, and bright a baby as any mother could ask for.

Yet for a long time I felt guilty. After all, I hadn’t tried (continued...)

( continues...) everything. There were prescription medicines, stronger than fenugreek, that might’ve boosted my supply if I hadn’t surrendered so quickly to the ease and convenience of the bottle. And what if Annabel never lived up to her full physical or intellectual potential because I didn’t try hard enough?

I got a reality check when my mother reminded me that I myself had been formula fed. And by most standards I turned out well. Maybe breast milk would’ve spared me from hay fever and given me enough of an IQ boost that I would’ve gotten into Yale instead of being waitlisted. But as health problems go, a few weeks a year of sneezing and watery eyes is minor, and I did well enough academically to make the Dean’s List at Penn all four years. I’m not exactly an advertisement for the perils of formula feeding. And I’m sure the formula Annabel is getting in 2004 is infinitely superior to what Mom fed me in 1971.

So I forgave myself. And on the rare occasions when nosy people criticized my decision, I told myself that they couldn’t have known what I endured those first few weeks. I’m doing the best I can for my daughter, and part of that includes accepting that the ideal isn’t always possible for either of us.

I'd like a fiercer ending, but that's just me. I have some anger issues with third-party disapproval of benign parenting decisions.

Your ending isn't as strong as your opening.

Suan, this is a great essay -- very frank, very informative, with plenty of emotion. My only suggestion is to think about the last sentence. After all you went through, and how well Annabel is doing, the end sounds negative to me, like, "Well, it's not really what we wanted, but it isn't killing us." I know exactly what you mean by it, but I would emphasize the positive aspect of it, as in, parenting always requires mean adaptation, but also (maybe) that the ideal is a happy mom and a thriving kid?

OK, how's this for a new ending paragraph?

So I forgave myself. I’m not sure I’m completely at peace yet—it’s a hard thing to fail to live up to a long-cherished ideal—but I forgave myself. Looking back on those first weeks is still enough to fill me with exhaustion and horror, but today my daughter is beautiful, smart, and healthy. She’s a joy to be around, and I must’ve done something right. And I’m learning that even things that don’t turn out the way I planned as a parent can still turn out right.

I'm staying out of this one, since my own issues with the repietition of "fail" and "guilt" as constant themes in this sort of essay would get in the way of rational editing.

But I will ask why on earth you have to emphasise that you are a Seattle mother. It read as if you thought Seattle was the last bastion of progressive motherhood.

I keep wanting to rewrite your essay in true-confession form, Susan.

"My daughter was starving to death...and it was my fault."

But seriously. I'd like a sentence about what being tongue-tied is and why it affects nursing. I also agree that the last sentence needs to be more positive--something like "I know I'm doing the best thing for my daughter and myself."

Because I'm submitting it to a Seattle magazine, deb. If I was going for a national market, it wouldn't be in there.

And I’m learning that even things that don’t turn out the way I planned as a parent can still turn out right.

Again, this could be tighter and would be more powerful so.

And I'm learning that even things that don't turn out the way I planned can turn out right.