I'll Be Completely Honest With You...

So, I'm not one to hide what I'm thinking- I'm fairly open about how I feel when it comes to life's issues. So, here the latest: I hate nursing. I've always hated it, never thought it was this great mother child bonding experience, and all the benefits of it- well, I can refute the claim on several of them. Some of you may know that I didn't nurse Alexa. It was one of the most miserable experiences of my life. She couldn't do it, I was in so much pain that I could hardly stand it, and I just wasn't producing any milk... yeah, it was probably stress related or something- I will admit to that. I can remember laying in bed when she was a few days old and hearing her in the bassinet next to me and wanting to cry while I thought to myself, "Do I really have to get up and try to feed her?" It was awful. So, we switched her to formula when she was a couple weeks old and she did great. I felt guilty about it for a long time. It didn't help that I lived in Provo where everyone has babies and I swear I was the only one not nursing. OK, I know that can't be true, but it felt like it. I felt somewhat like a failure that the only thing I really had to do for this little baby was feed her and I couldn't even do it the "best" way. OK- so, I got over it. It was really a good thing for me to experience for a few reasons. It allowed me to truly decide for myself that I really didn't care what other people thought, and that has really stuck with me. Anyone who knows me now knows that is my attitude on almost everything. I'm not looking for approval from anyone and I am completely content to do what works best for me, not what is accepted as the norm. So, I told myself after Alexa that with future kids, it didn't matter how they were fed. If they could nurse- great; if not, I'd be the first person to stick a bottle in their hungry little mouths. For some bizarre reason, Callie and Leah had no problems nursing- I nursed them both for a full year and hated every minute of it. Sure, it's convenient in the middle of the night to not get out of bed to make a bottle and yeah, formula can get expensive, but the other "benefits"? Callie and Leah were both plagued with ear infections, had tubes put in, and are still my sick children. Alexa is NEVER sick. So I don't buy the whole "breastfed babies are healthier" bit. And for the "breastfed babies learn faster and are smarter"- do you know Alexa? You can't tell me she is behind because she was bottlefed. She is WAY beyond her years and I don't say that to brag- it's just the truth. So, this brings me to little Quinten. The kid can't suck for anything. In the hospital it would take me 45 minutes to get him to latch on so he could eat for 3 minutes. 2 lactations specialists and 4 nurses later they decided it may just take him a couple weeks to catch on- they had no answers for me. Well, a couple weeks later and the kid still didn't do it. He's too little to starve until he figures it out... which was one of the nurses suggestions. NO THANKS. So, I'm done. I'm done pumping and feeding him bottles- it's driving me CRAZY. I'm done trying. He's just not going to do it and I am happily switching him to formula. My nursing days are over and I am more than relieved to see them fade into the distant past. Besides, bottlefed babies can be fed by their Daddy, which means I get to leave my house sometimes for more than two hours at a time. Who can complain about that?? OK- thanks for reading my lengthy soapbox sob story... leave it to me to tell everyone all the junk no one really wants to talk about.