Trying times

As a teacher I have had more than a handful of students over the years who have failed not for lack of ability but for lack of effort.  And over that time I have become familiar with the feeling that many of these students chose not to try not because they had no interest in Spanish but because, whether it was a conscious decision or not, they felt that there was less shame in failing because they didn't try than there was in trying and coming up short.  And while I recognized that rationalization, I could never quite understand it.  I mean, don't they still know, somewhere deep down, that they could've done better if they'd only put in the effort and doesn't that make the failure twice as hard to take?

The answer - yes.

As some of you may know, I had lofty goals of at least partially breast feeding the Salvateenies.  At the very least I was going to pump enough breast milk to give them all the advantages it's supposed to give them.

I think you can see where this is going.

In the hospital I never really got the time and support I needed to learn how to get my tiny little babies to latch on and suck.  And when I came home it was even harder, so I gave up on that pretty quickly and figured I'd just pump.

Pumping as much as I could find time to, I was only producing about 3 ounces of milk a day, which at the time was enough for each baby to get one feeding of breast milk.  I met with a lactation consultant who told me I needed to be pumping at least 8 times a day for at least 10 minutes each time to try to increase my milk supply.  So I rented the fancy pump she recommended that was supposed to help increase my milk supply and I tried to focus on pumping after each feeding, at least.

Only the babies started growing, and they didn't want to sleep after every feeding.  They wanted to play, and I wanted to play with them.  And when they did sleep after a feeding, I wanted to sleep.  Or take a shower.  Or get a snack.  Or read the paper.

And pumping wasn't going well.  When I did pump, inevitably at least one baby would wake up crying and I would try to lug the pump over to soothe them.  You really have not seen pathetic until you've seen a mother hooked up to a breast pump like a science experiment holding a baby at arm's length because that's the closest they can get without dislodging the tubes, thinking that will soothe the baby at all.  And even then, I never did get more than 3 ounces in a day, and it was depressing.

And so, basically, I stopped trying.  If I didn't strap that pump on, I figured, I couldn't feel bad that its little bottles were empty.  I got down to only getting in two pumps a day.  And that was stupid because it wasn't giving me enough stimulation to increase or even maintain my milk supply and yet it was just enough to make me feel like a failure.

And everybody tells me it's ok - that it was unrealistic to be able to pump enough for all three, and that even with only one baby it just might not have worked out.  And I know that's true, but it doesn't take away the feeling that if I'd just really tried to get those 8 pumps in a day I couldn't have done it.  If I'd just set an alarm or something.  If I'd really WANTED to, I would have made it work, right?  And if I'd tried, I could have done it, right? And it would've worked.  So I feel like a double failure.

Maybe it's just maternal hormones that somehow get secreted and make you feel like you're just not quite doing enough, or if you are, you're just not doing it well enough.  Yeah, that's it.  I'll blame hormones.  That way, I can blame myself, but it's a part of myself I can't control so it'll make me feel better.

Won't it?