When is it OK to stop breastfeeding?

For the first three months of my son’s life he used to eat about eight times a day and I spent a lot of time breastfeeding or pumping milk for bottle feeds. The early nursing sessions took about 45 minutes and there were four or five pumping sessions a day, including one around 2 am, each lasting about 25 minutes. During that period I felt like a milk machine that was working 24x7 to keep my baby fed. At around two months postpartum I googled “When is it OK to stop breastfeeding?”

Many women feel empowered by this ability to keep their child alive, but I was bogged down by it. I willed myself to do it because everyone talked about how incredible breastmilk aka “liquid gold” is for babies. ‘Breast is best’ is a phrase I heard a lot during my pregnancy. My doctor told me mother’s milk carries nutrients and antibodies and is recommended to be a child’s primary source of nutrition for the first year.

Breastfed babies are also said to be at lower risk for obesity, Type 1 diabetes, and asthma, among other things. And breastfeeding mothers could have a reduced risk of high blood pressure, and ovarian and breast cancer. Nursing releases a hormone called oxytocin that calms the mother while helping milk flow when a baby suckles. And breastfeeding gives the mum and baby opportunities to connect.

A lot of the mothers-to-be around me had breastfeeding goals. Some wanted to feed their baby for the first year, others for at least six months. Some wanted to go to 18 months. I didn’t give it too much thought, but figured I’d be able to make it to the six-month mark.

I lasted four months.

Breastfeeding is one of the toughest things I’ve ever done — it was mentally and physically taxing. Every prenatal class I’d taken and pamphlet I’d read said I’d love breastfeeding, but I found no joy in it.

It didn’t help me bond with my child the way I imagined it would. Oxytocin didn’t make me feel calm when nursing my baby. On the contrary, I would stress about how much milk he was getting and whether or not he was full.

I thought pumping milk to make bottles would allow others to feed the baby and ease the pressure I felt, but it only added to my mental load. I had to follow a strict schedule to ensure there was enough milk for the next feed and empty my breasts often enough to avoid things like mastitis (a painful breast inflammation caused by clogged milk ducts).

I wondered if something was off. I was lucky enough to be making enough milk and my baby was latching well, things that I knew were issues other new mums and babies faced. So why wasn’t I enjoying this like all the doctors said I would?

Then I discovered a Facebook group of ladies who’d given birth in the same month as me. Many of them felt the same way about breastfeeding — they talked honestly about how much they hated it, how they felt uncomfortable in their bodies, how they stopped nursing and switched to formula to protect their mental health. I wasn’t alone.

I wish my medical team had talked about this side of breastfeeding, and told me that it’s ok to not like it, to stop when it became too much. In fact, I learned more about breastfeeding from those Facebook posts than I did from any doctor. Like finding out about Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex, which causes mothers to feel negative emotions — anxiety, hopelessness, angst — when they're nursing. Or the fact that sometimes babies can reject breastmilk because of certain allergies.

I kept those posts in mind when I decided to start feeding my baby formula, in part because he wasn’t gaining enough weight, and in part because I wanted to stop breastfeeding. As I reduced pumping and nursing sessions, a sense of inadequacy bubbled up in me. Why couldn’t I push myself to continue feeding? Wasn’t this my most important job as a mother? Is this a disservice to my baby?

These questions were creating a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation in my head and I needed a way out.

Eventually I silenced the self-doubt and settled into a new feeding routine. I felt a load lift off my shoulders. I could be a better parent because I had the mental bandwidth to engage with him. I realised that though some may consider breast to be the best, I subscribed to what so many mums on the Facebook group said: fed is best.