a lesson from burgers and breastfeeding.

"Ohhh....!!!  My gosh!!! We are such bad parents!!" I squeal into the air somewhere in the direction of Mike as rain pelts me in the face, and I try my best to tilt Eleanora's car seat in such a way as to prevent her from becoming drenched, too.

"Just run!!!"  He yells back at me, an increasingly wet Evie in his arms, as we both dart as fast as we can toward the burger place we decided to attempt to dine at.  All four of us.  Right as a rain storm unleashed itself from the heavens.

We reach the door and some cover, but the door says something like, This is not an entrance. Please use the door around the corner.  

To which I respond with an, "Oh, come ONNNN...SERIOUSLY??"

At this point we are all very wet...except for Eleanora, thank goodness, who is scrunching her face into a slightly perturbed expression, nonetheless.  

Thankfully a guy working at the burger place had pity on us and opened our not-an-entrance door so that we didn't have to continue our harrowing journey to the real entrance door around the corner with our not yet three-week-old and not yet two-year-old.

I just really, really wanted to get out of the house because lately I've been feeling like a cave woman stuck in a cave.  And so we thought, Ok.  We can do this.  It's just dinner out with our two kids.  Not like we're trying to get the One Ring to Mordor or anything.  We. Have. Got. This.

But we did not factor in the rain storm.  In truth, we saw the gray clouds of foreboding as we left our house, but there was no turning back.  Not when we had already packed up everything and actually gotten out the door.  And that, my friends, is neither an easy nor speedy process.

But isn't this just how things go sometimes?  Life? Our plans?

In the grand scheme of things, getting wet while trying to go to a restaurant isn't a huge deal, but it does illustrate the truth that things don't always turn out quite the way we hope.

I will probably forever feel this way about breastfeeding.  Even if I have another baby, I think breastfeeding and I will have a complicated, if existent, relationship.  

Though it's been a completely different experience this time around, we've decided again that feeding our baby with a bottle is what's best for our family.  

With Evie, breastfeeding was a complete disaster filled with many factors working against us.  After two months with a starving, inconsolable baby, we switched to formula.  I felt like I had failed, but there was also a part of me that felt that things were out of my control, and I had done the best I could.

So this time, I was determined to have a much different experience with feeding our new daughter.  I went to a lactation consultant while I was still pregnant to make a plan to set myself up for success, whether it was nursing her or feeding her another way.  Honestly, I wasn't feeling very optimistic that I would be able to nurse her, so I was expecting to have to pump or do formula again.  

I wasn't expecting to have a baby that would actually latch and want to nurse, but that's what I got.  Eleanora wasn't great at attaching; sometimes it took over half an hour to get her to latch on, but she always would.  And my milk supply was great, too.  She was getting plenty to eat when I nursed her, and she was happy and sleepy and gaining weight.

The problem was that it was excruciatingly painful for me every single time.  My nipples were cracked and bleeding and blistered.  I dreaded the next time I would have to feed her.  I was becoming depressed and ridden with anxiety because all I could think about was having to endure the next nursing session.  One morning I was trying to get her to attach and she was having the hardest time.  She would attach, get agitated and pull off.  Over and over again.  And each time hurt like hell.  On the last time she attached, I felt like my vision blurred the pain was so intense.  And that was all I could handle.  I couldn't do it anymore.  My pain tolerance and endurance had reached it's limit after a week and a half of trying.  I wasn't 100 percent ready to give up, but I desperately needed a break.  So I pumped and fed Eleanora with a bottle for a day to give myself time to heal.  But when I tried to nurse her the next morning, she wouldn't nurse.  And so we made the decision to stop trying. 

I learned so much about giving myself grace with what I went through with Evie, but I guess some lessons need to be relearned because I have struggled so much with the decision to stop breastfeeding.  I've felt guilty for depriving a baby who wanted to nurse of the opportunity to do so.  Many moms have said that it is normal for it to be painful the first few weeks, and so I also felt like I was weak because I couldn't hang in there and tough it out. 

Comparison can be such a bitter and manipulative friend to me, especially when I am struggling through something that seems to carry so much pressure along with it.  I am still in the process of understanding there is strength in knowing myself and knowing my God and knowing I am drenched in a whole mess of grace.  

The first time with Evie taught me to recognize my limits and also helped me see what was important.  It's better for me to be emotionally and mentally healthy for my girls than to be miserably breastfeeding.  It's better for me to be able to be present and loving toward my daughters and my husband than to be constantly on the verge of breaking down.  

Knowing these things has been somewhat freeing to me as I feel this flood of emotions toward this thing that just did not go the way I had hoped.  

And I can rest in knowing that I have done the best I can with what I have been given- this life, this set of emotions, these unique experiences, these quirks and stumbling tendencies, these areas of strength and those where things are a bit weak, this pain tolerance and these daughters.  Comparison seems silly when you look at how complex each of us is with all that makes up who we are.  Like comparing apples to oranges, really.  If you think about it this way, there really is no room for us to feel less than, only different.  

And different is ok because it is all of our bunches of different coming together that makes spaces for us to comfort others or to learn lessons, or to teach them.  Our unique experiences and stories and struggles help shape us into who God wants us to be.  They make us relatable and they make us authentic and they make us human.  Big struggles and small ones.  Interesting stories and tedious ones.  Awesome experiences and hard ones.

Ones that tell of hardship in nursing a newborn and even ones that involve running through the pouring rain with your two kids just so you can eat a burger.

Eleanora Joy.

She's here!

Our second baby girl arrived on Friday, May 13th at 1:35am.  

She has her sister's petite features but instead of fire and feistiness, she is cool and sweet like a perfect little glass of iced tea.

She weighed six pounds and eight ounces and measured 18 inches long.  I forgot just how tiny newborns are.

I thank God that He answered so many of our prayers in this little one.  She made her journey into this world with much haste, making my labor and pushing very quick indeed.  I'll save the whole story for another post, though.  

She is a patient and willing breastfeeder, though it has still been so challenging, and we are working on making it less painful.  It's actually extremely painful right now, but I am trying to hang in there.  

She is so calm, which is a blessing right now as we are trying our best to be here for her not so calm and very frustrated big sister.  It's been a hard couple of days for Evie with adjusting to having a new member join our family, but I know she just needs some time and lots of patience and love and grace from us.  We are taking it one day at a time.

I took these photos today of both our little ladies.  They are such sweet captures of both of them, and I hope that the joy and peace they convey actually becomes their relationship very soon.  The reality is that though a photo can say a thousand words, it can also leave out that moment right after you lowered your camera where you used some quick reflexes to stop your almost two-year-old from laying on top of her just-born sister...or poking her in the eye. 

But Mike and I are enjoying Eleanora so, so much.  She is such a blessing, and we are so thankful for her.  When she was still growing inside me, I remember feeling so apprehensive to meet her.  I remember wondering who this little person could possibly be and how she would fit in to our family.  But now she's here, and it's like "Oh, of course.  It's you.  Well, you fit just perfectly."  She is just who we needed around here.  We can't wait to get to know her more.  

I will try to write a more detailed post later about how things are going, when I've got more of my wits about me and perhaps a little more sleep.

I hope you enjoy these photos!  (And...if you have any tips on helping your toddler adjust to a new sibling, I would so welcome them!) 

my breastfeeding story.

A while back, I wrote a post about my experience with breastfeeding and what it taught me about accepting grace as a new mom.  

Things don't always go the way we plan in this whole parenting thing, that's for darn sure, but it helps knowing you're not alone.  That's why I'm so thankful to Coffee and Crumbs for publishing my story today.  Coffee and Crumbs is a blog that does an awesome job creating a safe place where moms can come together, share their stories and encourage each other.  

Sometimes you need someone to know where you've been just so you can hear, "It's okay.  I've been there, too."

If you have a few free minutes, you should check out Coffee and Crumbs and read my story by clicking on over there with this link!

struggling to breastfeed.

The battles were fierce.  

At least, that's how I felt when I tried to breastfeed my daughter.  Each time began with Evangeline emitting screams and cries no earthly being should be allowed to make.  I would offer my breast, and the thrashing would start.  While her little hands clawed and pushed one side of my chest, her tiny feet kicked the other.  As I've become well aware of, baby appendages are filled with a surprising amount of force.  My husband had to restrain those flailing limbs or there was no way we were accomplishing anything.  

Because she was so ticked off, for whatever the reason could be, she wasn't able to latch on by herself.  She'd move her head quickly from side to side and make these alarming growling noises, almost like a little puppy trying to attack a toy.  We would carry on like this for a while before she would finally start sucking, but only with the help of a nipple shield.  And even then, she fought us.  

From day one of her life to eight weeks, this is how breastfeeding went.   

Feeding her became such a source of anxiety that I dreaded it.

Some parts of what I'm writing may sound kind of humorous, but at the time it was horrible.  I hardly ate.  I cried a lot.  I thought, What am I doing wrong? and This is all my fault.  I felt depressed and exhausted.  Our baby girl wasn't doing any better.  Along with not being able to properly breastfeed, she was upset the majority of the time she was awake.  Just inconsolable.  We tried so many things: acid reflux medicine, Colic Calm, all the techniques they teach you to burp your baby.  I developed callouses on my hands from swinging her over and over again in her car seat (that was the only way to make her stop crying, even if only temporarily).  We thought maybe she was lactose intolerant, so we tried this stuff called Colief.  I remember wondering if all newborns were like this, and if so, why, for the love of all that is good and right in the world, would anyone want to have a second child.  We just had no idea what we were doing.  And all the while, breastfeeding remained this heavy thing, looming over us.

Everything came to a head when we went to the pediatrician and learned that in a whole month, she hadn't added any weight to her tiny seven pound, four ounce body.  There were other babies we knew that were heavier at birth than she was at almost two months.  I thought, how can this be possible??  She usually nursed for so long, sometimes over an hour at a time, how is she not getting enough to eat??  

When you are working so hard to help your baby, news like this is devastating.  I would see updates from other new moms on Facebook about how well their babies were gaining weight and how joyous they felt about being a mother, and all I felt was bitterness.  

After another week of trying to nurse her with no improvement, we made the decision to give her formula.  She guzzled that first bottle down like she hadn't eaten all day.  All the problems we thought she had went away immediately.  She calmed right down and started smiling more than she screamed.  We were so relieved.  Unfortunately, once we gave her that bottle, she refused to attempt breastfeeding anymore.  I started pumping and realized I was hardly making any milk.  So, basically, she was trying to tell us she was starving this whole time, and we just weren't getting the hint.

In the end, I chose to stop breast feeding and pumping altogether because it was just too hard. What was supposed to be this wonderful, sweet bonding experience between my baby and me became this burdensome, stress-inducing nightmare.  

So, for us, formula was a blessing.  

But it wasn't easy for me to accept this blessing.  I kept blaming myself and feeling like a horrible mother because I wasn't giving my baby what was best for her.  I felt like less of a woman because I couldn't breast feed.  I thought I was ruining my baby because so many books, doctors and websites will tell you how breast milk is liquid gold and formula that second-rate other stuff.  I wanted so desperately for someone to tell me it was ok, that it was a good decision what I was doing. 

And then people did tell me it was ok.  They showered me with encouragement and love and support.  

And it didn't help.  

And I realized something.  Sometimes, you have to release the burden while it clings tightest.  

Yes, I could have analyzed everything I did to find out where I went wrong.  Yes, there are tactics I didn't try.  Pills I could have taken to increase my milk supply.  Tubes attached to bottles full of milk I could have attached to my breasts to encourage her to nurse.  I could have pumped every 2 hours in hopes of making more milk.  

But what was more helpful was digging down and facing my true struggle: refusing to allow myself the grace that God and others were already giving me. 

Once I let myself accept this grace, I felt the freedom to make a decision.  And my decision was to stop.  Stop all the striving and straining.  Stop battling.  

Peace finally came when I took all of my loose ends and just dropped them without having tied them all together.  Peace came, and along with it, the ability to see truth: I love my daughter so, so much.  I am not a horrible mother.  My husband and I made a wise, beneficial choice.  I can rejoice in feeding my baby formula, knowing she is getting the nourishment she needs.  

To my delight, we now have a smiling, gurgling, blessedly chunky baby who is so joyful and, most importantly, healthy.  

For a while there, I fought against receiving the one thing we all desperately need in this whole raising a tiny human thing. But I believe I am slowly learning to take hold of it with these feeble fingers of mine.

There is grace.  Even when it doesn't look at all like what you thought it would.  When you choose to lean on it and on the One who gives it, instead of on your own strength, you have not lost anything.  You haven't failed.  

You may not have any strength left to fight for yourself, but that's right where you should be.

It is there where you will find, if you let yourself, that you have been given the victory you were searching for all along.   

*edited on March 30, 2015