Rejected.

This morning, my daughter rejected me.

It was sadder than I thought it'd be. It hurt more than I thought it would.

Jeff didn't (doesn't) understand how this could be so agonizing for me. But a part of me was mourning all day,.

This morning, I woke up late. BG didn't cry out as she usually does at 6am, nor did she cry out at 6:30 as she does when she sleeps in a bit. At 6:50, I bolted upright in bed and said SHIT, I'M LATE!

So I hop out of bed and on my way into the shower, I yelled at Jeff to get up and go check on the baby.

Lately, I don't know if it's because I'm sleeping deeper then usual, or if it's the new hard drive that we bought that has a really really loud fan, but we haven't been hearing the BG when she wakes up. My internal clock will wake me up, and I'll really have to struggle and listen hard to hear the baby's cries.

So Jeff goes to get the baby, who was wide awake and just laying in her crib playing with her toys, and he pops his head into the bathroom and asks if I want him to wait to feed her a bottle till after I feed her first, or if he should just go ahead and give her a bottle.....

Now for some background.

I'm pretty proud of myself. I battled through all the biting, and the soreness, and the chaffing, and I exclusively breastfed for 6 and a half months before we introduced solids. But even up till 8 and a half months, the only milk she had was mommy's. At 8.5 months, we went to LA, and I was so busy that I hardly had time to pump, so we took some formula with us, and started introducing formula to her diet.

When we got back from LA, I stopped pumping at work. At that point it was too much time spent pumping for too little milk, so I got rid of all pumping during the day and only gave her breast milk at the first and last feeding of the day.

At around 10 months, I stopped feeding her at night, and kept only the morning feedings. This allowed me much more freedom to go out and spend time with my friends, and be free to stay out late without worrying about getting home in time to feed her. But, it was still hard for me to drop the night feeding, but BG took it in stride and didn't even miss a beat.

I really wanted to breastfeed for a year though, so I held onto the morning feeding even though after I fed her, we would need to feed her some more formula to fill her up.

Then, this morning, when I was in the shower and Jeff asked me if he should feed her a bottle or not, I said "go ahead and feed her a small bottle. I'll feed her when I get out".

But after the bottle. She didn't want me. She wanted more milk, but she didn't want me. I tried multiple times. She just shook her head, she bit me, she pushed me away. Then we gave her another bottle and she gulped the whole thing down.

It hurt. My heart was broken. I was rejected.

So it's official. I'm no longer breastfeeding. We're purely formula till we get the okay to give her cows milk from the doctor (in a couple of weeks - after her first birthday). And even though I may have complained about how much it hurt, or how much I hated pumping.... I'm glad I did it, I'm very proud of myself, and my wallet's glad I did it, because DAMN formula is expensive. Through it all, I enjoyed it - knowing that she was being nourished from something I made for her, that no one else could give her, gave me such a sense of fulfillment. For 6 and a half months, she lived, grew, learned, developed all sustained on milk that I produced. Nature is awesome. Women are awesome.

And though I may have complained endlessly about how much I hated pumping... If that's the only way to keep up my supply of milk so that I can breastfeed when I'm home with the next baby (whenever that may be) I'll do it in a heartbeat.