Is Breast Always Really Best?

I really hate to show up here after months of silence and jump right into my predicament without any updates about how incredible life as a mother of two is, but it's also very busy so I must skip over all the flowery wonderfulness and get right to it.

I have a problem.

When Isaac was born I resolved to myself that I would not be a crazy breastfeeding nazi as I had been with Sawyer. After all the drama of his failure to thrive diagnosis and reflux, that mentality had definitely bitten me squarely in the butt.

This time around, I made sure to get Isaac familiar with a bottle around 3 weeks of age (at the recommendation of his pediatrician) and I even gave him formula a few times a week when we went on outings. Hey, let's face it... formula is just so much more convenient for on the go feedings especially when a demanding toddler is part of the picture.

All was going well until just before Isaac hit 2 months. At that point he started to revolt against the breast. He would sometimes drink for 4-5 minutes and then start choking and screaming. Sometimes he would start screaming the instant I attempted to get him to latch on. Of course, I was completely convinced that he, like his big brother, was suffering from silent reflux. In these instances he almost always willingly took a bottle, however, he take a bottle upright and I have just never mastered the art of breastfeeding in any position that did not include the baby lying down. This all still stayed true to my reflux diagnosis.

Around this same time Isaac started to have mucus in his stools. Every now and then. Not all the time. Then one day there were specks of blood in two separate diapers.... so I called the doctor.

The doctor pretty much dismissed my fears of silent reflux and said he believes that Isaac is just being lazy. The bottle is so much easier, why would he want to work so hard to breastfeed when he could simply have a bottle instead? He said he was sorry but that was just going to be a battle I was going to have to fight.

As far as the mucus and blood he said milk protein allergy. So he recommended a special kind of formula and told me to cut milk from my diet.

Now, it has been about a month since all of this has happened and here is how things are going now. Isaac pretty much refuses to breastfeed at all times except for his two earliest morning feedings. I have been trying to keep up with pumping, but it is extremely difficult to find the time to do so. As a result my supply has dropped in half. Therefore, most of the time Isaac gets half formula and half breastmilk.

I tried really hard this week (now that the craziness of the holidays and visitors is finally over) to push the breast at every feeding. It seemed to work out ok yesterday (I only had to give him a bottle at 2 feedings), but today he has been revolting again and in an extreme kind of way.

Now, to add to the complexity of all  of this, I have not done a brilliant job of cutting milk from my diet. The mucus in his stools only seems to have gotten worse (no more blood, though) and I was regularly incorporating foods into my diet that I belatedly realized incorporated milk in its ingredients (you would be completely SHOCKED to find all of the things that contain milk. pretty much everything from boxed rice to bread to taco seasoning and so on and so forth. It's ridiculous. I am pretty much a vegan right now!) Only in the past few days do I think I finally have a good handle on eliminating milk from my diet completely. Online I have read that it can take anywhere from 4-6 weeks to completely rid your body of the milk proteins.

In the meantime, this diet is SUCH A STRUGGLE (OMG I AM DESPERATE FOR A CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE, bread with butter, freaking mashed potatoes, a blueberry muffin, and on and on and on)! Pumping is taking a huge portion of the very teeny tiny bit of free time I have in the first place and my milk seems to be hurting Isaac more than it's helping at this point anyway... so I just keep asking myself. Why exactly am I doing this?

Why not just switch completely over to the hypo-allergenic formula and call it a day? Is breast still best when I can't seem to get my diet straight so that my baby isn't constantly suffering from mucusy diarrhea and he is completely against breastfeeding as it is.

ugh. My logical brain says just let it go, Sarah, and start him on the formula full time. But something. SOMETHING in myself is not letting me give up completely. Yes it's a complete and total struggle for every last drop of that breastmilk. Yes, I am desperate (you have no idea) for anything buttery or milky or chocolatey and I have no idea how I'm going to keep this up for MONTHS let alone his entire first year....

I just need... help! Advice. Thoughts. Comments. Whatever you can give me that might help. Please.