Fed is Best

A sweet friend of mine inspired me to make a post during breastfeeding week about my journey after sharing hers!


My journey in breastfeeding was short and sweet. In the hospital it was hard, not natural to me at all. Ellie wouldn’t latch and I hated hearing my hungry girl scream. That lead to a lot of my post partum struggles.. feeling like a failure when Eleanor was so fresh out of the womb. I felt the pressure to keep trying, which SUCKED because I didn’t want to do it anymore. I knew there were other options but I kept trying because society says how “important mothers breast milk is” and deep down I knew that. We went to numerous lactation consultants who encouraged me but saw my struggle and suggested pumping and supplementing. My girl needed fuel and I just wasn’t producing enough. I would pump 7-10x a day… for a collective total of (wait for it) 2-3 OUNCES, all day long. It was obvious that Ellie could never sustain on that and so I started to realize it wasn’t that I wasn’t trying, it was that my body wasn’t making what it needed to. Insert all the mom guilt. Seeing mamas being able to feed their baby so quickly and them being able to Produce such beautiful nutrition for the baby that they made. I was making bottles with ready made formula and packing a cooler in my diaper bag… two very different dynamics but from women who had just gone through pregnancy and birth.


When I realized that formula feeding didn’t make me cry every single day and that J.R. (Hubs) could get up in the night and feed Ellie.. I started to ease up on the guilt. She was thriving just like all the other babies she knew, even the breastfed ones. I slowly stopped my pumping journey and packed up my parts once and for all. It took me six weeks to choose ME.. and prioritize my mental health but I’m so glad I did.


I am in AWE, of moms in general but Breastfeeding mamas are hero’s in my eyes! That takes a LOT of self sacrifice to provide for your little one in that way. Eating different foods, sacrificing sleep, facing a judgmental eye or two in public. But to my baby, I was HER HERO! I fed her, she had a full belly and the biggest smile. We need to normalize just feeding your baby, without having to justify either way! There should be no guilt either way, ever. Being a mom is a beautiful thing and whatever your story looks like for YOUR baby is perfect. That’s where we need to be confident and to build up our friends and other mamas no matter what their story looks like. Fed is best mama.


Cheers to motherhood and this photo of my perfect, formula fed Eleanor!