I remember the day C came home and declared it was “baby making time!” We whooped and danced around the kitchen in our tiny North End flat. Finally, he had secured a permanent teaching position, the condition he needed in order to feel ready for parenthood. Both in our early thirties by this time, we had been married for almost four years and I had long been ready to start a family.

Trying was fun, until it wasn’t. Tracking the changes in your vaginal discharge to determine the best time to have sex isn’t sexy. “Sometimes you make it feel like work,” he would say and roll away to his side of the bed. But we persisted and within a few months, I was pregnant.

Pregnancy suited me. For the first time in my life, my wide hips and squat, round frame felt purposeful. My pear shape curved around our developing baby like a protective barrier and I felt beautiful. C would hold me from behind, his arms cradling both me and our child, and I remember thinking: I was meant for this.

I don’t often admit this to other women but pregnancy was fairly easy for me.That kind of remark often invites eye rolls, big, huffy sighs and maybe even some choice comments made under one’s breath. I watched friends and colleagues struggle with conception, morning sickness, aches and pains, concerns, fears, and of course, miscarriage. I have learned to keep the joy I felt while pregnant to myself.

Our child arrived on the most gorgeous August day. I was able to follow my birth plan as I hoped and after only several hours of active labour, I held the most perfect little human in my hands. It had been a wonderful journey into motherhood.

But I had missed one detail: having a baby and being a mother are not the same thing. And while I had blossomed in pregnancy, those early days and weeks of mothering were incredibly difficult for me.

This was primarily because breastfeeding did not come as easy for me as pregnancy. I often felt this was my due; surely a woman could not dance through pregnancy and into motherhood. This was what I deserved.

While still in the hospital, the baby wouldn’t latch well. I felt like a failure. Once we figured that out, we waited for my milk to come in. I was producing very little but was assured that in a couple days my small breasts would be full and feeding. That didn’t happen and I felt like a failure. Arrangements were made to have members of the LaLeche League come to my home daily when we left the hospital. We tried the strangest things: Heineken beer a couple times a day, medication to increase lactation, running a tiny tube from a bag of formula behind my back, over my shoulder and taped to my nipple to feed baby but promote milk production through nipple stimulation. 

I kept waiting for “breast is best” to be true but mostly, every time I picked up my babe to provide what was needed for growth and comfort, I felt like a failure.

A colleague I admired was pregnant with her third child at the same time, and had given me this advice: All you have to do is love them, and keep them alive. I had begun to worry about whether or not I could do that on breast alone.

And with very little to drink, our sweet little redheaded infant was crying a lot, sleeping very little and beginning to drop weight. I spent those first few weeks in a haze of sleep, feedings, sobbing (both myself and our little one) and frustration with what I had thought would be so natural and easy.

At one point a doctor pointed out that the shape of my breasts might be to blame, as if I had any control over such a thing, and more medication and wireless bras were prescribed to bring on my milk. I wasn’t sleeping and though I couldn’t see it at the time, that feeling of failure was beginning to encompass my every thought and action; colouring every moment with my baby. “A touch of the baby blues,” my mom called it, a brush with postpartum depression. 

Despite the pressure from various medical sources to keep at it, sometime near the end of that first month of our first child’s life, I decided to quit the boob. I asked C to purchase bottles and formula so we could feed our baby. 

I had no idea that breastfeeding was going to be so hard—I hadn’t even purchased bottles in case it didn’t work out. And I lost count of how many times I thought “this is what I deserve for having such an easy pregnancy.”

Within a couple days, the baby was gaining weight, crying less and starting to sleep better. And I was happier—with a bottle in hand and my child in my arms, I could provide what was needed to grow and thrive. 

And now that we were bottle feeding, C was able to share the role and he relished that time with our son while I showered, slept or got out in the sun for a few moments to myself.

I remain shy about telling others how easy it was to conceive and carry my two children, because I know how difficult that first part can be for many women. And still, I carry some shame about the failure to breastfeed my babies, because it was not easier with our second child. But now, at 11 and 15 years old, growing, learning, at the stage where they are taking steps to figure out who they are apart from C and I, what unique contributions they will bring to the world, I can’t see any long term effects of “‘bottle over boob” in their lives. They are brilliant, kind, creative human beings. And my colleague was right, what they needed most was to be loved and kept alive… and I didn’t fail at that.

—Aren A. Morris