Titty Quest - A Husband's Perspective

Titty Quest

A blog post from guest-writer Jeff Wirth

 

A quest is when you embark on a journey with a goal at the very end which motivates you to overcome all the adversity you encounter along the way. Hopefully, before a person begins their quest they will learn about and acquire any tools they will need to survive. It’s like Zelda. In every Zelda game, you always get a sword and shield before you have to start fighting stuff that wants to kill you. In fact, there are failsafes in each game which actually PREVENT you from wandering into a dangerous situation unless you are prepared for it with the right equipment. 

Unfortunately, learning to breastfeed is not very much like a Zelda game. Rather, a titty quest is like skipping the part where you learn the controls, skipping the part where you get a sword and shield, and proceeding directly to the final boss. You may somehow learn how to defeat this grotesque creature with your bare hands, but you’re going to have to die like a thousand times in the process. You may want to scream. You may want to take the controller and hurl it at the television. You may say to yourself, “This is probably the dumbest game ever. How sick am I that I willingly put myself through this crap?” But, if you’re my wife, you keep trying and trying because you believe that getting to the end will somehow make it all worth it. And if you’re her husband, you admire her tenacity, her strength, and her spirit. And you also hope she’s right about the end being worth it because I swear to God if we beat this boss and we find out our princess is in another castle I’m going to **** some **** up.

Once upon a time... Everett, Emily, and I were at the hospital. There we were, the three of us, just enjoying each other’s company after the nurses had bathed Everett and measured him in a variety of ways. My son’s first attempts at breastfeeding were apathetic at best, and who could blame him? His stomach was still full after birth, and remained that way for the next twenty four hours. There was no urgency because there was no hunger.

             

But soon enough, hunger struck. And when it strikes, new mothers are kind of screwed because their milk isn’t in yet. Even worse, it doesn’t come in until AFTER their baby learns how to suck on their nipple properly. So, all a new mother can do is shove their boob in their child’s face and hope they go to town on it. Sometimes, mom’s boobs fit perfectly into baby’s mouth and mom gets her milk early and baby is a naturally gifted little titty sucking hoover and everyone is happy. But most of the time, learning how to breastfeed your child is an arduous process. Some women call it a journey. Some call it a cluster****. Both are right, I think.

          

Now, before I get all huffy and puffy, I want you all to know that I respect the nurses who served us at the hospital very much. They helped us change his diaper. They taught us how to swaddle. They normalized his weight loss and taught us what else we could expect in the first few weeks. They were extremely helpful and patient with us, and I don’t doubt they made Everett’s birth and initial acclimation to planet Earth much easier than it could have been. Unfortunately, some of the worst advice is often given by well-meaning people, like when one of the other nurses told us NOT to wake him up ever to feed him. Obviously she was trained in the year 45 BC.

             

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce a character which has served only to make my son’s ability to nurse exponentially more difficult. It’s called a nipple shield. This piece of plastic, designed to fit over a woman’s breast, is shaped like a cone, with little holes at the tip through which breast milk may flow. Basically, it’s like a perforated little top hat for a woman’s boob, not only a fashion statement in and of itself but also a useful prop for titty ventriloquists. Ventrittyoquists. The nurse who gave it to us explained that some people are just freaks and they have flat nipples, and that the nipple shield allows the children of these unfortunate creatures to establish a firm latch onto their mother’s breasts.

           

Besides making my poor wife feel like a flat-nippled mutant, I’d like to point out that the nurse’s assessment of my wife’s chest was just plain wrong. I’ve seen my wife’s chest after a typical feeding, and I have a simple question: Miss Nursypants, aren’t things which are supposed to be flat generally NOT pointy? I mean, you practically have to purchase lift tickets to get to the top of them.

             

Anyway, we had no idea what the hell we were doing and so we deferred to (what we mistakenly assumed to be) the expertise of the nurse and agreed to try the shield. It seemed to work ok at first when Everett wasn’t hungry and didn’t really care, but we learned a few days later that even a plastic titty top hat can’t help when your son throws a frustration-induced tantrum because he hasn’t learned how to get at the food he wants. He knows it’s right there and he’s quite literally starving, but he can’t get it. Did I mention the shield wasn’t working?

             

We were concerned. We didn’t know what to do. Our miserably dehydrated and undernourished son was beginning to look more and more like a pissed off raisin with each passing moment. So, a few days in we broke down and gave him a bottle of formula. Ah, his first bottle. Christ, it was basically his first actual MEAL. I remember that moment vividly. It was like watching a starving beggar chow down on a meatlover’s pizza. After he was done, he zonked out and didn’t wake up for hours. We were relieved. We also kinda felt like hipster jerks who cared more about our own au naturale pro breastfeeding agenda than our son’s health.

             

When we reported to the pediatrician’s office later that week, we were told Everett was under weight and that we should give him a bottle after each nursing attempt. But oh don’t you dare take that shield off, because if there’s one thing Everett truly despises at this point it’s a titty without a top hat. We agreed, mostly because at this point we felt like NOT using these plastic miracles--especially the bottle--was tantamount to deliberate starvation. What soon developed was a breastfeeding routine which helped to solidify Everett’s titty phobia even more. See, the thing about the nipples on bottles is that they are perfectly shaped to fit inside an infant’s mouth--in fact, they are more perfectly shaped than an actual woman’s nipple could ever be. That is, unless your nipples are shaped like giant uvulas that stick straight out, which is weird and I’m sorry.

             

So, faithfully armed with a nipple shield and Ol’ Lefty in one hand and a bottle in the other, we committed to our new schedule. Every time Emily gave him the breast he kicked and screamed and didn’t get any food. Then, we would give him a bottle and he’d shotgun it like a boss. I mean, think about it. With a behavior reinforcement schedule like this, we were basically TEACHING him to associate titties with intense anxiety and frustration. Poor guy is probably going to have PTSD when he goes to a strip club for the first time.

            

Fast forward a week or two, right around mid-December. We’ve about had it with the shield. This thing will fall off and frantically scramble under the couch if you so much as look at it the wrong way. And it seems to know exactly the worst possible moment to detach itself, too. Like, right when there is a bunch of breastmilk pooled at the base, it will take a dive, spilling milk all over the place. Believe me, this spilled milk is definitely worth crying over, and apparently it is also worth my wife going into a blind rage one day and hurtling the goddam thing across the room. I swear it made a trail of blood as it slowly sank to the floor from where it struck the wall.

On that same day my wife killed the shield we had a lactation specialist named Veronica or Deb or something come over and basically confirm every doubt we had about the direction we had received from the hospital and our pediatrician. No, nipple shields aren’t usually necessary. Yes, nipple confusion is indeed a thing. Yes, routinely using a bottle will make breastfeeding nearly impossible. No, your nipples are not flat. Actually, can you please take a step back because your giant pointy nipples are stabbing me in the face thanks. Also that same day Emily got Everett to latch onto her ACTUAL BOOB for like two hours, which was a first. We also learned that he is capable of getting much more food when there isn’t a barrier of plastic between it and his mouth. That’s just pure science, right there.

            

 Fast forward another couple of weeks and you’ll find us in the present. Everett is getting pretty good at latching on efficiently and my mutant wife is having to use the shield less and less. That’s a good and bad thing, but I’ll just focus on the bad for now. Basically, my son is latched so well and sucking so hard that it seems like he’s trying to tear Emily’s nipples right off. This is because he learned to breastfeed on a nipple shield and sucking this hard was the only thing that worked. Actually, we are talking about how much fun all this is as I’m typing, and Emily just said, “Imagine hot needles which are constantly poking into your nipple. That’s what I feel like all the time.” I just keep thinking about that scene from Mad Men where Betty Draper would just sit there and feed her baby a bottle whenever it got hungry. No mess. No fuss. No excruciating pain. No top hats. That seems kinda nice right about now.

             

What have we learned? Well, I suppose what we’ve learned is that even medical professionals are capable of giving advice that sucks ass. We’ve also learned that there is an ideological war being waged between these same medical professionals and a community including midwives and lactation consultants who prefer more natural methods. By the time new mothers realize this, they are already in between these two fighting factions and they’re just dodging bullets. The only way for mothers to avoid being made into mincemeat is to pick a side, which is just another example of how every issue in this country tends to degenerate into a petty bipartisan feud. My pediatrician actually asked us, “Did you see a lactation specialist? Did she contradict what I told you?” All the while he was grinning sardonically. How about just give terrified new mothers ALL the facts and let them make an informed decision? How about stop shoving a ****ing nipple shield onto to someone who doesn’t need it, thereby setting their progress back by about four weeks? One thing is clear: it’s an incredibly political world, and parents need to look after their own interests, and to do that they need to do a LOT of research beforehand.

             

In conclusion, playing Zelda is a lot easier than learning to breastfeed your child.