When Feeding the Baby Takes You Back to the Birth

Feeding is supposed to be the quiet part. A dim room, the baby against you, nobody else awake. For some women it is the part of the day when the birth comes back.

It can happen at the breast, at the pump or with a bottle in your hand at three in the morning. The baby settles in, and before you have decided anything your shoulders are up, your jaw is tight, and you are lying in the hospital bed again. You finish the feed. You do it well. Nobody watching would know.

You may feel as though your body is needed constantly, with little room to notice your own experience.

You may notice reminders during a feed: a position, a sound, the time of night, or a piece of equipment. Those details can be part of what you want to discuss, without assuming they explain every difficult feeling around feeding.

You are often propped up and half reclined, the way you were in the hospital bed. It is often night, when the worst hours of the birth may have happened. If you had a cesarean, the baby may lie right across the incision. The pump has the steady, mechanical sound of hospital equipment, and for many women the first time they used one was in a hospital room. And a feed is hard to walk away from halfway through, which is close to how the birth felt.

If you notice that connection, you can bring it into a conversation with a therapist. If pain or other physical symptoms are involved, discuss those with the appropriate medical or feeding professional.

For many women, feeding help in the hospital arrived as hands. Someone positioned the baby, adjusted your breast, pressed the baby's head toward you, sometimes after asking and sometimes not. Most of those people meant well and were short on time. After a birth in which your body was examined, moved and decided about by other people, their hands could land as one more thing done to you.

At home the handling changes form. The baby pulls, the pump pulls, and your body is needed every few hours, day and night. Plenty of mothers feel touched out. After a traumatic birth it can go further:

• 01

  A flinch at the latch, or an urge to pull away that frightens you

• 02

  Going numb or far away during a feed until it is over

• 03

  Dread that builds as the next feed comes due

• 04

  Irritation when anyone touches you between feeds, even kindly

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  Shame about the whole thing, since feeding was meant to be the close part

These reactions can be upsetting. You can describe them without deciding what they say about your love for your baby or assuming that you already know the cause.

If the birth went off the plan, feeding can quietly become the place to make up for it. You could not control how the baby arrived. You can, it seems, control this. So you track every feed, every ounce and every minute, and you read the number on the pediatrician's scale as a grade.

The pressure arrives from every direction. The hospital had a view. The internet has a hundred. Your mother has one, and so does the stranger behind you in the coffee line. Breast, pump, bottle or a mix of all three, someone is always ready to suggest you are doing it wrong.

You may hear a harsh judgment in your own thoughts when feeding does not go as planned. That judgment is something we can discuss, along with the expectations you are carrying and the support you need.

When a feeding plan changes, because nursing ends sooner than you meant it to or a bottle becomes necessary, it can feel like the birth all over again. A plan you cared about, changed by events you could not control, and a voice in your head calling it failure.

Questions about latch, supply, weight gain, formula, or physical symptoms belong with your lactation consultant, pediatrician, or medical provider. Therapy does not decide how you feed your baby. We can discuss the memories, feelings, and expectations that come up around feeding.

In therapy, we can discuss the memories or feelings that come up during feeding, the pressure to get it right, and the parts you have found difficult to say aloud. I draw from Brainspotting, somatic approaches, and Internal Family Systems, with the focus and pace discussed together.

You can begin with one part of the experience: a sound you associate with the hospital, the pressure you feel when a plan changes, or something you have found difficult to say. We can consider the support you need without asking you to make a feeding decision in therapy.

Sessions are weekly, in person in Prince George or by telehealth while you are in Virginia. Discuss childcare, privacy, and interruptions before scheduling rather than assuming an online session can be fitted around a feed.

If feeding keeps taking you back to that room, request a free consultation.

Make Room for Your Experience

Request a free consultation to discuss the memories or feelings that arise around feeding, while keeping feeding care with the appropriate professionals.