From the time Mr. Lion and I started discussing starting a family, we were in agreement about what our priorities would be when it came to raising kids. One of these priorities was that it was important to us that we continue to put our marriage first, even when we became parents. This is a somewhat controversial way of thinking, and I know not everyone feels this way, but for us this is what makes the most sense. We believe that when we put our marriage first, in turn, our children will benefit from having a cohesive family unit and parents who are on the same team.

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Our first child-free adventure in years!

This all sounds great in theory…but in reality, what does this actually look like for new parents?  I have wrestled with the practicality of how to live out this theory in my first years as a mom, but I think in the thick of things when your little people are so very demanding, this looks very different than it will when our kids are a bit older. I can’t always drop what I am doing when Mr. Lion has something he wants to discuss, and neither can he. Some days it is all we can do to make it through the day and collapse on the couch for a few minutes before bed, and I think this is just our reality for now. We make time for date nights and conversation about things other than the kids, but “choosing my marriage” really didn’t feel like a challenge.

Recently, however, for the first time since becoming a parent, I had to make a difficult choice. When faced with two decisions, I had to make the one that benefited my marriage over the one that benefited my baby. And while having these values in the background made making this decision possible, it was far from easy.

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To tell this story, I have to go back a bit. Mr. Lion is pretty much a rock star as a husband and dad. I think the best word I could use to describe him is steady. Whereas I am emotional and my moods tend to change on a dime, Mr. Lion is easy-going and not bothered by much of anything. This is a good thing for us, because it is been one heck of a year for me in the emotion department. Despite my personal struggles, Mr. Lion manages to keep a positive attitude, and has really been my rock through the last turbulent year of my life. I truly think I fell in love with him all over again watching him care for us all so effortlessly when I was on bed rest this winter. Without a complaint or hesitation he immediately took over the responsibilities of taking care of our toddler and household, despite the fact that he was the only one working and supporting our family. It was humbling to me to let him take over the things that were my turf, but I was able to let go a bit, not so worried about the little things because at that time the most important thing for me to do was to protect our littlest one who couldn’t protect herself.

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My favorite rock star, keeping all the kids entertained at a 4th of July party

Fast forward to a few months later, when our baby girl was born. Within a week of returning home from the hospital, everyone in our house, except me, came down with a nasty stomach virus that circulated for two full weeks. This left me, sleep deprived from caring for a newborn and recovering from a c-section, to take care of everyone else too. While I would like to say I was able to step up with the same resolve and positive attitude that my husband had when caring for me, that is unfortunately not the case. This experience became the beginning of a deep resentment that I honestly still do not completely understand.

As the weeks went on, my attitude toward Mr. Lion got worse and worse. The smallest things would trigger an extreme reaction from me…one that was completely irrational. Most of the time I was able to keep these feelings in because fighting was even more exhausting, but sometimes I was just so angry that words would explode out of my mouth before I had the sense to catch them. While I was on the lookout for postpartum depression and  I knew I wasn’t myself,  I dismissed any thought that this could be the cause. My love for Baby Lion and her brother was so incredibly fierce, almost to the detriment of my relationship with Mr. Lion. Any time he did something differently than me, especially when the kids were involved, I would perceive it in such a negative way that it filled me with what I can only describe as rage. But instead of recognizing that this was a problem with myself, I directed all of my energy into blaming Mr. Lion. The baby is crying? He must not have burped her correctly. The toddler is throwing a tantrum? What did he do to make him so mad? I walked around for more than 4 months in a constant state of anger, fully believing in this irrational state that my husband was completely to blame. I was mostly able to keep it together on the outside, but the random emotional outbursts started to take a toll on our relationship, and left me feeling pretty awful most of the time we were together.

Around this time, things also started getting really hard with my son as well. Any time I sat down to feed the baby he would morph into a totally different kid. He became attention seeking and very, very difficult. Baby Lion is a “snacker,” so these feedings were happening very frequently. Being alone with the kids by myself all day became really hard. I never really knew how much Baby Lion was eating when she was nursing, so I had no way to predict when she would need to eat again. Her feedings were constantly interrupted as I needed to keep her brother from injuring himself, and often after an interruption she wouldn’t want to eat again…until about 20 minutes later when she was suddenly starving.

I know many people successfully navigate this hurdle, but for me it seemed insurmountable. I slowly started to connect the fact that I was stressed and angry all the time with the constant uncertainty of balancing a nursing infant with an active toddler, and wondered if maybe things would seem more manageable if I stopped breastfeeding. With Little Lion I exclusively pumped until 10 months, and then switched to formula and never regretted it. The more I read and the more I wrestled with the idea, it seemed like switching straight to formula would be an okay option this time too. Despite the fact that the breastfeeding itself was easy and my supply was fine, the other challenges were just so exhausting. While I fully recognize that breast milk is superior for babies, I really started to feel that it wasn’t *enough* better to justify the amount of time it was taking and the stress it was causing, and I really hoped that by switching to formula I might start to feel less anxiety.

So we weaned. I, thankfully, am not prone to clogged ducts or mastitis, so I did this somewhat abruptly. Within a week I was no longer nursing or pumping at all. I had a few days of feeling really really sad and questioning my decision, but I knew this was to be expected. I had read about the effects of sudden weaning, and among them can be an increase of feelings of depression and anxiety, because of the drop in hormones that occurs when breastfeeding stops.

Then, out of nowhere, something unexpected happened. One day while we were all together, Mr. Lion did something (as spouses sometimes do) that I found to be mildly annoying. That’s it. I was mildly annoyed. Not filled with rage. Not wanting to scream in anger. Just a little bit irritated. Not only that, but I was able to recognize that just a week before, I WOULD have been ragey and angry about the same situation. This continued throughout the next few days. Suddenly, without warning or any sort of transition period, I went from being angry all.the.time. to back to my normal self. It was bizarre to say the least, like being outside of myself and looking at the “past” me, wondering what on earth had been happening. I was able to see clearly for the first time just how bad things really had been.

This led to a lot of research on what could be the cause of this odd turn of events. Sure, I was stressed by breastfeeding and caring for my toddler. But the level of frustration and emotion I had been dealing with could not have just been caused by being sleep deprived and overwhelmed. There must have been more to it than that. I recognized now that it was far too extreme.

While I am not a therapist and I know just enough about psychology to be dangerous (ha ha), I read several articles about oxytocin, which is the “love hormone” that in most people helps to encourage feelings of attachment and bonding. This hormone is greatly increased in breastfeeding mothers. This is why many women will experience depression when weaning – the loss of oxytocin can cause this reaction.

But my reaction to no longer breastfeeding was the complete opposite. I felt so so much better! So I did some more reading, and I discovered that in some circumstances and in some people in particular, oxytocin can actually lead to an increase in negative thoughts instead. I won’t go too far into the science behind it (I have some articles linked below in case you are interested in reading more) but suffice it to say, I was feeling pretty okay about my decision to wean. I had no idea just how horribly I had been feeling and acting, and I felt so much happier than I had felt in a very long time.

But of course, things are never that simple. About 2 weeks after starting Baby Lion on formula and seeing that she was doing well, we decided to switch her to the same (much less expensive) formula that Little Lion had when he was a baby. This seemed okay at first, but after a day or two it became clear that she was not responding well to the switch. She was gassy and uncomfortable, and after a particularly rough weekend she cried the better part of a 14 hour drive home from visiting family.

Suddenly I was overcome with guilt. Something about being trapped in the car for many hours with a baby you cannot comfort does crazy things to you. In fact, I think it even caused me to have a sudden surge of engorgement, which I hadn’t had for days. With this, I’m sure, came a sudden surge of hormones as well, and I cried for most of the ride home right along side Baby Lion. I spent hours looking up how to re-lactate after weaning, desperately trying to figure out how I could breastfeed again. After all, if I had just been able to “suck it up,” to keep my toddler under control, to do what millions of other moms manage every day, my baby wouldn’t be in pain. What kind of mom would deprive their baby of breast milk when she had the ability to provide it? How selfish was I that I sacrificed a supply that many moms work so hard for? That night in the car Mr. Lion and I had the biggest fight I think we have ever had, as he tried to grapple with what on earth was happening to his wife, and I tried to deal with the perceived crisis I was facing. He, of course, was completely supportive of whatever I decided, but through my frustration and hormones I couldn’t hear anything he was saying.

We got home from our trip and I rushed Baby Lion to the nursery to nurse her to sleep. She snuggled into my arm and was immediately comforted. I rocked her for a long time that night, trying to make sense of what was happening, desperately trying to figure out what I should do. If I wanted to build my supply back up, I really didn’t have any time to waste. It would take a lot of work, but from what I read it would be possible, with lots of pumping and lots of nursing. Was that really the right decision to make? What would that do to me? Would I go back to feeling crazy all the time? Would we be able to survive eight more months of this without me doing permanent damage to our relationship?

I went to bed that night and I didn’t pump, though I thought about it for sure. I hoped that a good night of sleep would clear my mind and that I would be able to think things through in the morning. And I did… I woke up, made my sweet girl a bottle from what still remained of my freezer stash of breast milk, and thought through my options with fresh eyes. My overwhelming and immediate reaction the day before was all the more proof that breastfeeding was not going to work for us. The fact that just that one rush of hormones had me completely and totally depressed and hysterical was really a wake up call to me, especially after several days of feeling “normal” again. I now understood just how horribly I had treated Mr. Lion over the last few months, and I knew that there was a very good chance that if I started breastfeeding again I would quickly revert to that person. I did not want to be that person.

Despite the fact that breast milk would be better for my daughter, and that going back to nursing would be the best thing for her nutritionally, it was not the best thing for our family emotionally. And in the grand scheme of things, Baby Lion having a mom AND dad who are stable, who work together, who are a team, is much more valuable for her than the kind of food she eats. Plenty of babies thrive on formula, and if the one we were feeding her didn’t work, that didn’t mean we had no more options.

We decided to try a sensitive formula, and Baby Lion is doing much better than before. We still have some issues with her eating and digestion, and I would be lying if I told you I believed I made the right decision 100% of the time. I am still struggling with the guilt that creeps in sometimes, when I know my baby is in pain and believe (completely irrationally) that it is “my fault.”

But in those moments, I am trying to cling to the truth…that sometimes there is no perfect solution, and that sometimes what is best for the whole family isn’t always the thing that is best for any one individual in the moment. For me, putting my marriage first means forcing myself to see the big picture. I am sad about having to stop breastfeeding, and I still struggle with hoping that this was the right decision. But I am happy to feel like myself again, and happy to have my best friend back. Slowly I am learning that it is impossible to be a perfect parent, and that all we can do is the best we can do, and have peace knowing that it is enough.

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This happy girl seems to be doing just fine

More information about oxytocin