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    A Man’s Perspective on Breastfeeding

    Dustin 07/31/2019
    Full disclosure- to be writing on the subject of breastfeeding is a little odd. I am not an expert in the field, nor any medical field. I also have never fed a child from my breast…my plumbing doesn’t work that way. I am however, a father of two children who were breastfed, and if my perspective can help in any way, I’ll add it to the conversation. 
                Breastfeeding, in my view, is just a continuation of the process by which we discover that women have super powers.  Seriously. The fact that from the moment of conception, everything a child needs to grow, enter this world, and then survive in it for the first portion of life is completely provided by his or her mother is absolutely amazing. I fully believe it is impossible to observe pregnancy, childbirth, and rearing an infant without having your view of women elevated. For our family, breastfeeding was a part of this process.  And while I could speak more to the idealistic image of nursing and how wonderful it is, in true male fashion I will speak to the practical side of my experience.
                First off, while there are many things foreign to anyone in preparing to become a parent, I don’t believe there was any area to which I was more clueless than nursing. The mechanics of the process are very simple.  Baby gets hungry, mom supplies food, and the cycle repeats. This is in fact, how things do work.  However, a few things that brief summary does not account for are:  latching, let downs, the frequency at which your child will eat, how long it will take your child to eat, manual pumps, electric pumps, how to power said pump in the car, ice packs, bottles, pump parts, lactation rooms, covers, milk supply, milk storage, traveling with milk, public opinions (which are very strong) about breastfeeding, how new mom feels she’s supposed to navigate those strong opinions while doing life… the list goes on. Caring for a child is complicated…I had no idea that simply feeding a child would be so involved. 
                And the double-edged sword of all these moving parts, from my male perspective, is that so much of the process is completely dependent on mom. My wife took far more middle of the night feedings with both of our children. She carried the bulk of the logistics of making everything work, and signed up for basically having her life run with a three-hour timer set between whatever activity she wanted/needed to do for the entirety of the time she was nursing. And while I was blessed by all of these responsibilities she took on, and while I appreciated the monetary savings and health benefits for our kids, I was also not able to feed our kids most of the time.  As an eager new dad who had already felt less connected to our kids than my wife (who had used her super powers to be physically connected to them while growing them in her body), I was a little envious of the time mom got to have with them. I didn’t have the thing that could magically make our daughter stop crying.  As a guy, we like to fix things- and that was a tool not in my belt, err… chest. 
                So, I decided my role was to be super dad/husband/nursing coach. I was going to stand at attention every time we called lactation to the room (which was every time our son needed to eat as new parents), I was going to learn the football hold, cradle hold, cross-cradle hold- every hold I could learn. I was going to remember all the things about feeding our kid that new-mom brain couldn’t remember. I was going to be aware of how my wife was feeling about nursing our kid in whatever setting we were in, and figure out how to make accommodations for her.  And while I was certainly not perfect, and still didn’t get to be the guy who could make food appear miraculously for our children at a moment’s notice, I did get to care for my family. I got to watch my wife grow as a mom, our kids get awesome food, and by the time it was all said and weaned… I got to feed them plenty. I’m thankful breastfeeding worked for our family, and I’m thankful I got to grow as a husband and father through the process.
     
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