The day finally came. The day I felt ready to give Maci, my daughter, a milk bath using my remaining breast milk. I finally felt like I could create this experience for us and let it go, close that chapter, allow myself to feel all the feelings in one final moment.
This was the moment I placed her in my breast milk for her final (and only) milk bath.
I didnât get fancy. I didnât use flowers or fruit or anything other than all of my remaining two bags of breastmilk that have been sitting in my freezer for months now. I had imagined doing something elaborate and exciting that would create incredible photos. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted something so much more simple. I wanted it to just be us, an ordinary yet beautiful and special moment captured between the two of us. And it was perfect.Â
Those final few ounces that were left. Iâve been thinking about this moment a lot lately. How I felt so nervous about letting go and accepting my new journey on formula. The F word. The topic that can create such a diverse amount of opinions.
I am a formula mom.
If you are, too, I hope you donât feel like you need to justify why. And donât let someone try and convince you about the science or about how your experience wasnât âcriticalâ enough to switch. Or that you didnât try hard enough. Or that you werenât informed enough. Iâll be honest, I do wish I had more affordable resources at hand when this all happened to me. Women deserve to receive the care and proper guidance for breastfeeding. But the last thing they need is someone to throw unnecessary facts at them and shame them for what is now done. I canât bring my milk back. But I can try and prepare myself as much as possible for the next opportunity. When someone falls and gets hurt, the last thing they want to hear is that they should have avoided what they tripped on. Instead of stating the obvious, try helping them up instead.
Throughout the milk bath, she never stopped reaching for and patting on my boobs.
It was almost as if she knew what we were doing. She would look up at me and smile. Somehow she knew that a simple smile in our simple milk bath was exactly what my broken mama heart needed. And just like that, my heart began to heal.
Maybe next time breastfeeding will work for me.
Or maybe I will continue to be a formula mom. Either way, Maci and my future babes will be cradled in my arms as I feed them in whatever way that needs to be. They will be loved. They will be fed. They will be given what my journey is capable of providing. And they will grow faster than my heart can handle. And it will be beautiful.
This post originally appeared on Meg Bogg's Instagram and was republished with permission.
