exhausted.

I never, in my wildest dreams, would have thought it would be so hard to feed a child. I decided from the beginning that I was going to breastfeed Savannah. It's something I really wanted to do for her. There is not a more ideal food for babies than breast milk and I was determined to give it to her. I had a really hard time with it (OUCH!!!!!) for the first couple weeks, and with some fantastic encouragement from a few friends who had it as bad, and worse, than me I made it through the first six weeks. Six weeks was a "benchmark" for the other girls and I was determined to make it that far. They were right. At six weeks things started to feel more "normal". Except for one thing. The screaming. You would think I was throwing daggers down this kids throat or something. She will scream.... and she will scream often. It is so frustrating, exhausting and disappointing to feel as though you can't successfully feed your child. I'm trying to do the best thing possible for her, and she screams bloody murder.

If you read back a few posts, you will read that she refuses a bottle. Since then she has gotten much better! She will take one and sometimes without a fight. I started cutting the breast milk with formula to entice her to take it. It worked. Since then I've made the bottles half and half. Sometimes its almost easier to feed her with a bottle than the breast!

I'm tired. I'm tired of breast feeding. I'm tired of it being a fight every time I try to feed her. I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired of talking myself into formula feeding, then back out of it. I'm tired of being nervous every time she gets hungry. I'm just tired. Breastfeeding, and now feeding in general, has probably consumed 90% of my prayer life in the past 10 weeks. I had no idea it could be so hard. But it is. It has me down. It brings me to tears at least every other day. And I'm at a loss for what to do.