🌼 I was twenty, on the bedroom floor, and I had no idea what I was doing.
I can still see the room.
Me on the bedroom floor. Him in my arms.
So sleepy I could barely hold my head up.
And quiet.
That is the part that stays with me most — how quiet it was.
Just me and him, trying to figure it out together.
Neither of us knowing how.
I was twenty years old.
I Didn’t Know What I Was Doing
I want to be plain about that, because I think we skip over it.
I did not know what I was doing.
At all.
I had a breast pump.
I had no idea when to use it, or how, or for how long, or what any of it was supposed to accomplish.
I had never been shown.
I was holding a machine and guessing.
We were already supplementing, because the hospital had started it and sent me home with some formula to try.
So I was doing three things at once — feeding, pumping, bottles — with no understanding of how any of them fit together, or how they were affecting each other.
And I was alone.
Not alone in the world.
Just alone in that room, at that hour, with that problem.
There were not many people around me then.
And the ones who were… we did not talk about this.
It was not a thing we discussed.
The Voice That Was Already in My Head
Here is what made it so much harder than it needed to be.
I had a breast reduction at eighteen, and my doctor had warned me it could affect breastfeeding one day.
I wrote about that whole decision in → Breastfeeding After a Breast Reduction — What I Wish I’d Known at Eighteen.
So the whole time I was sitting on that floor struggling…
there was a voice telling me I had done this.
That this was my fault.
That I had chosen it two years earlier, without understanding what I was choosing.
That every hard feed was a consequence I had brought on myself.
I could not believe in myself for a second, because I had already decided I was the reason it was going wrong.
I put myself so far down.
And that is what made it harder to keep going.
I was already struggling with feeding. Then the self-blame turned into depression.
And the depression made everything else feel impossible.
I Tried for About a Week
That is how long I lasted.
A week of the floor, and the pump, and the guessing, and the voice.
Then the depression took over and I stopped.
I have carried that number around for fifteen years like it was evidence of something.
Only a week.
As though there is a required amount and I came up short.
I do not think that anymore.
Most days.
But it took me a very long time to get here.
The First Bottle
People ask about this like it should have been a big emotional moment.
It was not.
It was in the hospital, in the first days, before I had built any of this up in my head.
And he did good with it.
That is the whole memory.
He took it. He was fine. He was fed.
The grief did not arrive with the bottle.
It arrived later, on the floor, when I understood the bottle was going to be the answer and not the backup.
What I’d Go Back and Tell Her
I think about this more than almost anything else.
If I could get back into that room — sit down on the floor next to that twenty-year-old with her sleeping baby and her pump she did not know how to use — I know exactly what I would do.
I would tell her she was doing good.
That is it.
That is the whole thing.
Not fix her latch.
Not correct her pumping schedule, even though I know more about that now.
Just look her in the face and tell her that what she was doing right then — badly exhausted, at two in the morning — was already enough.
And then I would show her how.
Kindly.
Without making her feel small for not already knowing.
With what I know now, I think she would have been so much better off.
Not necessarily with more milk.
Just with less of the weight she was carrying on top of it.
What I Actually Needed
Looking back, I needed support.
I needed someone to sit with me and teach me.
To show me what the pump was for, when to use it, and how all the feeding and pumping and bottles were supposed to fit together.
I needed someone to explain that my breast reduction may have affected my supply.
I already knew it.
What I did not know was how to stop treating it like proof that I had failed my baby.
And I needed someone to look at me and tell me that we were going to be okay.
That he was fed.
That I was trying.
That formula was not a defeat.
I did not have any of those things.
You might not either.
That is why I am writing this down.
If You Are on Your Own Floor Right Now
I know how quiet it is.
I know how it feels to be holding a baby you love completely and feeling like you are already letting them down.
But I want you to hear this from someone who sat on her own bedroom floor fifteen years ago and has three kids now and a lot of distance from it.
A month is not a failure.
A week is not a failure.
A day is not a failure.
The number was never the point.
And whatever is happening with your supply — it is not a report card on you.
Bodies have reasons.
Sometimes there are physical ones that no amount of wanting it more can change.
You are not doing this wrong.
You may be doing something genuinely hard on almost no sleep, and you deserve support with it.
I hope, little by little, you can put down what you are blaming yourself for.
Your baby needs to be fed.
And you deserve to be cared for too.
Did you struggle with your first?
I would love to know what you would go back and tell yourself, if you could.
With love,
Rachel (RaiRai 💛)
→ Breastfeeding After a Breast Reduction — What I Wish I’d Known at Eighteen
→ My Breastfeeding Story: The Guilt I Carried, and What Finally Helped
→ Postpartum Isn’t What I Expected: My Honest Experience After 3 Babies
This is my own experience. It is not medical advice, and nothing here is a comment on how anyone else should feed their baby. If you are struggling with feeding, or with how you are feeling, please reach out to your provider or a lactation consultant — there is real help out there and you deserve it.
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