Life in a Nutshell

The Difference Between Letting Go and Giving Up

I looked down into my new son's face and sobbed big ugly tears. He just could not stop screaming. At close to a week old, my milk hadn't come in fully and he was so very hungry.

He'd lost weight since birth and also had a lip tie. His little stomach was in knots for nourishment of any kind, and I had nothing to give past a little colostrum.

The odds were against us.

His face was bright red and scrunched, his body stiff, as waves of anger and hunger emitted from his tiny body.

His screams echoed through my heart cracking it further with each unfulfilled feeding. Suffering from weeping blood blisters on both nipples and pain still radiating through my body from a forty-six-hour labor and delivery, I gave up.

Mentally, physically and emotionally, I just gave up. I wanted to walk away from it all but knew I couldn't.

Even with all the fenugreek supplements, lactation cookies, and several sessions with a consultant, nothing was working. My 'geriatric' age, (they actually called it a 'geriatric pregnancy'), the induction at birth, and the fertility issues that had plagued me since I was in my teens just weren't allowing my milk to fully come in.

In abject misery, I called my husband and begged him to buy some goat's milk. He had planned for this scenario happening and came home within minutes with a quart of low heat pasteurized organic milk from a local goat dairy.

I had done some research beforehand. I wanted to refuse powdered formula if I could at all help it. I was raised with a family milk goat on cattle ranches. I knew them and trusted their motives far more than the billion-dollar corporations that made profit from feeding America's children powdered oils, processed proteins and sugar in place of natural milk.

I heated it up and put two ounces in a small bottle. He was still wearing himself out with hunger wails every hour as I still tried to latch him on and give him whatever I had.

I remember vividly the moment he had the bottle; his little eyebrows went up in surprise, his eyes closed, his lips curled back in a milky smile, and he peacefully drank the whole thing. Afterward he fell into the longest, deepest sleep he'd ever had to that point.

I was happily devastated.

I knew I had to feed my baby, but I had wanted to be able to be the perfect mother that breastfed her child to a healthy and full year. But that was not the case for us. After that day, I accepted the let down and did more research.

Like me, many parents don't have a choice and have to supplement their children with formula. I finally understood the need, and a huge cascade of empathy for my fellow humans billowed out of my heart.

Historically "nanny" goats were used as wet nurses when a mother couldn't produce milk. From my research I learned their milk protein is the most similar to human milk protein of any other domestic animal and is therefore much easier for babies to digest.

I talked to my son's pediatrician and a dietician, and we came up with a recipe for fresh goat's milk formula that they approved. So that's what I did. I made my son home-made formula for the first year of his life.

The cost per bottle was much less than powdered, and that's even with specific vitamins, oils and low glycemic coconut or brown rice syrup added to the milk mixture for the proper carbohydrate to protein ratio.

I would make a half-gallon at a time, and my little monster was drinking up to forty-eight ounces of the stuff per day by the time he was six months old.

There's a lot of bias around breastfeeding your baby versus formula feeding, and I initially wanted to be one of those Instagram perfect mothers who had smiling babies worthy of stock photo fame, but life doesn't work that way.

He was a messy, barfy, noisy, laughing reminder of why I needed to throw my expectations out the window.

I had to change my priorities. Instead of giving up, I realized I needed to let go. (Queue the Frozen song.) I had to let go of following through with my own idealized version of the future as I wanted to see it. I had to adapt, modify and change my goals.

It was funny, I had always liked kids. You know, like a nice hobby.

Something I could pick up like an interesting crochet project on a rainy afternoon and then put down again. However, I had never wanted it so badly that I felt like I was missing something. I was fulfilled. I had a career, a husband that I loved, and animals that were my babies.

That was sufficient, I called it good.

However, I wasn't prepared for the punch drunk, sloppy, soul wrenching, heart ripping, self-sacrificing love that this little person could wring from me.

It was a biological imperative. I get that. But it was also a gift from God.

For years, we had tried to determine what life had in store for us. Planning, saving, projecting income levels with purchases. What did retirement mean? Was it worth setting aside extra funds or not? What about investments? A new vehicle? A vacation?

We had what we thought was a decent life. Not luxurious, not lavish, but we could pay our bills, and we owned a home. Then I got pregnant. I was old. Women at forty-one aren't supposed to have babies for the first time, they're supposed to have kids in high school, or a grandchild on the way.

I was terrified. I wasn't prepared for this.

We weren't planning on this contingency, it had been at least twelve years of trying for a family, then being told by doctors that without fertility treatment it wouldn't happen. The last several years we'd moved beyond the point of wanting it.

We had given up. It wasn't in our future, that ship had sailed. We had to move on from the dream of parenthood. Letting go is never what you actively want to do, but it seemed to be something we had to do.

Personal choice never seemed to play a part in it. And I'm fully convinced the universe has a well-developed sense of humor.

After a while, things fell into place, and sacrifices were made. We counted the costs and made some hard choices. We sold our home, to rent a smaller house, but the equity gained provided a way for me to stay home and be a mom for most of the first year, and if we were lucky, I could continue a part-time career thereafter.

Time is more important than money, and time was something I could never get back.

Our son was worth more than any income I could earn, and being there for him was something I will never regret. I wouldn't have learned this had I not let go of the perceived security money can provide.

So, now it is several years later. We have no 401k, very little retirement contingency. We rent our home and have one car. It's not a financially secure set up. But we are both employed and can pay basic bills. Plus, we don't have significant debt, which is something I'm extremely grateful for. We are so very lucky, and I count my blessings every day.

I have a healthy, happy, well-adjusted eight-year-old that calls me mommy. He has a  sense of humor that won't quit and has a life-plan of becoming a famous YouTuber making Hot Wheels junkyards and dioramas.

Well, that's the plan this week, anyway. Go for it, kiddo. I'll try not to tell you that YouTube will most likely be obsolete by the time you're an adult.

My life doesn't have any resemblance to the image I had in mind twenty years ago, of where I'd be today. But I sure wouldn't trade where I am now for anything else. There are so many things I could have gleaned from this journey, but the biggest is the most obvious.

Don't give up, just let go.

Let go of what you thought your life was going to be like. Let go of how successful you thought you should be by now. And let go of what other's expectations of success look like. We each have our own path to walk, and our own story to write.

The best parts of life are the pieces we can't predict.

Those parts are what stretch us, shape us and let us grow to become the people we are meant to be.

I haven't given up. I will never give up. But I will let go and see what happens.