A Love Letter to New Moms
I know firsthand how brutal and beautiful postpartum can be. When I had my daughter in 2022, I was a young mom who thought I was prepared for what was coming. I was determined to breastfeed exclusively, clinging to the belief that I would recover quickly and seamlessly step into motherhood. I thought it would be natural and easy to pick up. I had no idea how much I didn’t know.
As a newborn care specialist, I was surrounded by babies every day. But nothing—nothing—prepared me for the raw, unfiltered reality of postpartum. I had seen countless mothers navigate those early days, yet I never truly understood the depth of their exhaustion, the silent struggles they carried, and the way society expects them to smile through it all. I thought I knew everything I needed to know. I was so, so wrong.
I was induced at 38 weeks due to preeclampsia. My induction went as planned with minimal complications, however my daughter’s clavicle was broken during birth. Then, just hours after birth, she was diagnosed with a pulmonary heart defect—something no scan had caught. Within 2 hours of birth, I was consumed with guilt and blamed myself for her complications. I tried to latch her as soon as possible after birth, but she was in too much pain to nurse. A nurse handed me a pump and a nipple shield, offering little guidance beyond instructions to “figure it out” every two hours. My colostrum was barely there, but I obeyed, desperate to do everything right.
The next day, the hospital’s lactation consultant visited. She had 30 other moms to see and only ten minutes for me. She told me I wasn’t trying hard enough, then roughly forced my crying newborn onto my breast. When she couldn’t get her to latch either, she told me to pump and book an appointment with a private lactation consultant. Hours later, I was discharged— completely consumed by guilt and shame. At home, I continued pumping and attempting to latch her, but my output wasn’t enough. By day two, she was inconsolable with hunger. My husband, who had never even held a newborn before she was born, was trying his hardest, but we were drowning.
That first night home, I found myself crumpled on the kitchen floor in a diaper, with stitches in places I couldn’t even bring myself to look at in the mirror, and pumps hooked to my boobs like sucker fish while holding a sample can of formula—the one I swore I’d never need but had kept “just in case.” Listening to her cry, something inside me broke. That night, I fed my baby formula.
The guilt was soul-crushing. It shouldn’t have been. The harmful rhetoric that "breast is best" or that a mother should only give her newborn breastmilk without thought for the mother's best interest, is what led me to treating my postpartum body like a dairy cow. With no thought for my humanity or respect for my body that just created life, and roared her into the world.
The moment she drank that bottle, she slept for hours. And for the first time in days, so did I.
When I woke up, I had rested enough to look at things rationally. (Sometimes sleep really does fix A LOT). I booked an appointment with a lactation consultant, who gave me pointers on adjusting my pump even before I saw her. That day, my milk came in, and I was able to feed my daughter.
We worked tirelessly for months, overcoming latch issues, pain, and frustration. After her clavicle healed and we addressed her lip tie, we finally got the hang of breastfeeding. We nursed for almost a year. But in those 12 months, I did it all—I exclusively pumped, exclusively breastfed, combo-fed with formula, and eventually transitioned fully to formula when I dried up at 11 months. It was one of the most grueling, emotional, and transformative experiences of my life. I wouldn’t change any of it. Every struggle, every tear, every moment of doubt led me to where I am now: devoted to caring for postpartum mothers and their babies. But I will never forget the desperation, the loneliness, and the guilt the first few weeks of motherhood came with.
To the new mom reading this: You are not alone. You are not failing. Your worth is not measured by ounces or schedules or expectations placed upon you by others. You are the perfect mother for your baby, no matter how you choose to feed them, no matter how many times you feel like you’re stumbling in the dark. Trust yourself. Lean on those who lift you up. Give yourself the grace you so freely give to others. And please, please remember—you deserve rest, care, and support just as much as your baby does. Moms should never be judged for how they feed their babies, every situation is different and it is never easy. There is so much nuance in discussions surrounding feeding because it is so different with every mom and baby and it is such an intuitive, sacred act.
For my moms who deliver babies with health complications: You need to know, there is nothing you did that caused this. Holding onto guilt for something that is out of your control steals your joy, and you, my friend, deserve all the joy and love the world has to offer. You will be strong for your baby, you will do absolutely everything in your power to give them the best shot at life. I know this, because you already have in pregnancy. Your track record is amazing! Strength comes with time and experience in this world, and your strength will only grow with each obstacle thrown your way on this journey. We’re mothers, we will endure. You will learn that your strength is far more expansive than you ever knew. You are not alone.
This is my story, but it carries the echoes of the pain and primal instincts of mothers everywhere. Postpartum should be a time of healing, not of guilt and shame. Mothers need and deserve support during their postpartum journey just as much as their babies. As a postpartum doula, my purpose is to care for you as a mother, so that you can rest and recover for you AND your baby. To sit with you in the quiet moments in the middle of the night when the world expects you to be strong, and remind you that you already are, and you are not alone. To help you trust your intuition, because it has always been there, even when the noise of expectation drowns it out.
I often wonder how different my story could have been with more support, more education, more compassion. With every fiber of my being, I hope I can be that difference for the mothers I am privileged to serve.
