Plus, breast pumps are often inefficient and painful. I tried for a couple of days. Then it was like, “Nope!”. I also learned pretty early on that actual useful help and advice when you need it is hard to come by.

I didn’t have much trouble with breast feeding once I got past the initial hurdle, it was for the convenience of having someone else take care of her that I even bothered trying because I didn’t need to. I took 2 gap years from work during her infancy. Pumping also didn’t go well because she would never take a bottle until we started giving her fruit infused water in the bottle. Strawberries. Kids LOVE strawberries. That worked better, and allowed a slow transition to regular milk, warmed up to fill in. It bought me more time for a break. Nana got trapped in traffic construction once and was out of what I sent before she would be hungry again, so she got her a strawberry milkshake and had the clerk put it in her bottle when she finally could stop to feed all the kids. That worked too. I would not have thought of that, but way to improvise Nana.! I’m thinking she was around 6 months when that happened.

I also didn’t have trouble getting much sleep from day one. She usually nursed pretty heavily around 9pm and fell asleep nursing. I would relax holding her while reading or watching TV or surfing the net. She slept till about midnight where she nursed heavily again and then we both went to bed. She slept through the night, waking me up around 6 am to be fed and changed again. So I always got at least 6 straight hours of uninterrupted sleep plus at least one daytime nap. I’ve been a single parent from the start, so making sure I remained functional was a priority over a lot of things including hurt feelings on a few occasions and societal expectations, pressures, and “well meaning" advice nearly every damned day.

In the end, you’re in it alone so you gotta do what works best for you. If somebody really has a problem with it, they’ll be willing to put their time and effort into doing some of the work being mindful of what you need and what’s actually helpful. Until then, they can kindly keep their yap shut and stay out of the way.