Happy mother's day!

It's come to this: I was reading a review of Drunk Mom, the new memoir by Jowita Bydlowska about her decent into alcoholism soon after giving birth to her son. Bydlowskais was a serious drinker, a black-out drunk, and it is after a night of binge drinking that she wakes up one morning with no recollection of the night before. This happens frequently during this period in her life. She's the only one home, and she doesn't know how long her one-year old has been in the crib alone. She assures herself that he hasn't gone hungry- bottles of formula in the crib "spill milk onto the mattress."

My first thought was, she feeds him formula?

I've been battling the guilt related not to a serious addiction to alcohol but for using Similac Advanced once a day, sometimes twice, to supplement my breast milk supply.

My worst offence was when my husband and I were in NYC for a few weeks in a rented apartment with my parents. I saw about four shows, and left my parents each time with the baby and a six-pack of the test tube-like containers of Advanced. I was pumping in the morning and evenings, getting up about twice a night to breastfeed her, breastfeeding her every three hours during the day, but it still wasn't enough to not supplement when I went out. It was the first time she had tried formula. As a result, she had some unforeseen digestive troubles that took a week to go away.

The flack I got wasn't so much direct finger pointing as praise for my recognition that what I had done was bad. 

"Well, now that you know, you can stop using that stuff."

"Have you tried (lie ins, where you confine yourself to the house for a week and do nothing but feed; drink fenugreek tea; "look feed," where you feed her every time she moves her eyes in your direction)?"

"Have you tried everything?"

Supplementing with formula is not the best thing for babies younger than four months - breastfeeding promotes the growth of health bacteria in their stomachs, and they're particularly sensitive to this in their first few months of life. It's one of the many, many health benefits to breastfeeding. Breast is Best. Breast is Best!

My own guilt was overwhelming. Once we had returned and I'd realized the magnitude of my mistake, I'd stand in the middle of our living room, recounting the tummy troubles she had suffered and ball as my baffled husband tried to reassure me that the baby is fine. And the baby was totally fine.

But I'd put myself before my baby. And I think that's what it comes down to. I'd done something that might not have been THE BEST for my baby in order to see some shows. Because mothers need to try everything, everything, leaving their former selves deflated in a heap behind them, in order to give their babies the best. And a part of me believes this.

But those shows? They included some of the best pieces of theatre I've ever seen. Sleep No More was wild. Peter Brook's The Suit was this shining little gemstone. I was talking to a theatre prof here, and the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma's Life and Times came up, and we had this satisfying talk about that kind of art that I wouldn't have been able to have otherwise. I felt totally enriched by all of it.

So what do we sacrifice for our babies, and what do we keep of ourselves? I'm still trying to figure that one out.

PS: We're moving to New York! We have two months to prep before we haul ourselves out of this place (although I totally love it here, and am sad to go.) It's random and insane.