I just took a pill to stop lactation...

And I'm absolutely heartbroken about it.

I'm not 100% sure why I'm writing this. Maybe commiserations? Maybe kind words from people who know just how much this means? Maybe similar stories?

I'm a first time mom and I always dreamed of being a mother and breastfeeding. My Little One (LO) just turned 8 weeks old. The pregnancy was planned but full of complications which ended up meaning I spent the last 8 weeks of the pregnancy in the hospital and we had to meet LO by C-section at 36 weeks.

My husband and I got through the pregnancy complications by saying "once this pesky placenta is out, the complications will be over and we'll walk out as a family and won't need to be back in a hospital until our next pregnancy!".

When LO was 3 weeks old I got my first case of mastitis. It was horrific. Hot/cold sweats, fever, nausea, excruciating pain and it resulted in 2 weeks of antibiotics and a large lump which was diagnosed as a galactocele on my right breast which covered a portion of my areola that they need to do 3 separate needle aspirations on to try and drain it.

The lump never truly went away and I was only able to feed LO on one side but it didn't matter, they were gaining weight and I started to love breastfeeding. It no longer hurt to latch, I wasn't leaking constantly and I loved that I could instantly sooth LO and even exhausted and sleep deprived, when I nursed LO at 2am and they stared at me with their beautiful eyes I melted. I continued to pump the bad breast every 6hrs just to keep milk flowing and took lichithin supplements daily in the hope that I'd never have mastitis again and that one day the lump would go away completely and I'd be able to nurse on both sides.

Then one week ago today I went to pump the bad breast and out of nowhere, the lump had become swollen and hard and my breast began to become red. My best guess is it's because LO had been cluster feeding on the good breast and it signalled my body to produce more milk. Within 24 hours, half of my breast was red and angry and I had started rescue dose of oral antibiotics at my doctor had prescribed me just in case. Two days later I was admitted to the hospital with fever, nausea and dehydration to have IV antibiotics. I had an ultrasound and another needle aspiration where they took out 70ml of milk and pus and the doctor told me to continue to try and express the breast to keep milk flowing. However, my breast had become so swollen and excruciatingly painful that though I was still trying to pump, no milk was coming out. The swelling also stretched my skin to the point that it was like tissue paper and when I tried to pump, the plastic of the flange rubbed away some of the skin and created a wound. The milk trapped in my body then decided to take the path of least resistance and created a hole in that wound and began gushing milk and puss out of it. I had developed an abscess.

Yesterday I had a procedure where they opened the wound further to clean out the cavity and flush it -all without anaesthetic. They put essentially a stoma bag over the hole to collect any drainage to see how much it tried to refill overnight.

Due to the amount that it refilled overnight, and how much excruciating pain I had been over the weekend, and how my blood still showed an active infection though I have now been on 6 days of IV antibiotics, and how this was the second time in 5 weeks that I had mastitis, the doctors finally recommended that I stopped lactating because there is a high chance that this will happen again. That the cavity may not have a chance to heal because it would constantly be backfilling. And that if I get it again it could be just as bad where I would need hospitalisation again.

I spent the night agonising over this decision, weighing all the pros and cons and going into deep dives of research into formula vs breastfeeding, knowing that I would not be able to handle another infection at this level again. My husband has had to take off a week off work to take care of our LO who has had to be fed to mixture of my frozen stash and formula. My LO has had to not have me overnight to comfort them. And I have been in such pain that I've been on morphine and my body had such a response to the infection that it literally created a hole in the skin to let the milk out.

And I realised that the main reason for me insisting on continuing would be for selfish reasons and not because it's the right choice.

So an hour ago, after I had my finial nursing session with my beautiful little one in my hospital room while crying, I took my first dose of cabergoline to stop the production of prolactin in my body. I will take 3 more doses at 12hr intervals and my body will stop lactating. And my breastfeeding journey for this child at least will be over.

Edit: It's only been an hour and I already appreciate all of the responses more than words can say <3

I don't have many friends with kids so I think I wrote this post to help myself process my decision but to also lay it all out to a community of people that understand the sacrifice having to make and hold me and tell me that it's okay and that's what I'm getting. So thank you all so much for responding and sending me your love. I'm reading every response and I will re-read them over and over <3