This is the fourth installment in a series about the stages of grief. If you haven’t yet, I recommend reading the first three posts on denial, anger, and bargaining. This post continues the series by discussing my wrestle with the fourth stage of grief: depression.

One day at church, I watched another mom casually lift her baby to her chest and start nursing. She didn’t fumble with bottles or stress over ounces. Her baby simply knew what to do. I felt a lump rise in my throat. I smiled, but inside, I was breaking. I wanted that ease and connection, but it was out of reach. No effort, trick, or sheer force of will could change that. I remember the weight of that sadness. No amount of denial, no amount of anger, no amount of bargaining could fix me. 

There’s so much pressure around breastfeeding nowadays, so much mom-shaming. It’s exhausting. Everyone says breast is best. It is as if love and effort don’t count if it doesn’t come naturally. I felt like I had failed before I had even begun. Like my body had betrayed me in the one thing it was supposed to do as a mother. And yet, the world told me it was my responsibility to try harder, to make it work—like determination alone could change my biology.

I remember looking in the mirror and breaking out into tears. I felt a sense of body dysmorphia. Not because I had gained weight or felt insecure about my looks. I knew I would get back into shape eventually. I was experiencing an immense worry about my physical ability to breastfeed. I read materials about breast shapes in Insufficient Glandular Tissue (IGT) and really connected my experiences from puberty with it. Unfortunately, most of that literature is part of the cosmetic surgery world. There’s not a lot of medical literature on the implications of IGT and breastfeeding. I had always had insecurities about that part of my body. Through my struggles, my insecurities grew into a depressed hatred for my body.

I thought about postpartum depression, wondering if that’s what I was experiencing. But deep down, I knew my sadness was different—it wasn’t hormonal or chemical; it was grief. It was mourning the experience I had expected and longed for. And while I knew it wouldn’t always feel this heavy, that knowledge didn’t make the pain any easier to bear. In many ways, it made it worse. 

I felt stuck in a cycle of grief—mourning something I had never truly had. I wanted to move forward, to stop feeling like I was drowning in disappointment. But I didn’t know how. And so, for a while, I just existed in the sadness. My son refused to nurse, which only added to my depression. So, I began what felt like a long and arduous journey into the pumping world.

Every time I sat down to pump, it was a reminder of my inadequacy. I felt numb. I loved my son and my husband with everything I had, but it was shadowed with depression. I grew to dread each pumping session. Losing milk by accidentally spilling it was a catastrophic event leading to withdrawal from others. On top of that, my son would often end up throwing up or spitting up my breast milk. Any time that happened, I questioned why I had put in so much work to get him every ounce possible.

I knew why it was vital for him to get those antibodies from the breast milk—I knew why his little body needed them—but the emotional toll of providing breast milk became exhausting.

I remember feeling stuck to my couch to pump on schedule. It was debilitating. My mental health steadily declined each month. I loaded myself with schoolwork to try and distract myself from the situation. However, distracting myself with homework wasn’t fixing my mental health situation. Every pumping session reminded me of the weight of my abnormal reality.

All I wanted was the connection other moms talked about—that connection between a mother and her child as they nursed. But my son had other plans. He was (and still is) a busy little boy who was easily distracted, so the convenience of the bottle was just easier for him.

One night, after another exhausting pumping session, I prayed. Desperate for peace. I wasn’t asking for a miracle—I had already accepted that my body wouldn’t do what I wanted it to. I just wanted to feel like I was enough. As I sat in the quiet, I audibly heard in my head, “I am your sufficiency.” I pulled open my scriptures to a random spot and read, ‘As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you’ (Isaiah 66:13). It wasn’t about how I fed my son—it was about how I loved him. And in those quiet moments, I felt God’s reassurance that I was enough. I was sufficient through the power of Christ. He is my sufficiency.

At the turn of the new year, I sat with my pump one last time, staring at the small bottle of milk I had worked so hard to produce. I thought about all the hours spent tethered to this machine, the tears shed over spilled ounces, the exhaustion of it all. And then, I felt something unexpected—peace. It was time to let go. I turned off the pump and knew I wouldn’t turn it back on again.

The first morning after I stopped pumping, I felt a lot of different emotions. I had spent months scheduling my life around pumping, and now, suddenly, I didn’t have to. It should have been freeing, but instead, I felt unsettled—like I had forgotten something important. I wasn’t tethered to the machine anymore, but a part of me still felt chained to the guilt.

Had I given up too soon? Should I have tried harder? What if I had just pushed through a little longer? But then I’d look at my son—my grinning, wiggly, thriving boy—and I knew the answer. He wasn’t mourning what I had lost. He wasn’t keeping track of ounces. He just wanted his mama. 

So, I filled my time with something new. I picked up a crochet hook and let my hands move, stitch after stitch, creating something tangible that wasn’t measured in ounces or inches. I dusted off my viola and found comfort in the familiar rhythms. And little by little, I started feeling more like myself again.

I spent so much time believing that my worth as a mother was tied to breastfeeding. That if I had tried harder and pushed through longer, I could have made it work. But looking back, I see now that love isn’t measured in ounces. It’s in the way I held my son close when he cried. It’s in how he seeks comfort from me when he’s scared. It’s in how we have bonded—not through nursing, but through love.

Motherhood isn’t about checking off milestones. It’s not about nursing your baby, and it’s not about doing everything “perfectly.” It’s about showing up every day in whatever way your child needs. And that, I’ve realized, is enough.