Expectations

A friend told me a couple years ago that I have too high of expectations of people, myself included. She gently chastised me that I get my feelings hurt too often as a result because people will always end up letting me down eventually. I listened to her and gave her words some weight since I knew she was saying them out of love and concern, but, admittedly, didn't see exactly what she meant and was talking about. Until now.

This past week has been a struggle for me. It wasn't the ideal Christmas INSERT LINK if you read this post here about having to start supplementing with formula. Between the bottles and my low supply, Madison is not enjoying breastfeeding, which means I am not enjoying breastfeeding. There are few harder sounds to hear than your child crying and trying to latch and not getting enough to eat.

I spent one evening a couple nights ago on the phone with another dear friend who shared with me her struggles and encouraged me to do what's best for my relationship with Madi. I gave that a lot of thought and prayer and realized that the way things were going right now was causing me to resent my daughter, to dread feeding time, and angering me because I wasn't able to provide for her. And I was unfairly taking it out on my daughter.

Between my tears and her tears, I've decided to stop nursing her. I tried pumping the last couple of days and feeding her just in the morning, but I'm still not getting my supply up enough to keep up with her and it's getting to be a hardship. Jason and I talked about it last night and decided that my feed this morning would be my last.

Through this struggle my eyes (and heart) have been opened to see what my friend was sharing with me regarding expectations. It took my beautiful, helpless, needing baby girl to show me that I was already expecting too much of her. I expected her to eat efficiently and calming. I expected her to be able to distinguish between a bottle and my breast with no problems. I expected her to only whine and fuss when something is wrong, not when everything seems to be fine. Expected, expected, expected. And I didn't even realize it.

It scares me to think that I might continue in this pattern as my daughter continues to grow. It brings me to tears again to think that she might grow up feeling like she can't do anything right and that failure is not an option because I have too high of expectations for her. I want her to fail sometimes because it means she tried and she'll grow and learn. I want her to know that I love her more than she could imagine even when she sins.

I'm concerned for my marriage and that I'm possibly putting too high of expectations on Jason. I'm wondering if my friendships have struggled because I unknowingly expected too much and as my friend predicted, got my feelings hurt too easily.

I'm not really sure where to go from here either. I'm not sure how to fix myself or adjust my expectations - of myself and those I love. I'm open to advice or suggestions from anyone that's had a similar struggle. All I do know is that I do indeed need to change my perspective so I don't push away the people I love and care about, especially my husband and daughter.