I became a mother three years ago, on the day I took a pregnancy test. My whole world shifted in the two seconds it took me to read the result – in an instant I had to start thinking about someone else. I had to figure out what I needed to eat and drink, and what vitamins I needed to gulp down in order for this other person to grow and thrive.

That was a lot of pressure, especially for someone with anxiety, so I was constantly looking up what I could and could not eat, or what I could and could not do. I read five different articles on why reaching above your head was bad – and felt terrible about the fact that I had a job where that motion was necessary.

Naturally, I stumbled upon all the articles about breast feeding. Breast feeding was the be all and end all and why would you ever want to feed your baby anything else? It was a natural super food. So I felt terrible when I immediately hated the idea of breast feeding. Here I was, constantly worried about what I was eating while my daughter was growing inside of me, but I was going to deprive her of liquid gold after she was born? But I was already giving up so much of myself for this and breastfeeding felt like too much.

All up until the day Dylan, my daughter, was born I went back and forth on it. Everyone who had breastfed in the past pushed and pushed me on the issue, but I could never commit myself to following through. An hour after Dylan was born I breastfed her for the first time and it was different than I thought it would be. It wasn’t bad, definitely not the terrible experience I thought it would be, but I wasn’t immediately convinced that it was right for me.

Then I messed up. I didn’t read the pamphlet they’d given me and I slept too late and Dylan missed a feeding and the nurse was looking at me with a frown on her face and she said, “let’s give her a bottle so she doesn’t get behind.” So I gave her a bottle and then Dylan never wanted anything else. I tried when we got home from the hospital. But Dylan is as stubborn as I am.

Even when I was home people still pushed me on it. They wanted me to pump and pump and pump because even if she wasn’t drinking from me at least I was giving her breast milk. This could have worked, except I wasn’t eating, because I felt guilty, and I wasn’t sleeping, because I felt guilty, and I was crying all the time, because I felt guilty. So how was I going to produce enough milk to feed her?

There is not a day that goes by where I don’t think about the nutrition that Dylan missed. That maybe if she had been breastfed she wouldn’t have gotten so sick when she started daycare – three ear infections in six months –or that maybe her allergies wouldn’t be so bad. That maybe she wouldn’t be susceptible to febrile seizures, because those are terrifying. I even worry about breastfeeding my next child because is it really fair that they get something Dylan didn’t?

These thoughts are not okay. Dylan is a happy, extremely intelligent, and mostly healthy two year old. She’s loved and cared for and beyond spoiled. She’ll never care if she was breastfed or not. So why do I still care that she wasn’t? I support breastfeeding, I do think it’s the best option, but it’s not for everyone, and we should stop thinking that it is. Because I failed at breastfeeding and I have carried an unnecessary guilt with me since the day I stopped pumping.