Jana Kramer says she did not breastfeed her children as she doesn't like her 'nipples being touched'
Jana Kramer has opened up about how she initially struggled with her decision not to breastfeed her children.
In the recent episode of her Whine Down podcast, the 'One Tree Hill' alum opened up about how she went through stages of hesitation when it came to zeroing in on the proper method to feed her kids, especially since she “didn’t want to breastfeed.”
“I had no desire. I wasn’t breastfed,” said Kramer, 36. “I didn’t feel like I had to have that connection with my baby. Personally, I don’t like my nipples being touched. I don’t like it. I don’t want someone sucking on ’em.”
However, she did initially try nursing after her first child with husband Mike Caussin - Jolie Rae, 4 - was born.
“But it was really important to Mike so I said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna try’, ” she continued. “[But] my milk didn’t come in and then they wanted me to supplement and they wanted me to pump, and it was so stressful. I was just crying and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, my baby lost even more weight than she should’ve'. And then my milk eventually came in but we had already made the decision to formula feed. I remember getting so much shame and so much hate.”
As a result, Kramer decided against breastfeeding even before her second child Jace Joseph was born. However, her decision was surrounded by controversy especially because of the medical complications faced by her son after birth.
“He got [Respiratory Syncytial Virus] when he was just a couple weeks old and everyone was just like, ‘breast is best, this is how he’s not gonna get sick,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my God, they’re right. If my kid ends up getting worse, it’s because of me, because I didn’t breastfeed’,” she said. “And so I had two of my girlfriends come over … my boobs still had the milk in ’em but they were just so engorged and just gross, so they had the pump on me. I literally had my friends Ashley and Julie massaging my breasts to try to get milk out, and I’m just bawling."
“And then we’re trying to get Jace to connect [with] my nipple and I didn’t know how to do it ’cause I never breastfed, so I didn’t know how to latch it and how to do all these things,” Kramer said. “Mike walks in the room, he’s like, ‘Why are you doing this to yourself?’ And I was like, ‘Because I have to — because everyone says that he’s gonna get worse if I don’t breastfeed!’"
She said that her husband then reminded her that her nurse had told her it “doesn’t matter” if she uses breast milk or formula as long as Jace got the nutrition he needed and that he was “going to be healthy one way or the other.”