Whitney Port has opened up about how she’s stopped breastfeeding two weeks after her baby’s birth, as she doesn’t want to put that kind of “pressure” on herself ever again.
During a recent appearance on People’s Me Becoming Mom podcast, Port, 36, detailed her “painful” experience of breastfeeding her child, Sonny. Port gave birth to Sonny, who she shares with her husband Tim Rosenman, back in 2017.
“The night I got home [from giving birth] my nipples were already like chafed and dry and bloody and painful, that I couldn’t breastfeed anymore,” she said. “So all of the sudden I was like, ‘What is Sonny gonna eat?’ And that wasn’t even something I had thought about yet.”
Port recalled that this was a time where things got difficult for her, “emotionally,” and she “felt riddled with guilt.”
“I stopped breastfeeding after two weeks because it was just too hard for me, it was just too painful,” The Hills star explained. “The pumping seemed to be easier for me and I was able to get enough milk to feed him exclusively with breastmilk for six months.”
However, for Port, those six months of pumping and still trying to breastfeed on certain occasions weren’t easy to fully remember.
“And that’s something I wouldn’t do again,” she said, in regards to how she previously handled breastfeeding. “I would never put that much pressure on myself because looking back on it, those six months were a complete blur.”
“I was just so focused on getting through the pumping, the breastfeeding, the whole job of it, also getting mastitis [infection of the breast tissue] three times,” she added. “It was a mess, it was a total mess.”
If Port and her husband do welcome another child, she said that she doesn’t want the “guilt” that she has towards breastfeeding to overcome her actual “feelings.”
“The plan is if I start to feel those feelings again, where I feel overcome by it and I’m not able to enjoy having a newborn, and I’m not happy and I know specifically I’m not happy because of this, to just really listen to that and not let the guilt override those feelings.”
This isn’t the first time the actress has opened up about breastfeeding. In an essay published on Refinery 29 in 2019, Port noted that she used to feel like breastfeeding was a major deal, “as if [her] Sonny’s life was solely dependent on” it. However, the results of breastfeeding were extremely painful for her mentally and physically.
“I agonized over every feeding, dealt with immeasurable emotional and physical pain, and put so much pressure on myself that I managed to get mastitis not one, not two, but three times,” she wrote.
However, after a month of trying to breastfeed and five months using a pump, Port felt quite relieved.
“Once I stopped pumping, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I saw the light and started to find so much more joy in being a mother,” the essay continues. “The act of stopping was like instant recovery — no long healing process required. I no longer had to worry about pump parts and nipple pain, and I could start focusing on the cute, cool, crazy little person that we had created.”
