Our story this week comes from Skyla. Skyla had a rough start to breastfeeding and was under a tremendous amount of pressure from family to make it work. Read how Skyla worked through that pressure to find what worked best for her and her baby.
Nobody ever really knows what to expect when getting pregnant. You hear so many horror stories of how people feel during pregnancy from the 24/7 morning sickness all the way to the terrifying medical problems. But one thing is for sure; everyone talks about how excited they are to be pregnant, to bring a life into the world. My journey was different. My pregnancy was relatively simple? Aside from morning sickness briefly and some heartburn near the end, I didn’t really feel pregnant except the obviously large baby bump.
This being my first baby, I was both terrified yet so excited to finally become a mom. Something I’ve always wanted since I was 18 years of age (I am now 30). There was a lot of conversation between my partner and I regarding how things would be once baby came, but 2 things I was unsure of was finding out the gender before the little one came and breastfeeding. Yes, we waited the entire pregnancy not knowing what we were having! I secretly tried finding out later on behind my partner's back but our little one had other plans.
Whenever I thought about the idea of breastfeeding, it honestly kind of terrified me. I’ve seen online of women whose breasts become lopsided or getting mastitis and it was scary to me. I have had conversations with friends and other women about it and most would agree the best is when baby is fed. Doesn’t matter if it is from the breast, from pumping to bottle or straight formula feeding. Although most of the people I know would give very supportive answers and would tell me that whatever I choose will be right for my baby, my mother-in-law had a very strong opinion when it came to “breast is best”. As a young mother to 3, she raised all 3 of them and breast-fed all for as long as she could. She gave some really valid points that definitely swayed me more to wanting to breastfeed. While being in the middle of a pandemic, I wanted to be able to give my child the best I could. I made the decision before they came that I would breast feed. It has amazing nutritional values, great for her immune system and it was free.
Sixteen days before my due date at around 9:00pm, my water broke. I had just finished peeing in the bathroom and I was just sitting down to eat a delicious deep-fried donut that I had been waiting all day for. “What in the world just happened? Did I pee myself? I just went to the bathroom but I wouldn’t be surprised if I did.” These are a few things that were running through my head in that moment, as I had never had my water break before. But I knew! I knew it had because it just kept coming out. I was panicking briefly, yelling up to my mother-in-law while I’m in my underwear because we didn’t have our hospital bag packed and I wasn’t ready. My partner had gone out to participate in a hockey game but didn’t think to keep his phone on him so I couldn’t get ahold of him. After having a friend drive down to the arena whose husband was playing with my partner, she informed him I was going into labor.
As I am casually packing my bag, my partner is barreling down the stairs in half gear panicking, expecting me to have already had the baby! A little dramatic and pre-anticipated but I was calm and packing our hospital bag while standing in our room in a diaper, literally! But after it was packed and he finished showering, we were on our way thinking this baby was coming tonight. It had previously been decided that I would be having a C-section due to a medical concern but we weren’t sure if they were going to schedule one that night or hold off. Thankfully they decided to give me some morphine to slow down labor and let me sleep it off until booking an emergency cesarean for 8am the next morning. I was so nervous and so excited at the same time, I was up until 4am just hanging out in the closet of a room that they set me up in.
Morning rolls up and my partner wakes me up holding a coffee, a bagel sandwich and a hash brown from Tim Horton’s. It was actually quite a nice gesture bringing me breakfast since I couldn’t eat my donut last night and needed to fast in order to have this baby.
As my partner and I are talking while he’s eating breakfast, which was such a tease since by this point I’m starving, the doctor comes in and informs me that it is time to start heading to the Operating Room. It’s happening, it is finally time that we are going to bring our little baby into the world. It is so scary but yet so exciting. And after 2 hours of prep and operating, she was here! That’s right, we had a little girl!! She was finally here and we could start our journey together.
In the recovery room after they did all of the baby’s measurements, the nurse finally hands her over to try and breastfeed. She is struggling. Going into labour early plus having a C-section, my colostrum didn’t come in. It was quite frustrating, as we knew the baby had to eat but my body just hadn’t had time to produce what she needed.
As a first time mom when my partner would head home to sleep, I would find myself, late at night alone, trying to understand what it means to be just that… a first time mom.
Although I had some nurses who were amazing and open to helping me try and get my milk to come in so that the baby can try and breastfeed, I did have an extremely negative experience on my last night that I will never forget.
With the pressures of my milk not coming in and being told I can’t leave the hospital unless I have a solid breastfeeding plan to try to navigate motherhood on my own, it was quite overwhelming. I had been ringing the bell hoping to have a nurse help me try and figure out how to express so that my milk would come in. It was very late (4AM), I was extremely sleep deprived and on top of that, dealing with a screaming newborn that was hungry because I had nothing. She couldn’t breastfeed. I wanted to breastfeed but my only option was to give formula.
When someone over the speaker finally answered me, they said someone would come and help me then dismissed the alarm. After 30-45 minutes of nobody coming to help, I rang the bell again… this older woman came into the room, pushed the bassinet out of the way, knocked over the garbage can and its contents and turned the alarm off. She asked me what I wanted and I told her, “I am extremely exhausted, I’m trying to get my milk to come in to feed the baby. Can you please help?”
She looked at me and with a ignorant/dismissive tone, she told me that she doesn’t know what to tell me, maybe I should just bottle feed the baby and go to bed. After she said that, she just walked out of the room. I then had to crawl out of bed to bring the bassinet back next to the bed so I could put the baby in it and bent down to the ground 3 days post-op from a caesarean to pick up the garbage can that definitely weighed more than the baby and the garbage that spilled all over the floor.
I was upset because I was tired, and struggling. I felt defeated. I wanted to be able to do what every mother is capable of doing but I couldn’t. On top of my milk coming in slowly, I was only given fast flow nipples so my journey to breastfeed ended long before it even started. Imagine the first hours/days of your life, you are funneling your food down and not needing to work for it like you would if you were to have breastfed from the start. Of course she didn’t want to latch, she just wanted the food now.
After being discharged from the hospital, I was finally able to start over and try and have my journey to breastfeeding be a little different. Maybe we could find a way to have her latch without getting so angry my milk wasn’t coming out like a rocket. So many hopes, but it didn’t end up going that way. She only wanted a bottle, so I was trying to pump and feed on demand. I couldn’t keep up with how much she needed to eat because my milk hadn’t really come in yet and I still had pressures within the home of needing to feed directly from the breast. Having my father-in-law tell me that the only way I am going to bond with my daughter is if she is breastfed straight from the boob and his wife agreeing. So I was determined to feed her breast milk somehow. With that being stuck in my head I was constantly trying to get her to latch when she was hungry but it was the same thing, scream consistently until she got the bottle. And for any exclusively breast pumping mommas out there, they can all agree that it is like a job in itself. The whole process could take an hour and a half from pumping your breasts, to feeding the baby, to washing the bottles and breast pump equipment, to sterilizing. It was a lot! And by the time you were finished, the kid is all of a sudden hungry again. I felt like a cow at this point, trying to keep up with my oversupply of milk to make sure I don’t get mastitis and to make sure we weren’t giving the baby formula because “breast is best”. I was exhausted.
My entire breastfeeding lasted about 2 months. Within those 2 months, I had completely lost myself and my mental health went so far down; I wasn’t in a safe mindset. Prior to having my daughter, I was diagnosed with Perinatal Depression and Anxiety so I was already struggling mentally. But after, it became so much worse. The moment where everyone finally realized that formula feeding the baby might be a better choice was when I put my daughter in an unsafe position and it took me 30 minutes to realize what had happened. She was thankfully safe and okay, but I had completely shut down and was at my breaking point. I didn’t want to stop giving her breast milk because I knew it was better for her than formula, and it was inexpensive. Spending $50 every week and a half on a carton of formula just wasn’t a part of my breastfeeding journey. I felt guilty for not being able to keep up with what I wanted for her but I knew that my mental health is what would be best for us as a family in the end. I went from exclusively pumping to supplementing formula for first and last feeds to strictly formula. In that moment, that was when I started to see that I was becoming more of myself again, I was becoming her mom. Aside from the struggles that were still happening internally with PPD and PPA, I was able to finally have some free time to enjoy being a mother. I started to appreciate that I finally made the right steps for myself and for my daughter.
There are so many arguments and debates towards why “breast is best” but realistically, it’s not. Fed is best! My milk supply wasn’t enough for my daughter, it wasn’t fatty enough so she wasn’t gaining weight and as I had already mentioned, it completely destroyed my mental health to where I couldn’t be a mother, a partner or even a person at that point. Formula feeding her was actually helping her grow and thrive and the free time I had from not having to do the whole pumping process was letting me enjoy motherhood finally. I am now 8 months postpartum, still struggling with PPD and PPA but I am enjoying being a mother more than I ever imagined. She officially crawled yesterday and a week ago she said her first words, “mama”.
Motherhood is so beautiful, even with those difficult moments in some weird way they help us become stronger parents. Now that I look back on my journey, the only advice I would give to myself would be to not stress and care so much about what others do or say. This is YOUR journey, do what you feel is best for you and your child. The choices you make will always be the right one. And don’t feel guilty when you make a decision that is best for your health as well because in the end, it will benefit yourself and your child.
What do you think about Skyla’s story? We think she did an amazing job at figuring out what worked best for her and her baby! Thanks for sharing Skyla!
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