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Breastfeeding
Skyla's Breastfeeding Story of How Fed is Best
Parenting, Breastfeeding Story, BreastfeedingCommentOur 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!
Would you like to share your breastfeeding story on our blog? Submit it here!
Carly's Breastfeeding Story and Some Nursing Tips for New Moms
Breastfeeding Story, Breastfeeding, ParentingCommentOur story this week comes from Carly. After nursing two babies, she’s found some tricks and good advice for new nursing moms - whether it’s your first and last!
Both my breastfeeding journeys had similarities and differences, but my key takeaways were that neither was “easy” and both were so worth it. My first daughter was born in 2016 weighing 5 lbs. 10 oz. and consistently gained weight and latched, but I had incredible pain for weeks.
Even after a lip tie revision and multiple lactation appointments to work on her latch, I had bad bruising and pain until she was about eight weeks old and finally opened her mouth wide enough for nursing to not be painful. Although I cried (with her) through many middle of the night feedings, I’m so glad I stuck with it. Unfortunately I was an ounce obsessed pumper once I went back to work, and while I was able to meet my goal of breastfeeding without supplementing the entire first year, it definitely came at a cost.
I pumped multiple times a day, adding in extra pumps before work and before bed (all while nursing overnight) to keep our freezer stash going, and when it ultimately began to dwindle at 10-11 months I did panic a bit. The fears were unfounded and she actually had frozen breast milk until she was 15 months, and nursed until 19 months after many months of me trying to wean due to the fact that she was an “acrobatic nurser.”
I know that without additional lactation support and education early on, we wouldn’t have made it through those early weeks, and with my understanding of the road blocks during breastfeeding I was sure my second baby would be easier.
Wrong.
And not only was it not easier, the challenges were totally different. Spoiler. It didn’t hurt less. It did hurt for less time. What was most upsetting about my experience with our second daughter was that even though I in theory knew what to look for, we had an undiagnosed tier three tongue tie (and lip tie) until eight months.
She was an avid nurser from the beginning and I was in way less pain after about two weeks, so I thought things were going really well. When I started having pain again at four weeks, I all but assumed this would be how it was forever. At every doctor’s appointment I brought up the fact that she choked while eating and almost sounded like she was aspirating at feedings. Since she was gaining weight the doctor (and lactation consultant (LC) at the pediatrician) assured me that she was fine.
Fast forward to our four month appointment and she wasn’t transferring more than 2 oz during a morning feeding, and the LC at the ped called her a “slow gainer” because she dropped from the 55% down into the 42%. She maintained her growth percentile in the 40s and 50s throughout her first year, but that comment really shook me. I started taking fish oil and pumped once a day even though I stayed home with her for almost a year.
When we went to introduce solids at six months she had an FPIES (Food protein-induced enterocolitis syndrome) reaction that led me down a huge rabbit hole of food allergies and how to introduce solids when your little one has an allergic reaction. That said, she’d never had formula or any dairy, which was a big potential FPIES trigger.
In the midst of this diagnosis, she started refusing to nurse more than 3-4 minutes at a time during the day, while nursing 3x overnight. I was exhausted and panicked at the thought my supply would tank since she wasn’t nursing during the day, and I didn’t even know if she could safely drink formula due to the potential allergy.
I also noticed that when we were giving solids she seemed unable to swallow well, and was having trouble keeping the food in her mouth. Our oldest never had this problem and I wondered if she hadn’t lost the “tongue thrust reflex” that keeps babies from choking.
As all this was happening at the same time, I finally found a lactation consultant who was willing to help. We were in the midst of early COVID and she couldn’t see me in person since we’d left the hospital, but she recommended a pediatric dentist, a craniosacral therapist, and a private LC I could also visit.
With many appointments in hand, I was pumping multiple times a day to keep my supply up, nursing all night, and trying to keep my sanity with a four-year-old in pre-K and COVID running rampant. I found out my daughter had a tier three tongue tie that probably contributed to her choking on milk in the early days, and may be impacting her ability to swallow solids. We got both her tongue and lip released at eight months and did the exercises every three hours to keep it from sealing back together.
At this point I’d also seen another LC (and she still wasn’t transferring more than 2 oz during her morning nurse) but she told me she felt strongly that our daughter was thriving and that she was doing OK – and as long as she kept nursing I could stop pumping during the day. We finally tried another round of sleep training at nine months because I couldn’t handle the 3x/night wake ups with no nursing during the day, and wanted to get to a more “normal” feeding and sleep schedule. After a couple of weeks we got to a much better place.
We also started seeing an allergist and nutritionist virtually through the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) FPIES clinic, and had a plan to tackle solid introduction. I also relaxed a little once she had yogurt and could in theory tolerate dairy. At this point I had over 1,000 oz. of breastmilk in the freezer because I’d pumped daily without giving extra bottles.
During the time of her FPIES reaction and nursing strike during the day, we switched pediatricians. I called the LC (who was also a nurse) on staff at our old pediatrician and she told me not to worry about the FPIES reaction and that we’d talk about it at her nine month appointment, but to stop giving rice, which was her trigger food – (duh). She also told me during the nursing strike that our daughter was self weaning, and that I should introduce cups instead of the breast. My daughter was also refusing cups, which made my anxiety worse. The combination of the bad advice in her first few months, a dismissal of the FPIES, and her thoughts that we were weaning at seven months made it too hard for me to stay, and so we found a new pediatrician.
I’m so passionate about the fact that most moms aren’t given enough information to get off to a fast start on their nursing journeys, I put together a free breastfeeding quick start guide that helps you with everything you need to know to begin nursing a baby. It’s filled with all the information I wish I’d known the first time around. It breaks my heart that so many women feel like they have to give up on their breastfeeding goals simply because they don't have the information or tools to help.
As I look back, the one thing I want other moms to know is that they should trust their gut. I knew something was wrong with her feeding as an infant, and although we didn’t get it fixed until much later, I did push to speak to three lactation consultants and the pediatrician the first month of COVID when everything was locked down.
I didn’t believe that the FPIES reaction was “nothing” and that we should just go about our day. I found another doctor who took me seriously and was able to diagnose what was going on. We were lucky to catch it so early and come up with a plan.
After she went on her nursing strike, I didn’t take it at face value that she was weaning. I went in search of other information and found help. I finally figured out that her tongue tie combined with the distractibility of a seven-month-old could have just made it too “hard” for her to nurse during the day. We got answers, and I’m happy to say she’s still nursing at 21 months.
We recently left our daughters for the first time in two years (and the first time ever for our youngest) and I was so sad to think that she may not want to nurse when we came home. I know that our time is coming to an end soon, but I’ll always look back on this time with my babies as some of the best in my life. After 40+ months of nursing two daughters, it’s been a long road, but one that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I’m so glad we made it through. And I’m so grateful that we had the help to keep going.
What do you think about Carly’s story? We think she did an amazing job of fighting for her babies! Thanks for sharing Carly!
Would you like to share your breastfeeding story on our blog? Submit it here!
Micaela's Breastfeeding Story
Parenting, Breastfeeding Story, BreastfeedingCommentThis week, our story comes from a sweet customer. It’s short and sweet, but still so beautiful!
I had a very complicated and high risk pregnancy following a diagnosis of endometriosis, PCOS, fertility struggles and a previous miscarriage. At 34 weeks I was diagnosed with preeclampsia, and at 36 weeks on the dot my condition became severe and our beautiful girl entered the world after my blood pressure skyrocketed to stroke levels and my body went into preterm labor. She came out quickly with some breathing difficulties and required some time in the NICU. As she had significant jaundice and was preemie, we were mostly feeding with formula until my milk came in, but I was able to pump colostrum for her to wet her lips with while I recovered from birth. Since she was so little, her mouth was having a hard time grasping a solid latch, but we worked on it slowly with every feed, up every 2 hours, and with plenty of grace shared between the two of us as we learned and worked together. Our journey into breastfeeding was paced out and never painful or overwhelming, we took our time and learned together and have since created a bond that was built on those early moments together. Just her and I, in the light of the moon while the world slept, just me and my girl.
Now she is 21 months old and we’re still going strong breastfeeding! She will be our only baby, so I am eternally grateful for this beautiful symbol to represent our time together.
I ordered a ring to represent my biggest accomplishment in my life, my daughter. Also fun fact, her name is Maisie, which means pearl, so pearl shimmer to her milk is the perfect addition!
Thanks for sharing Micaela!
Would you like to share your breastfeeding story on our blog? Submit it here!
Kelley's Breastfeeding Story
Breastfeeding, Breastfeeding Story, ParentingCommentOur story this week comes from Kelley. Kelley’s story is one of determination and perseverance. Read on to see how Kelley pushed to make breastfeeding work for her and her son.
I remember a day years and years ago, when I still worked in the hospitality industry and a woman whom I knew came into the restaurant for lunch with her infant. Mid lunch I realized she was nursing the kid and I was horrified, whispering to the other staff about how dare she! Oh, the horror! I was self-righteous in my indignation and of course, I never wanted children and definitely would never breast feed.
Fast forward two decades and here I was, holding our infant son. Born eight days after my 42nd birthday, our boy came four weeks early yet still weighed a hefty seven pounds. And while I had a relatively uncomplicated pregnancy, save a slight bout of preeclampsia at the end that prompted the early labor, we had a very healthy little boy. But he did have low blood sugar and therefore the nurses started him off straight away on tiny little bottles of formula, despite the words ‘breastfeeding’ written on my chart and on his little baby card fixed to the hospital bassinet. Once we became pregnant, somewhat miraculously and naturally after three tries at the ripe old age of 41, I quickly realized I would nurse our child. Something deep within me shifted, the first of many monumental changes that moved me toward full-on motherhood. What I didn’t yet realize nor could I ever have understood was that what seemed so natural would not come easy. In fact, it was incredibly difficult.
In the hospital we met with three different lactation consultants who all said different things. One put a nursing shield on me, which I hated. Another gave me a crash course in the football hold, a complicated maneuver that my sleep-deprived brain couldn’t grasp, prompting me to take copious amounts of nursing selfies, hoping to replicate the pose once we went home.
Another brought in a small tub for washing pump parts, a method she meticulously detailed over some 20 painful minutes while I could feel my husband tensing and gritting his teeth.
“I know how to wash dishes, for crying out loud,” he grumbled upon her departure. We were frustrated, tired, overwhelmed, confused – dutifully feeding our son those tiny bottles of ‘medically necessary’ formula while trying to squeeze out my colostrum and feeding it from a spoon.
Thankfully my sister, who had breastfed my niece 18 years before, told me I needed to pump since our son wasn’t nursing that well. I started pumping, listening to the constant whirring sound of the hospital-grade pump, so tired and frustrated and feeling like a failure. Then, my milk came in – buttery yellow, thick and in great amounts.
Honestly, I cannot remember if we fed our son that milk in the hospital. I think we did, but for whatever reason they still sent us home loaded up with those tiny bottles of formula. We had a sheet of paper to log all feeds, and the amounts, along with paper upon paper of instructions. Not to mention my selfies of that football hold, the one position that really seemed to work.
We soon found our way to the pediatrician’s office as instructed, where we learned that our son was losing weight. Babies can lose up to 10 percent of birth weight, which for our son meant no more than 11 ounces, not quite ¾ of a pound, or in our case, not less than 6 pounds 5 ounces. Despite all of my best efforts he still lost weight. Those first days home our routine consisted of me trying to nurse for up to 30 minutes, using a cold wipe and trying like hell to rouse our sleepy little new baby. My husband would lurk, impatient for his turn to feed, until I would give up and hand over our son, tears streaking my cheeks, weary in my desperation. I would grab the pump a friend gifted us off our registry, a fantastic Medela almost as efficient as the one in the hospital. In my exhaustion sometimes I would hear words from the whirring, or make up songs to go along with the noise. Over days the constant churning of that pump seemed to mock me, yet the ounces upon ounces the machine received from my body kept me going, providing the encouragement I needed. We did this routine every two hours, and I could feel my husband silently cursing my determination.
Back at the pediatrician’s office with our son continuing to lose, the lactation consultant told us to use a syringe for the weekend feeds and ordered us back into the office Monday. It felt like my last chance, and in hindsight, it sure was. The routine was the same except my husband used a syringe instead of a bottle, which he detested. These so-called ‘squirrel feeds’ didn’t seem natural to him, and they left him unsettled. All that weekend I tried to nurse a lazy sleepy little bottle-fed baby while my husband lurked, impatient, for his turn to squirrel feed as I pumped. Except this time, miraculously, our son decided he did not care for a syringe and instead would try out the boob.
We returned to the pediatrician that Monday, happy to see his weight starting to creep back up. We got the green light to stop the syringe feeding and our son started nursing. But subsequent visits to the pediatrician had him not quite gaining as he should, yet again. Another round with the lactation consultant who again helped me with his latch and then told me about hind milk. She told me to keep him on each side for 20 minutes, which really never worked. He was a consistent 10 minutes per side kind of babe and thankfully, that wound up perfectly ok. The little guy wound up taking to the breast, finally, and within his first few weeks of life, after such a hard time that I think most people would have given up. In fact, my husband really encouraged me to stop trying. But I love a challenge and here we were – the reluctant breastfeeder, determined and refusing to give up. Our son never did take a bottle after that first week and wouldn’t take a pacifier. The little nugget who preferred formula at first had become quite the little boob snob.
Today, we are still going strong at 29 months. I never in a million years expected to nurse at all, let alone this long. We did recently night wean, a process that took several attempts before he was ready. Since the start we have been staunchly against any form of sleep training or cry-it-out, so I wasn’t about to do any sort of forced night weaning. The first few tries he got upset so I abandoned the attempts. Finally, right around 27.5 months he was OK with it. We still nurse to sleep and bedshare, but he knows no more milk until the sun shines. If he wakes at night we cuddle, and he rarely asks for milk anymore. But every morning when that sun comes up he loudly declares, “Sun uuupppp” and pounces like a tiger!
I’ve no idea when our journey will come to an end and honestly, I am ok with continuing to let him lead. I know not everyone understands or ‘approves’ – honestly, I didn’t get it either until we had our son. Now I know it is a bond like no other, and I know when our journey ends, I will miss it very much. And these days when I think back to that mama nursing in that restaurant, my heart warms and a smile creeps across my face. I see you, mama, and I have become you. Thank you.
What do you think about Kelley’s story? We think she’s a rockstar! Thanks for sharing Kelley!
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How Clare Found the Encouragement to Keep Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding, Breastfeeding Story, ParentingCommentOur story this week comes from Clare. She shares about her two different experiences with breastfeeding and how she found the encouragement needed to keep on breastfeeding her second child.
Before having children, I remember once seeing a woman nonchalantly breastfeeding a baby in a shopping center while she browsed the aisles. This image has always stuck with me as an example of how easy and effortless breastfeeding CAN be. I later came to realize that it rarely ever is, at least not at the beginning.
I have two boys who are two and a half, and three months. With my first baby, Ronnie, I had quite a quick delivery and was in shock for a few minutes after he was born. When I came to and tried to breastfeed, he struggled to latch on and I ended up hand expressing colostrum into his mouth for the first day. We were discharged from hospital after 24 hours expecting a midwife visit the next day. Unfortunately, due to a mix up the midwife didn’t come until day three, by which time Ronnie still hadn’t managed a good latch. During that visit the midwife managed to help him latch on and he had a really good feed in the side-lying position. I felt hopeful that this would work. However after she left I couldn’t replicate the latch, and by the next midwife visit on day four Ronnie was quite jaundiced, dry skinned and had lost more than 10% of his birth weight. The midwife was unable to help him latch-on this time, so my husband ran to the shop and bought some ready-to-feed bottles of formula which he guzzled down hungrily. I had to go back to hospital because my blood pressure was extremely high. On the way there we phoned my sister-in-law and asked her to buy a sterilizer, pump and bottles. I learned how to use them in hospital and was discharged again later that day on some medication for my blood pressure.
Various people tried to help me with the breastfeeding after that, but it seemed like Ronnie loved the bottle and nothing else! We discovered he had a slight tongue tie but the procedure to cut it made no difference to his feeding. For the first few weeks and months I would often try and breastfeed without success. Once in a while he seemed to latch-on correctly, but most of the time he would scream and cry and thrash around at the nipple. An extremely unpleasant experience for both of us! I expressed milk about six to eight times a day and topped up anything else he needed with formula until four months when we switched to all formula.
I remember lots of times feeling really disappointed that the breastfeeding hadn’t worked out. Although I could see the benefits of bottle feeding, I found regularly expressing milk was time consuming and inconvenient, and I felt like a failure. I beat myself up with thoughts that if we lived in times before formula and pumps he would have starved to death (the concept of a wet nurse didn’t console me)! The rational part of my brain knew it was perfectly fine not to breastfeed, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty and ashamed. I sought a lot of help and received endless suggestions for new ways to help him latch. I felt like I couldn’t give up, but deep down I wished someone would just tell me definitively, ‘it’s not working, it’s not your fault, and nothing you do now will help him breastfeed’. On reflection, I know it was unreasonable to expect someone else to tell me this. The decision had to come from me. The last straw was a lactation consultant who recommended some tongue exercises for Ronnie. I just knew that trying to get a baby to exercise his tongue was something I could not find time or motivation to do. Looking back I do not regret the time I spent expressing milk for Ronnie but I do regret all the time I spent feeling upset and guilty about not breastfeeding. Time that would have been better spent enjoying my baby!
Following my experience with Ronnie, I made a pact with myself that if my second baby found it difficult to breastfeed, I would straight away give formula. I knew that balancing a toddler and baby alongside regular expressing was not going to work for me.
After a really smooth (dare I say, relaxed!) birth, I had skin to skin contact with my second boy, Frank, straight away and the midwife helped him latch on very quickly. It immediately felt like it was working but I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much as I knew things can change quickly in the first few days. In the hospital I kept asking midwives to check his latch and they kept telling me it looked fine. We went home after 24 hours, and when the milk came in on days two and three, things got a lot more difficult. I was very engorged and suddenly it felt harder for him to latch on, as well as painful. The pain got worse and worse, and my nipples were extremely sore and cracked. At that point we called the community midwife in despair and she agreed to see me on the same day to give advice. All the midwives I came across this time gave both practical advice and emotional support, and were much more pragmatic than advisors I’d come across with Ronnie. They made it clear to me that I should not feel obligated to continue to breastfeed if I didn’t want to. I knew that Frank was getting enough milk from breastfeeding because of his weight, but one midwife said ‘it has to work for both of you, not just him.’ I felt so grateful to her for taking my well-being into account and not just pushing a pro-breastfeeding agenda.
The support I received helped me to keep going, alongside lots of pain killers and nipple cream. There were some very difficult days where the pain was almost too much to bear and I would dread every feed. After two weeks, even though I’d told myself I didn’t want to express milk this time, I felt that giving some bottles of expressed milk would give me a rest and help my nipples to heal while maintaining my milk supply. So I started giving him about 50% bottles and 50% breast. I felt at an advantage having sought so much advice with my first baby because I knew lots of different methods and positions to try, and eventually the pain started to decrease. Finally, one Saturday after I’d had a nap, I woke up to see the cracks had started to heal. This gave me encouragement to continue. After six weeks I could say my nipples had fully healed and it was no longer painful to feed. I was so pleased I persisted because I now love breastfeeding and the opportunities it gives me to cuddle and bond with Frank. I still can’t multitask as smoothly as the woman I saw in the shopping center, but I can just about breastfeed while eating chocolate and watching Netflix, which is good enough for me!
What do you think about Clare’s story? We love how she ! Thanks for sharing Clare!
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How Kaitlin Became An Exclusive Pumping Mom
Breastfeeding, Breastfeeding Story, ParentingCommentOur story this week comes from Kaitlin. Kaitlin struggled with many of the concerns, fears, and obstacles we all do as nursing moms, and in the end, discovered what worked best for her and her baby girl!
As a little girl, I placed baby dolls on my flat chest, pretending I was nursing. My mother nursed me until sometime after my second birthday. There was no doubt in my mind that someday when I had a baby, I would nurse her as well. When I was pregnant with my May 2020 baby I did all the reading. I signed up for the class, which was scheduled in April of that year and ultimately cancelled due to COVID. I had some friends who had babies over that past year who had tried to nurse and had some challenges resulting in them quickly turning to formula. I had a lot of respect for these moms and was nervous I wouldn't succeed in my goal either. I mentioned my fears in passing to one of the nurses at my OBGYN’s office. She told me that it was “the most natural thing in the world, and if they failed at it, it’s because they never really wanted to do it in the first place”. I didn’t agree that my friends didn’t try hard enough per say...but if the nurse wasn’t concerned, why should I be?
And then my baby girl was born. She was beautiful and wonderful and latched right away. Not perfectly, but the nurses helped and got her to fix it time and time again. But by 24 hours later my nipples were raw, scabbed and bleeding. She would latch and I would cry from the pain. Which is saying something considering the shape my vagina was in. The night nurse came in and saw my struggles and said “have you considered formula?” I started sobbing even harder because I heard “why don’t you just feed formula instead of breastmilk?” Ultimately I let her have a couple of ounces until I could see the lactation consultant again when she came in the morning. I saw her three times in the hospital and ultimately they gave me a pump and suggested that I pump when I go home for just a couple of days so my nipples could heal.
I got home two days postpartum and had to figure out this breastpump I hadn’t studied...because I wasn’t supposed to need it yet. I hadn't been planning on dealing with it until I was nearing my return to work. But in light of the circumstances I quickly became acquainted with the machine and we bottle fed breast milk for days 2-8 of Ophelia’s life until I was healed and I got in to see a local lactation consultant. She was wonderful and dosed me with a bunch of hope and a nipple shield. We were back at it! A baby and her boob.
The next week we had some struggles and lots of mess with the nipple shield (if you know, you know) but we continued to nurse with it and did gradually wean. I was delighted that my baby was nursing, just as intended. The thing is though, we weren’t doing a great job. Many feedings were a struggle. Sometimes she popped on and off. Often she was overwhelmed by a forceful let down, causing her to choke and cry. She nursed a lot. I chalked it up to cluster feeding, but several weeks in after the baby tracking app showed me she had been on the breast once an hour for 21 consecutive hours...I knew things really weren’t right. I had read about ties but I had asked one of the many pediatricians we were shuffled amongst due to COVID and she said “she doesn’t have a tongue tie since she can stick her tongue out past her lips”. I had let the idea go for a while but I was paying more attention now, I noticed the “clicking” and even to my untrained eye, I could spot at least what appeared to be a lip tie.
At 8 weeks old we saw a pediatric dentist. Ophelia was diagnosed with “extremely restrictive” lip and tongue ties. The dentist showed me how when she pulled up her top lip it didn’t stretch very far, when in fact it should have been able to come up and cover her nostrils. She pulled her tongue up and showed me how it couldn’t reach the roof of her mouth. Weeks of mother’s intuition overshadowed by undereducated doctors proved correct. We had the procedure done to release the ties with a laser. It was quick and we tried to nurse right away after. She struggled, as had become the norm, but I was hopeful it would just take time to learn how her new mouth functioned. We went home, lubed my finger with coconut oil and did the prescribed stretches every few hours, including overnight, to keep the new open wounds from closing.
Two more weeks passed without improvement. She eventually started refusing the breast almost entirely and we wound up doing more pumping and bottle feeding. Things weren’t better and I didn’t know why. My heart was breaking and my last day of maternity leave at 11 weeks 6 days, we made one last trek to the pediatric dentist to see if perhaps the ties had reformed. They hadn’t. In fact, they were healed beautifully. My girl was telling me what I hadn’t been open to hearing. Nursing wasn’t for us. Nursing caused us tears, frustration and stress that neither of us needed. We were just surviving, not thriving. I can say now, that I was stubborn. I was selfish and unwilling to settle soon enough for what my baby really needed. The breast was just too difficult for her to master.
We are eight months postpartum now. Five months of exclusively pumping, and it has been the best choice I wish I would have made sooner. My supply has consistently exceeded what she drinks, allowing me to build a current freezer stash of over 1300 ounces. I went from 6 pumps per day including an overnight one, to 5 shortly after my return to work, and down to 4 pumps per day at 5 months postpartum. I am prepared to start dropping pumps at 11 months postpartum in order to start weaning as I will have more than enough to get her to a year with the help of frozen milk.
Exclusively pumping is not easy. Over these months I have spent between two and four hours each day setting up the pump, removing the milk, cleaning up, bottling, bagging and washing parts. I learned the pitcher method and started using a dedicated milk freezer. I purchased an additional pump for portability as well as the collection cups which unfortunately didn’t work for me. Amazon got my business for extra flanges, duckbills and storage bottles. I’ve worked through clogs including one monster one caused by a bleb that nearly caused me to quit. I’ve pumped in the car, at work, in a camper, around the fire, at the homes of friends and family. I could not have done all of this without the full support of an amazing partner, to whom I am extremely grateful.
When I was pregnant I could have never imagined our breastfeeding journey would lead where it has. I had no idea that one could exclusively pump and bottle feed. I’m not sure that if I had, anyone would have convinced me to try it. But out of desperation, need and love for my child, I continue to hook up every day and do what has become second nature. My baby is chunky, happy and doesn’t even have a concept of what boobs are for anymore. She is perfect, even if our path here hasn’t been.
-A grateful and humbled pumpalicious mama
Check out more from Kaitlin on her Instagram sight - The Fairy Pumpmother
What do you think about Kaitlin’s story? We think she’s done an amazing job of figuring out what works best for her and her baby! Thanks for sharing Kaitlin!
Would you like to share your breastfeeding story our blog? Submit it here!