People paint this perfect picture of how breastfeeding looks. Proud moms flood our Facebook feeds with photos of themselves boob out feeding their babies in public and smiling at the controversy they are serving up to the patrons of restaurants, malls, waiting rooms and the like. Some women even strike yoga poses and juggle household tasks like folding laundry. I was lucky if I could get a latch using both hands.
There’s no such thing as a perfect breastfeeding journey.
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to breastfeed. It’s not only good for baby, but you lose a lot of your baby weight quickly, it’s a wonderful bonding experience and it’s really, really convenient. What I didn’t know, was that I’d have to fight like hell to do it.
“Is it supposed to hurt so bad?” I asked the Lactation Consultant (who I will refer to as their appropriate initials LC) assigned to me after my delivery. I was on day three of breastfeeding and things just didn’t seem right. Madison was demanding the breast every thirty minutes. And it felt like she was nursing with vampire fangs. So the LC tells me to try again. Surely it’s a bad latch. It happens to all first time breastfeeding moms.
She grabs my breast, squeezes down on my chaffing nipples and shoves it into Madison’s tiny mouth like it’s a quarter pounder with cheese. Madison’s eyes are wide as she struggles to adjust her latch. The LC lets go and says with a smile, “See. That’s a good latch.” But the electric shock of piercing pain shoots through my breast and smacks me in the face. Within seconds, my sweet baby has drawn her head back and taken my nipple with her. It looks like an old stick of lipstick struggling to keep its point. “She’ll get it” the LC tells me. “It takes time to teach them how to latch correctly”. And she man handles my breast again, stuffing it deeper into my poor baby’s face.
And so I tried. I tried, I tried and I tried. And every time it was the same thing. Perfect latch, then slide down to the very tip and settle in for a 15 minute snack until she’d fall asleep. I cried on the inside when I would look at the clock and see that 45 minutes had passed since her last feeding and I knew she’d wake up soon to take yet another layer of tender skin off my quickly diminishing nipples. How on Earth do women do this without flinching?
As I look at my precious baby, in all of her beautiful innocence, the pediatrician’s words hammering down all judgy on my delicate and bruised ego, I conceded my fight to want to exclusively breastfeed.
I stared at the containers of formula in the truck ride home. I could read the fine print three, maybe four, words at a time before the next blur of tears would fall from my miffed face. I was angry, annoyed, hurt, sad, guilt ridden, and every other emotion in the spectrum. Why was it so hard for me to do something that was so natural?
And so the grueling process of breastfeeding one meal, then bottle feeding while pumping the next played out for nearly a week. I struggled with finding the happy medium of my breast pump, fidgeting with the control nobs to see which strength and speed would actually work. No matter what, I’d still only get a shot glass worth of milk which I’d often throw in the sink as if it was a white flag. I felt defeated. I wanted to give up. But I wanted to breastfeed even more.
I spent endless hours on Google. Article after article on how your output doesn’t mean you aren’t producing. Another on how stress effects your supply so stop worrying about if you have enough milk or not. A few that say supplementing hurts your supply and you should stop formula feeding immediately. But it was the last one I read that resonated most.
Does your baby:
- Repeatedly break suction while feeding
- Make clicking noises while feeding
- Gaining weight too slowly
- Falls asleep while nursing
Are you:
- Experiencing nipple pain when nursing
- Struggling with dwindling milk supply
Are you kidding me? That’s me! And not like the “I have a headache and WebMD says it’s a brain tumor and I’m gonna die in three days” me… but literally this is my situation! This… this right here… makes sense! So I scroll… what’s the solution… there’s gotta be something here that’s helpful. Then, in front of my face, a diagnosis: Tongue and Lip-Tie baby.
What, in the world, is that?
Tongue–tie is what they call it when a baby experiences trouble with the tight piece of skin between the underside of their tongue and the floor of their mouth . It can sometimes affect the baby’s feeding, because it makes it hard for them to attach properly to their mother’s breast due to the tension on that skin. It’s uncomfortable. So they lessen the tension by sliding back and settling for less milk with a poor latch.
We eventually DID find a treatment plan and it all worked out (I’ll post another blog on that soon). And I did end up toughening up and dealing with the more frequent feedings and Madison started gaining the proper weight and was happy go lucky – certainly not starving like the pediatrician had implied. In fact, we celebrated 7 months of breastfeeding this month.
As a mother, I knew something wasn’t right. I should have stuck to my guns from the start. How could someone trained to be a Lactation Consultant not have suggested this? It’s your JOB to know this! And while I know on the surface it seemed like maybe it was fine, but I feel like someone should have listened to me when I said that my nipple was going to fall off. Maybe they were waiting for that to happen because they’ve never really seen it before.
Maybe someone will stumble on this when they are crying in their rocking chair at 2:00 am with burning, tired eyes, cracked, bleeding nipples and a screaming baby Googling “what the hell am I doing wrong?” And if you are that person, and you’re reading this now, you’ll be ok. Your baby will be ok. Your baby is not starving. And you are not going crazy. Don’t give up. Ask some REAL questions to someone who will listen.
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article sponsered by Northern Michigan certified lactation consulting and Mother Hubbards Country Cupboard
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