I have decided to write a series of articles on motherhood. Realistically, being a mum is just about all my life has space for at this very moment, so it would be silly to ignore that..
Please excuse my choice of soundtrack for this post.
I am a pumper. I pump. I… had no idea what a breast pump even was until shortly after my little girl was born (hey! ‘He’ did turn out to be a ‘she’ after all..!), and have spent the last 6 months almost inseparable from the damn thing.
It isn’t easy to find that much information online about exclusive breast pumping, and for that reason it is the focus of this article; I hope it reaches at least one person looking for reassurance or friendly advice, or even just someone to relate to.. exclusively pumping breast milk is a sorry state of affairs, and a lonely one, too.
In the days after Olivia was born I breastfed her. It was tough, and very painful and I had very limited help or support. My wonderful sister was visiting, and she was as supportive as she could be, but having never experienced it herself, and being as awkwardly British as we are, there was definitely a gap in how supportive she could be and the kind of support that I needed.
(Not to downplay her support at all; she was actually fantastic).
Living in a place with a completely different culture has its perks, but it certainly has its drawbacks, too. Here, it is the norm to breastfeed. Everyone does it, or at least gives it a good try before admitting defeat. The main thing is that everyone seems to know HOW to do it. [For anyone who hasn’t been in the position of attempting to breastfeed for the first time, it is definitely not a case of ‘everything just comes so naturally to both mother and baby. It’s blissful and there are butterflies and rainbows that fly out of my chest every time my precious angel goes to latch…’ -some people have a much easier time than others, but frankly if anyone makes out the first few weeks of breastfeeding to be anything close to heavenly it’s a big fat lie].
What I have come to realise is that there is just a lot of information being passed around here. Neighbors, relatives, strangers in the street.. everyone has advice and tips and feel like they are perfectly qualified to tell you, forcefully, how to do it. But also that everyone gives completely different advice, and without a close, experienced, family member to guide me full time in the beginning, I ended up chopping and changing how I did things just to suit whoever happened to be visiting at the time. Not helpful. At all. In any way.
So, everyone felt the need to fill the gap of the close family member, guiding me through what to do, but no one was actually willing to take the time to do it for more than five minutes, and the result was a barrage of conflicting information, a huge amount of stress for both me and baby and eventually, just over a week in, broken, bloody nipples, infections in both sides, excruciating mastitis that needed antibiotics (the first incident of NINE in the first three months), and a stressed out baby who just wanted some milk without being put through some kind of gymnastic juggling act every two seconds..
Trying to breastfeed with shredded and bloody nipples is a pain which, for me, was worse than childbirth. Way worse. One of P’s relatives is the head nurse at a hospital here and she helped me so, so much. She told P which pump to go and buy (we’re pretty limited financially at the moment, so it’s manual as opposed to electric, but it does the job..), and sat with me for a long time, talking about what to do and making sure that I was okay.
Her visit was a turning point for me. I realised that, despite having done it themselves, not everyone here is some kind of breastfeeding guru. I stopped just accepting that anyone visiting would expect to be able to watch me feed my daughter and comment on it. I became more forceful about my need for privacy and less willing to make exceptions for anyone (the floodgates..). I even got a bit mad when P tried to interfere with what I was doing. Not ideal, but I stand by it;
Becoming a new mum is chaotic enough without having the world and his wife telling you exactly how to do everything. It’s okay to have doubts, but you need to trust your instincts and not just assume that other people have the answers. Every baby is different, every parent is different.
So. Fast forward another week and Olive was getting angry at my breastfeeding attempts. She’d noticed the difference between the work involved at the breast vs the instant gratification of the bottle and that was that. Thanks to our earlier gymnastic routines, she took no comfort from my boobs, and knew she could get milk much easier via a bottle, so, despite continued daily attempts for weeks after, she was destined to be breastfed from a bottle.
I was in emotional turmoil. Overjoyed that the pain of that first weeks wouldn’t come back, but heartbroken at the rejection. I’m not sure that it was a conscious decision, but pumping became the norm. 6 times a day (and night), for up to an hour each time. Looking back on it now I think I must have been completely insane to do it. P’s family are only really interested in the novelty factor of having a baby around, and P was still in the shock of becoming a father, so most of the time it was, and is, just me taking care of our little girls needs.
The first 4 months were impossibly hard. Olivia wasn’t in any kind of routine and so I just pumped when I could (the rare occasions she would actually sleep), and this lack of organisation is what led to complete exhaustion and repeated bouts of mastitis. P did his best to take over each time I was fighting a fever, but despite his heart being in the right place, he struggled so much that any respite I had usually lasted less than an hour.
It wasn’t until she was about 4 and a half months old that I was able to establish and maintain any vague resemblance of a routine and finally stopped getting sick. However, the routine itself was, necessarily, very demanding. Pumping once every 3-4 hours, day and night. Each pumping session could last up to an hour, and many of them were done while Olive slept, because it was just easier that way, really.
Taking care of a newborn baby for the first time is hard. Doing so 7000 miles away from ones family and support network is isolating. Deciding to sacrifice sleep in order to pump breast milk for said baby is insane. Looking at the situation now, in retrospect, I can see that. Though at the time that I made these choices, being a new mother, I was at least a little unhinged, to say the least and with no sound voice of reason around (sorry P!), it was inevitable that I was not going to make sensible choices.
Breast milk is the gold standard. If possible, it is of course what you should be giving to your little ones. No question. But the focus for me should definitely have been the ‘if possible‘ part. Realistically, the path I chose was far too much for me to take on alone.
This week I began the slow process of weening myself off of the pump.
I am proud of the fact that my little girl was exclusively fed breast milk until she began solids at 6 months. As awful as it may sound, I’m not sure that, given the choice, I would do it again. I’m exhausted and around 10kg below my pre-pregnancy weight (I have written before about my concerns with being underweight before and during pregnancy; a further loss is far from being something to celebrate). My period has yet to return, and my hair is still falling out in clumps. I am yet to enjoy an uninterrupted sleep of more than 3.5hrs since Olivia’s birth in October.
In other circumstances, I think pumping milk would be ideal; the mother who has to work but still wants her baby to be fed breastmilk, or who pumps in order for another person to do a night feed or two so she can get some rest etc etc. or even in the same circumstances as me, but with someone else who is willing to look after baby for even an hour a day, would have made the world of difference. I would happily breastfeed any future children that me and P may have – if they’ll let me, but pumping as the sole carer of a newborn is far too much stress to even consider repeating.
For those of you embarking on the life of a pumping mummy, here are some things I’ve learned in the trenches;
- Breastfeeding/pumping makes your hormones crazy. Hell hath no fury like a woman desperately needing to pump her boobies. Seriously.
- Organisation is key! Make a timetable for yourself and stick to it as best you can.
- Stress/tiredness lower milk production (ha).
- If you don’t own a double pump you have an increased chance of one boob swelling much larger than the other (I have had neighbors comment on my lop-sided jubblies..), but they always even out again eventually.. until the next time.
- To even out your boobies, or to cope with one side being your main producer and the other barely pulling it’s weight, pump the smaller/under producing side first; once you’re finished pumping both sides, go back to the first one to help stimulate more production. – only do this a couple of times, as anymore and you’ll just swap one for the other..
- To deal with oversupply, try timing your pumping sessions and decrease the time by five minutes for a few days; it’s supply and demand, so if you don’t completely empty yourself before stopping, you’ll eventually stop producing so much. For undersupply do the same in reverse.
- Mastitis is a bitch. I found that, despite being advised that only emptying the affected boob would help, the best thing to do, and for me the surefire way to actually get better, was to sleep.
- Your baby won’t thank you for pumping breast milk. Your spouse may resent the time you take to pump milk instead of resting. You may come to resent it, too. Being able to self motivate is so important.
- The occasional bottle of formula won’t hurt your baby, completely formula feeding won’t either.
- When trying to stop lactating, cabbage leaf compress’ actually work. Who knew?!
So, here I am. Underweight, exhausted and with lop-sided boobies. The mum of a beautiful little girl, who is healthy and happy. Nearly 7 months in, I’m finally beginning to actually enjoy myself and spend quality time with Olivia, without being dangerously overtired or a hormonal mess.. though I do smell a bit like cabbage.
Please share your own experiences in the comments, if you like, or feel free to ask any questions…
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article sponsered by Northern Michigan certified lactation consulting and Mother Hubbards Country Cupboard
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