- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 0
- 0
-
Sparkle (0)
I was not a breastfed baby. For most of my life I believed that this was because I was allergic to my mom’s milk, which made me jaundiced and that she just couldn’t because of that. The doctor told her, “Feed her formula,” and so she did. It wasn’t until I had my own child in 2006, and my mom watched me struggle with breastfeeding, persevere and then ultimately succeed, that she told me the real reason she didn’t breastfeed me: It was too hard. It hurt too much.
I know what she meant. It was really hard for me, too. It hurt. A lot. Oh mama, did it hurt. Lactation educators and books on breastfeeding say that breastfeeding shouldn’t hurt, and they’re right for the most part. Once you and the baby figure out how to get her latched onto your breast and everything’s working the right way, it shouldn’t hurt. But the first of my many breastfeeding hurdles was Breastfeeding trouble #1: inverted nipples. That means they point in instead of out. Yay! They weren’t hopelessly inverted, but they wouldn’t come out on their own, so that skin had basically never really been exposed to any touch whatsoever. Many new nursing moms have some pain when their babies are learning to latch on to their breast in those early days. Having a hungry, eager newborn suck ravenously on skin that is essentially seeing the light of day for the first time was an excruciating experience (and I had just gone through a drug-free labor and delivery). Not only was it painful, but my daughter was having a terrible time getting a good latch because of those damn inverted nipples. Tons of pain, no milk, frustrated baby and mother. Quadruple whammy.
After my daughter’s birth, we stayed in the hospital for two days. By the time we were ready to leave, I hadn’t had much success getting her to latch (and the hospital’s lactation consultant had called in sick. (Argh!) and had been coaxed by some well-meaning nurses in the middle of the first sleep-deprived-what-the-hell-am-I-doing-why-is-she-screaming night to give her formula. Enter breastfeeding problem #2: Nipple confusion.
Thankfully, my husband was on the case. Before we were discharged, he was on the phone with a local lactation consultant (the fantastic Wendy Haldeman, co-founder of the Pump Station, who agreed to meet us at our house to help. Wendy worked with us for a while that day trying to get the latch to work, but eventually it was clear to her that my daughter wasn’t able to get anything out of my breasts. She suggested I pump my breasts every three hours (to preserve my milk supply and draw my nipples out), feed the baby anything I was able to pump in a bottle (to preserve my baby), supplement that with formula as necessary (to make sure she was getting enough) and keep trying to get her to latch as often as I could (to preserve the possibility that we could be a nursing team). And so that’s what I did.
For six weeks, every three hours without fail I dragged myself into our living room to the rented hospital-grade breast pump that Wendy had brought with her and hooked myself up like a prize dairy cow. For six weeks, I yelped in pain when my nipple-confused infant tried to latch on, then gave up in frustration and fed her from a bottle. The good news was that I was great at pumping my breasts and my daughter was gaining weight from all the milk I was pumping. But we weren’t breastfeeding. I woke up one morning at the end of those six weeks in a frustrated, defeated, sleep-deprived stupor and thought to myself, “I can’t do this anymore. If she doesn’t get it today, I’m just going to give up.” And I meant it. But that day, to my delight and surprise, she figured it out. She latched on properly, she sucked the right way, and she drank. It was glorious. We were a nursing pair until she was more than 2 years old.
More Adventures in Extreme Breastfeeding
Those first six weeks were the hardest for me, but my boobular struggles didn’t end there. Some highlights:
Blisters and bleeding: In the early weeks, because of my daughter’s difficulty in getting a good latch and my inexperience at fixing her latch, she was sucking wrong at the beginning and I developed a few blisters on my nipples.
