The Breastfeeding Experience

Eating more with less – how I breastfed my food allergic children, Part Two

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:17:00 +0000

This post is from Allergymom.

Some told us it was was impossible for a breastfeeding mother’s diet to cause allergies in the baby. Some spoke to us like we were morons. Some spoke to us like we were conspiracy theorists glancing fearfully over our shoulders. Some made me doubt my own sanity. Almost everyone advised us to supplement with formula. Apparently, my son was not growing well on breast milk and needed more than that.

But we did find one very compassionate and experienced pediatrician. She had breastfed her own dairy-allergic child on a maternal exclusion diet. She told us about reading labels and keeping food diaries. We also found a pediatric allergist, a leading researcher in the field who is making headlines today with his success in trial studies to desensitize children with dairy, egg and peanut allergies.

I found alternative foods and recipes. I became an intrepid cook in my kitchen eager to try out Iron Chef challenges in reverse – “let us make bread and brownies without wheat, eggs and dairy.” Out of the woodwork came mothers who had successfully breastfed their children on Maternal Exclusion Diets. I found numerous blogs dedicated to cooking without allergens. I found support from breastfeeding mothers and mothers of children with food allergies. I felt entirely sane again.

I made mistakes along the way. I ate “non-dairy whipped topping” containing whey, a cow milk protein. I bought rice cheese that was lactose-free but still contained casein, a cow milk protein. But I learned with each mistake and quickly became a whiz at label reading. I did not consider breastfeeding my son beyond a year. I was still trying to get my bearings in the world of food allergies. We had good health insurance which paid for hypoallergenic formula. My son was not ready to wean, I was not entirely happy with weaning either. But he did well on hypoallergenic formula and it was the easy thing to do. I wondered if I gave up too easily. I promised myself, that given another chance, I would try harder. And that chance did come my way.

I caught on to my daughter’s symptoms very early on, within the first few days of her life. I became my daughter’s advocate. I confidently passed on food allergy knowledge from my children’s allergist to the not so allergy-aware pediatricians. I scoffed back at the doctors and returned their disbelieving stares. For the first time in my life, I was thankful for the ordeal we went through before my son’s food allergy diagnosis. My daughter is a premature baby who spent the first two months of her life in the NICU and like most babies in the NICU was started on a Human Milk Fortifier containing cow milk protein with her feeds of pumped breast milk. If she had had to suffer in the same way as my son, she might not have made it.

Sitting in the pediatrician’s office today, I looked into my little girl’s cherubic face, a tear drop still glistening in the corner of her eye after her one-year vaccinations. She reached for my shirt and peered down the front urgently, looking for the familiar comfort she knew. As I cradled her in my arms and she latched on, the nurse smiled sweetly at us and closed the door quietly behind her. I looked at my little girl’s half-closed eyes and content expression and felt confident in my decision to continue breastfeeding her for the second year of her life.

Eating more with less – how I breastfed my food allergic children, Part One

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:11:00 +0000

This post is from Allergymom.

A month ago, I was looking forward to having some of my favorite foods again – baked brie, hummus, lamb kebabs, grilled shrimp and a variety of cashew and pistachio desserts from the South Asian subcontinent.

Today, however, I am looking forward to breastfeeding my daughter for another year foregoing all those favorites. I made this decision at my daughter’s one-year checkup when the pediatrician inquired if I was going to wean my daughter to fortified rice milk or hypoallergenic formula. That is when it hit me. Breast milk or rice milk? The answer seemed obvious to me.

I am breastfeeding my daughter on a Maternal Exclusion Diet. I have eliminated from my diet all the top eight US allergens and then some – like gluten grains and high-protein legumes. This is because my daughter has multiple food protein allergies and food protein induced enterocolitis (FPIES). Many of those foods she is actually allergic or intolerant to, such as dairy, soy, wheat, eggs, legumes, pork and beef. The others, like tree nuts and shellfish, are recommended as a precautionary measure so as not to sensitize her and trigger new allergies. Her reactions range from mild to acute and are triggered when I consume any of the foods she does not tolerate, even in very small amounts, and then breastfeed her a couple of hours later. Her symptoms, depending on which allergenic food, take anywhere from a few hours to few weeks to resolve.

It sounds terrible. But it is not. I eat many rice-based dishes, lots of fruits and vegetables – well over the 5 a day and 7 a day recommendations – and eat chicken for protein. I drink fortified rice milk and take a calcium supplement. I am eating healthier than ever in my life, and I look and feel healthier too. I still treat myself to hot fudge chocolate cake and chocolate pudding, all allergen-free. I still enjoy every meal every day.

Luckily for me, this is not my first time on a Maternal Exclusion Diet. I learned the ropes two and a half years ago with my son. He also had allergic reactions to food proteins in my diet. Back then I had no knowledge of food allergies. I was doing all the right things. I was giving my son breast milk, the best food in the world for a baby. I had a plentiful supply and he was a ravenous eater.

But he was colicky and had myriads of symptoms – spitting up, incessant crying, reflux so bad he could only sleep if held vertically, stuffy nose, chronic diarrhea that never seemed to get better. And at three months of age, he failed to thrive. His growth curve just plateaued off and he fell off the bottom of the chart.

After a lot of searching on the Internet, I found out on Kellymom about dairy allergy symptoms in breastfed babies and the concept of entirely cutting out the allergen from the mother’s diet. The symptoms matched those of my son’s. Cutting out dairy, or even dairy and soy, was not making much of a difference. I ate chicken, rice and carrots for a week. And lo and behold, my son’s symptoms went away. It was a few more weeks until his intestines healed enough for him to recover on the growth charts.

And I was able to add more foods back into my diet in a way similar to introducing solid foods to a baby – one at a time and watch for two or three days. From that point on, I never looked back.
We had seen many specialists for my son – ENT, GI, special infant care – all of whom scoffed at my suggestion that my son was reacting to foods in my diet.

Angie and Pooh

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:59:00 +0000

Before I gave birth, I had a whole list of things to worry about. I tend to be one who frets anyway, and the pregnancy and childbirth process gave me a whole new world of worries to have. As one who worries, I can tell you that the biggest annoyance for a worrier is having to worry about things that are beyond your control. You can’t DO anything about it; all you can do is wait and worry. This is a lot of what pregnancy is.

One of things at the top of the list was breastfeeding. A breastfeeding class was one of the recommended child birth preparation classes offered by the hospital where I would deliver. I took the other classes—because I’m one of those people who feels most prepared going to classes and reading lots of stuff—but not the breastfeeding class. How realistic could it be, I wondered, and who knows if I’ll even have a problem breastfeeding, or if it’ll be a natural breeze. Besides, the hospital provided lactation consultants, so why bother.

I guess the next thing for me to say in a confessional such as this is, boy, was I wrong! But, I wasn’t. Despite being crazy exhausted after a very long labor, I asked to breastfeed my baby in the delivery room, and that worked just fine with the nurse just popping her on. The next day’s problem was that my baby was also exhausted from the hard labor (um, didn’t I do all the work?) and didn’t want to wake up to eat. So the lactation consultant came in and showed me some methods to keep her awake, and then she taught me how to use the pump and she fed the baby with a syringe when she insisted on continuing to sleep.

Once she decided to wake up I discovered that my little Pooh was a real hard sucker. This was very effective for getting milk out, but she sucked scabs off of my sore breasts, which showed the power of her vacuum hold. This leads me to “what I wish someone had told me #1”:

Breastfeeding hurts.

Being a voracious consumer of “everything in print about the subject” I had read that “breastfeeding is not supposed to hurt.” I wish someone had told me that’s a load of bull so I didn’t feel like I was doing something wrong. In the hospital, breastfeeding caused my cervix to contract (which is exactly what it’s supposed to do) and that HURT LIKE HELL. Maybe it’s because my labor was really long and painful and I was a big baby because I didn’t want to hurt anymore ever again, but I was really unhappy with the cramps (um, that really felt like contractions) that breastfeeding gave me. Then the next thing was “breaking in” the nipples. But if you have a proper latch, it’s not supposed to hurt, right? Bullpoop. I was doing everything right, my baby was doing everything right, and I was still dreading every breastfeeding session. I was only alleviated from my “what is wrong with me” self-immolation when I told the LC at the pediatrician’s office about it and she said: “oh you mean the first few moments of toe-curling pain? Yeah, that’s normal.” Bless her. That is exactly what it felt like. And it eventually went away.

It’s said that breastfeeding is like dancing in that it takes two compatible partners. Luckily, for me, my baby and I could really tango. On that visit to the pediatrician that happens a couple of days after you get out of the hospital, the LC told me that my baby and I were doing better at it than 90% of the pairs they see. I don’t know if that’s some lie that they tell every new mom (and it’s a great lie if it is one), but it made me feel really good. (For about one day, anyway, until my baby starting spitting up blood, but that was resolved in quick fashion by the LC’s advice to use a nipple guard for a day.)

So having been breastfed myself as a baby and knowing all the benefits of breastfeeding, I never considered not breastfeeding outright. I figured if I could do it, I’d go ahead and do the recommended 6 months and see what happened from there. Which leads to “what I wish someone had told me #2”:

There is no shame in giving your baby frmula.

I am that person who is 110% susceptible to public health messages and follows instructions to the letter. By the time 6 months rolled around, I had been back at work for a couple of months, and my pumped milk supply started to drop off. I tried to pump more often as was recommended to get more milk, and Pooh continued to be thirstier than I could provide. So of course I realized that I was a bad mother who could not provide for her daughter. And how ridiculous was it that I felt so much better when the pediatrician recommended just giving the baby some frmula along with the breast milk. Wow, really, it’s that easy? I was torturing myself all that time just to realize I could just start giving her some frmula?

As the story ends, I breastfed exactly as recommended – until my baby was one. I’m the model mother who followed instructions to the letter. I liked breastfeeding. The last breastfeeding session I had with my daughter I wept and wept and wept because I knew it was over. (She was weaned prior to an international trip I was getting ready to take for work, so that was part of the sorrow.) But oddly I have found myself becoming bitter toward the “breastfeeding establishment” since then.

I guess I feel a bit duped for feeling so bad about the perceived disservice I was doing my daughter any time I couldn’t provide her with enough milk. I understand that the messages sent out that are strongly pro-breastfeeding are good to convince people to give it a try and stick to it. I guess it’s my own problem to feel so sensitive to “what others might think.” But I wish in retrospect I had that time back that I was fretting about getting that pump to suck out just one more drop of milk. No one ever actually said anything—it was just the voices that I had internalized in my own head. With some distance from it, I know that the kids I see running around playing can’t be divided into the healthy smart breastfed kids and the sickly dullards whose negligent parents gave them frmula.

I do plan on breastfeeding my hypothetical next child—and probably for another full year, maybe longer. I just hope when I am in the thick of things that I don’t beat myself up so much about it. And I hope that a subsequent baby will also be a good tango partner.

Slow Posting

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:44:00 +0000

We're not gone yet. The posts on this blog come from reader submissions, and from bloggers that I reach out to because I respect their work. Real life has slowed down my blogger outreach these last couple of weeks, so you haven't seen much around here. I'll go back to my regularly scheduled pleading shortly. In the meantime, I would love to see more reader submissions.

If you've been trying and failing to write about your own breastfeeding experience, remember you don't have to tell your whole story in one post. Try these prompts and see what you get:

What did you learn from breastfeeding?

What was the strangest thing that happened to you because you breastfed?

Tell us about someone whose support helped you breastfeed.

What was it like the very first time you nursed?

Was your pediatrician supportive?

Remember, you can chose what name your piece posts with. You don't have to give your real name, or any name at all.

Stephanie, Noel, and Darrah

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 23 May 2009 18:40:00 +0000

My name is Stephanie. Right now, I have two children- my son, Noel, who is three, and my daughter, Darrah, who is 15 months old. Before, though, before I was a mom-to-two, I was just trying to have a baby. I had lots of plans of how it was going to be- and my husband and I had been trying to have a baby for almost five years before I got pregnant via IVF, so I had plenty of time to make plans.
I was going to have my baby in a birth center, with a midwife. I was going to breastfeed immediately, I was going to have a blissful pregnancy and everything was going to be easy and perfect.

Well, I got pregnant. I was really good at it. I measured exactly right at all my appointments, I felt awesome, I had a perfect little baby belly once I started to show. I opted to do the triple screen- a blood test to check for chromosomal anomalies, and got back a result of 'increased risk'. Eh, my midwife assured me that there were a lot of people that got that result, and all was well. Because I was seeing a midwife, though, state law required me to follow up with a perinatologist, where my options were a thorough ultrasound to check for what they call 'soft markers', or an amnio. My husband and I felt that the amnio was too risky after the difficulty of getting pregnant, so we did the targeted ultrasound and went on our way. Well, we finally did the amnio at 30 weeks, when the risk of losing the baby was minimal, after three targeted ultrasounds that showed two markers of a possible problem.

The next day we found out that our baby had Down syndrome. We were devastated- I had PLANS. This was not my plan. I got a title of 'high risk', and couldn't stay with my midwife or birth center. I had to transfer to an OB/GYN at 32 weeks. I had to have a hospital birth, and because the baby was perpetually breech, we started talking about a c-section. It took me about two weeks. Two of the hardest weeks of my life, honestly. It was two weeks of me coming to terms with what I thought I was getting into, and what I was actually getting. It got better. I tried to wrap my head around our new circumstances by reading . I researched turning breech babies. I researched Down syndrome. I researched breastfeeding. I read and read and read. I remembered that the baby inside me, the one that I was so afraid of- was still the one that I had wished for and dreamed of for years and years. That just because things were going to be different didn't meant they were going to be bad.

The baby stayed breech, I had a c section. My husband followed the baby into the nursery to make sure that nothing was given to him by mouth, that no one gave him a pacifier until he was brought to me once I was out of recovery. I read the La Leche League's paper on breastfeeding babies with Down syndrome. It wasn't much to go on, but I knew it could be done. I put him to breast, and we fumbled. It was going, but it wasn't easy. We kept trying. He got to room-in with me from the start, so that was in our favor.

I called in the hospital's lactation consultant. With her help, we latched and relatched until he was on right. We stripped him down and woke him up because he kept falling asleep. We got a hospital grade pump on the scene to evert flat nipples. This was like work. I felt like I was doing it all wrong, but I hoped that if I kept at it, if I kept trying, maybe it would get better. I was going to do everything in my power to try until I couldn't do it anymore. We kept plugging along, and it was always an hours long process to get him awake, correctly latched, and eating. And then it was time to do it all over again. We got released from the hospital. At home, we kept up the wake up, latch-relatch, eat, fall asleep routine. I needed a hand to hold his head (in the dancer hold), and one to hold his body, and a third to hold my boob, which was bigger than the poor baby's head.

Fortunately, we had a pediatrician who is incredibly supportive of breastfeeding, and helped us, even while my son was not gaining his birthweight back very quickly. Instead of pushing us to supplement, he gave me some advise on positioning, and was available to help whenever I needed it.

We both learned how to do it better. As my son grew, he was able to manage better. As I got more comfortable with nursing, I was able to just go through the actions and not have to think about every step in detail. There was most definitely a learning curve- it wasn't just "open mouth, insert nipple", although we got there relatively quickly. By the time my son was four weeks old, we were doing just fine.

We did just fine straight through until he was about 16 months old, and I was pregnant with our second child. He weaned himself suddenly at that point.

It can be done. People told me not to get my hopes up, that babies with Down syndrome were unlikely to nurse. It's harder, maybe. But if we did it, others can, too.

(and with my second child I got my midwife assisted homebirth. My daughter nursed in her first minutes, and did it perfectly from the start. Easy as pie, without even a second thought)

Hedra, Part Two

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 23 May 2009 09:27:00 +0000

I only wish I actually did ask for help every time I struggled.

Last reason I don't like the Super-Mom thing - I've been there. I bought into the Super-Mom title just a little. First time mom equals insecure, much of the time. From that first-time perspective, everyone else knows what they're doing. Everyone else looks like they have it together. I felt like I was just kind of making it up, and hoping it was close enough, and hoping more that nobody looked too closely and noticed that I was faking my confidence half the time, and the other half I just got lucky.

My competitive streak combined with that made it harder for me to ask for help. I wanted to be a better mother than my own mom - who is a decent mom, all in all, so that was a high bar. She never had help. She never had books, or resources. She didn't have a spouse who thought this was a core job for her. She never had medical reassurance, social backup, or La Leche League. She was doing this in the 50's and it Just Wasn't Done. Me? To compete, I had to do it equally alone. Sorta. At least I shouldn't ask for help, you know? Because to be a Real Mom, I had to be a Super-Mom. I had to do it alone, prove I was worthy. Prove I was better. Bad combination with the insecurity, there.

I have four kids, two older than the twins, so you'd think that I'd have figured out by the time I had the twins that if I struggle, I need to get help. Call me a slow learner.

With my eldest, I struggled - cried through feedings for five and a half weeks until he figured out how to not clamp down too hard on my breast. I asked my friends to check his latch. I asked the midwife (who was also a friend) to check his latch. But I was deep-down terrified of calling a lactation consultant. If I asked a Professional, that was admission of failure. I could ask peers or non-specialists without trouble, but calling in qualified support? That would be proof that I was not a Real Mom, and certainly not a Super-Mom. I couldn't fail, and asking for help equaled failure.

I still shake my head over my stupidity on that. Not only did I pay for my stubborn insistance that I needed to do this All By Myself, but my son did, too. It turned out that he had an oral aversion with devensive behavior from being suctioned roughly at birth, which was why he was clamping down. If that had been managed and addressed as an infant, he might not have ended up in a feeding clinic with aversive feeding at five years old. He will always have a different relationship to food than the natural and welcoming relationship he could have had, because I was determined to be better than my mom. That's a painful admission. I may be smart, but being stubborn about earning my label was dumb.

Skip forward four years, and I did it again. I suffered through bad latches and blisters for four months. See, I'd earned my badges of 'breastfeeding mama' and 'Super-Mom' by nursing my eldest for more than three years. I knew how to do this, and I was NOT going to give up my hard-won label by calling for help! Instead, I poked around the internet until I ran across a method for allowing an infant to set their own latch instead of helping too much. I tried it with him, and ta-DA! It worked. He just got confused when I helped too much. By choosing to not hold his hands out of his own way, and not shove his face into his food, I got good latches from then on. He needed to be in charge of the process. Great! See, I really am a Super-Mom.

Sheesh. I want to go back in time and smack myself in the forehead. I know some of the need for the label was driven by that deep-down flicker of insecurity. First, over being a first-timer, and second, over the first time parenting siblings. But isn't everything a first when it comes to parenting? The learning is constant, so clearly the new experiences are, too. Having the label of Super-Mom was salve for all the times that I struggled and blew it. The label gave me something to cling to.

And then I started learning about labels, as I learned about siblings. Hmm. Maybe this label wasn't such a good thing. I learned not to apply labels to my kids (mostly - I still struggle with that), and I learned how damaging and limiting they can be.

But it took another three years to figure out that they were just as bad applied to me. Eventually, even 'Breastfeeding Mama' started to feel uncomfortable. It put a line between me and anyone who had tried and struggled and had to stop. It put a line between me and those who were afraid to even try. It put a line between me and every woman who had not had enough supply. It stole common ground from all of us.

At that three year point, I had the twins. I didn't have time, energy, or the luxury of holding onto a label. I called in reinforcements. I called in my family for help, I joined the multiples club, I called on friends - I'm going to need help, I can't do this alone. I can't even do it with my usual support system. The excuse of multiples made that a little easier, but it was only an excuse. Being a mom is hard. We all need support. We evolved to parent in community, not alone or in pairs. Support for breastfeeding is part of that.

At least this time, when I reached the point where my pumping supply (I was working) was not keeping pace with the needs of two babies, I only hesitated for three days before I called the lactation consultant. She had some good advice for me, which I really already knew, but which I did actually need to hear from someone else to be willing to follow it. I didn't want to add another pumping session in the morning. But with the allergy history in my family, adding solid foods to fill the gap at 4 1/2 months was not the best plan.

In the end, I was laid off from work and got to stop pumping entirely. That helped, but that actually wasn't what made the difference. What made the difference was that I got over the label, so I could just be a mom. A mom like every woman who has ever had a child is a mom. I'm a particularly lucky mom in some ways, and a completely blundering and dense mom in other ways. I have some talents, and some blind spots, like everyone. By just being a mom, I could ask for help without waiting for it to be too late.

So please don't call me a Super-Mom. I'm a mom. Just like you.

Hedra, Part One

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:12:00 +0000

This post was written by Hedra, who blogs at Hands Full of Rocks.

I successfully breastfed all my kids, including the twins. While I didn't do completely child-led weaning, I did nurse past the two-year mark for each of them. I met the WHO guidelines, as well as the minimum weaning-age preference of the American Academy of Family Physicians. All that is satisfying, but it can also be misleading.

Some people have called me Super-Mom because they couldn't imagine succeeding with breastfeeding twins, or they know someone who couldn't. Or they can't imagine nursing past a year, or they know someone who couldn't or didn't. Or they couldn't imagine breastfeeding at all, or they know someone who didn't even get a fair shot at trying.

I don't like being called Super-Mom. It puts me in a one-up position, which means it also places whoever said it one-down. I am uncomfortable with people putting me above them. It is fundamentally untrue. Worse, it makes life harder for everyone.

There is no such thing as a Super-Mom. We're all just moms, just humans. We differ in skills and resources, training, temperament, style, and intentions. Our histories differ, our lives differ, our networks differ, our values differ, even our goals may differ. But we're all in this together. We really are all human, with no super-powers and no skills that are outside the human range. I'm not genetically modified, and I'm not digitally edited.

When it comes to breastfeeding - whether that's a singleton, twins, or more - it isn't too hard to understand why we use the term. Breastfeeding isn't all that easy, and there are so many challenges that get in the way beyond the physical stuff. Many women do not meet their own goals, fall short of their dream. We may try to make these entirely normal moms feel better by calling the succeeders "extraordinary". I understand the effort to pad the painful parts by distancing the success stories. My successes were never smooth or easy, even if they sometimes look that way from a distance.

Or, someone might use the term Super-Mom as praise, as a way to laud or celebrate what we see as shining examples. We try to make those who did what we want to do understand that we know how hard it may have been to get there. But that's not super-human, either.

Calling breastfeeding success extraordinary, for whatever reason, is entirely the wrong perspective. What is more accurate is that breastfeeding can be hard, or can be easy, and can even be both at different times, even different days or hours. What is also correct is that our resources - personal, family, support, guidance - can also vary on as small or large a scale, can change, can hold us up or let us down. Putting those two patterns together means that normal women, every day, will meet their goals, and normal women, every day, will struggle, and normal women, every day, will not meet those same goals. There is no measure for this that can apply, and no label. It's life. We're human. It just feels worse because we're moms.

The second reason I don't like the term Super-Mom is that it forces women on both sides of the line to attune themselves to the label. Labels are traps, if we buy into them. The more detailed the label, the more a trap it becomes. Super-Mom is that kind of label. The woman who sees someone else as beyond human norm has placed the boundary between herself and that kind of success. The woman who accepts the warm feeling of pride when the label is applied to her also has placed a line between her current moment and the rest of her life - which I can guarantee is not going to be 100% shining moments. To hold onto that perfect label, she'll have to fake it and lie a lot, or work insanely hard some days to continue looking perfect, or will have to accept that she really isn't superhuman, which then might hurt even worse.

Back to my experience... Breastfeeding twins as a normal human woman was hard work. It took effort and planning and support and guidance, and it didn't hurt that I had previous breastfeeding experience. I had a lot of pluses on my side, making it not outside my personal human capability. Right at the edge of that capacity, fairly often. I walked back and forth over the line of 'able' - fortunately, humans evolved to be able to recover and rebound, as well.

The first and most important part of succeeding as a normal woman with breastfeeding twins was having reassurance that it was possible. Talking to twin-moms and lactation consultants who had seen it done allowed me to believe that it was possible. Just believing that at least some normal women can do this is huge. It stops feeling totally insurmountable, and lands instead at least no farther out than the edge of human capacity. I might slip one way or another over that edge, but it is within my grasp.

The second and maybe even more important for the 'on the ground' effort was having a partner (my husband) who felt the same way. He knew I was human, knew it would be hard, and was willing to help in any way he could. Having him tell me (when I was frustrated by another crushing moment) that my only job was lactating, and he would handle the rest... it's more than most women get, and some days more even than I needed. What I needed most was knowing that he believed in me, and trusted me to find my way - or ask for help. This was not blind worship from a distance. He doesn't consider me Super-Mom, either. It was just a faith in me as a person, that I will fight for what I want, and that I will ask for help when something is beyond me. We may not have been taught to do that as women, but having a child to fight for makes a difference.

Some difference, anyway.

Comment contest winner and horrible google ads

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:43:00 +0000

First of all, we have a winner of the comment contest! I made a list of everyone who commented between the 10th and the 17th, and then used the random.org random number generator to pick a number. Caramama, please send me an email to claim your gift certificate! It's been a real pleasure seeing this site slowly develop into a community, so I hope you'll stick around and keep offering support even without the incentive of a contest.

Second, I heard that some of you are seeing google ads for free formula on this site. I never see those myself - all I see are breastfeeding supplies, industrial manufacturing pumps, and some creepy ad about not training children like dogs. I don't have any way to choose what ads google gives me, and I have the ads because I'd like to move this site to its own server and I can't pay for that out of pocket right now. Please email me if you see formula ads, and what page you saw them on. I'm going to try and figure out if certain key words are triggering them so I can avoid the ads.

Anne and Lily

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:40:00 +0000

So this is the tale. I wanted to share this, if I can give even a glimmer of hope to any mom out there who is struggling like I was. I tried to condense it somewhat, but in order to really tell the whole story I had to, well, tell the whole story. Buckle your seatbelt and bear with me.

I’ll start at the end: Lily is 1 year old as of April 14th, and we have been fully and purely on the breast for 7 months now, which means we have finally been nursing for longer than we weren't nursing. It took us FIVE MONTHS to get her on the breast. We've gotten used to it now, but there are still days it doesn’t seem quite real. It’s a dream come true, and something I’ve worked for harder than I ever worked at anything in my life, hands-down. (And the most rewarding and important as well.)

Lily had what amounts to a Perfect Storm of elements stacked against her. They were:

• A posterior tongue tie. This is probably the most significant hindrance to her nursing. For those who don’t know, a tongue tie is a condition where the frenulum underneath the tongue is too restrictive for the baby to latch on properly. There are 4 different grades of tongue ties, too. Some care providers may mean well but are not familiar with anything but the most obvious tie – the anterior one that’s right up at the front & very obvious and stringy. Some babies are able to nurse with some kinds of tongue tie (though it’s often with the cost of pain to the mom), but this one was totally non-functional.
• Extreme molding to her skull from her otherwise wonderful home birth. All babies born vaginally have some degree of molding – the fontanels are designed to work that way – but this was really dramatic. This resulted in two things: first, there were some structural problems with her jaw function (think about how interconnected everything in that area is; a huge part of the problem is that she simply wasn't able to open her mouth wide enough), and second, may have contributed to a couple of neurological delays (nerves essential to coordination can be impinged due to molding and also the associated swelling).
• Being an early bird. She was born at between 36 and 37 weeks – she qualified as full-term according to her newborn exam, but was just an early bird. According to a lot of practitioners, the early ones can just have a harder time getting started sometimes. This caused some concern in the first few days even BEFORE we started to figure out that the two issues above were going to cause serious problems. She had no rooting reflex at first, and for the first 2 days would barely suck – I had to squeeze colostrum into her mouth, and out of concern that my milk wouldn’t come in without her actively, regularly suckling, I started pumping right away – and thank GOD I did (more on that later).
• My nipples being small and kinda flat. If there were no other issues, a normal baby would probably have done okay with me, but Lily’s challenges made this an added factor.
• And if the above weren’t enough, her tongue, even after being clipped, is a small one, and her palate is very high (this is common with tongue-tied babies) – making it very difficult for her to get my nipple in her mouth far enough to pump it against the roof of her mouth, the way an efficient nurser can.

Are you exhausted yet?

So. Man, I’m not sure where to begin with explaining what our approach was. The first few weeks were so terrifying, which made way for a prolonged period of stressed-out, anxious grief, and then settled into just months upon months of hard, hard work. All day, every day, every feeding, and with all the work that surrounded every feeding. I should also note that due to a complicated if temporary long-distance situation with separate residences 8 hours apart, her father was only with us about ¼ of the time, so the rest of the time I was also doing this as, essentially, a single mom. He was a supportive as he could be under the circumstances, but I was still just plain alone the majority of the time,

I think I can best illustrate it with a list, in order, of the techniques and treatments we used.

1. Finger feeding with a syringe. The story of our first two weeks is a saga in itself, and as this is already verging on epic, I won’t recount the entire thing. Here’s a thread I started at MDC when she was two weeks old describing the situation at that point, if you want the details. Suffice it to say that it became clear that she simply was not latching on. Syringe feeding was recommended by the first LC that helped us, and it did the trick to get food into her (always priority one), but did nothing to help her learn to latch on. I kept trying at every feeding, but had no real skills or game plan – and I think we had come to the end of this LC’s ability to help us. She was very kind and did have some information, but we were just beyond her. This went on for a ridiculous 5 weeks.

2. During this time, I started taking her to get craniosacral/chiropractic work, starting at about 3 weeks. She has gotten regular work done ever since, though decreasing in frequency after the first 4 months. This was very important, despite our fairly severe financial hardship, and helped tremendously in ways that extend even beyond breastfeeding, but during that first 5 weeks, I was hoping that finger feeding and craniosacral would cause her to magically be able to latch on all of a sudden, as it was helping to correct her jaw finction and open her mouth wide enough to latch. This was not to be – there was no way this could happen without . . .

3. Getting her tongue clipped. Her tongue tie was finally identified by the 2nd LC we went to, Jennifer, an IBCLC that came highly recommended by several different people who had had difficulties similar to ours. There are 4 different grades of tongue tie, actually, and hers was a posterior one, probably the hardest to identify to a non-expert. Here’s a great article about tongue tie, written by the doctor who performed Lily’s clipping. [Note: that acronym above, "IBCLC", is the gold standard you're looking for in a lactation consultant. Many so-called "lactation consultants" are just L&D nurses who did a weekend workshop - and some of them are lovely people, but if you have serious issues, you must get someone board-certified. All LCs aare NOT created equal.]

4. My mom was visiting from out of town when I went to get this clipping at 5 weeks, requiring a drive to Long Island with our 5 week old babe. After that was taken care of, Jennifer had us switch to finger feeding without the syringe – simply putting one end of the tube into a container and requiring Lily to much more actively suck it out. This didn’t last long, as it was staking her about and hour and a half to finish a feeding of about 2 ounces, giving me only an hour or so relief in between each feeding, in which time I had to pump on top of doing everything else involved with caring for a baby, as well as, ya know, eat and pee and maybe even sleep occasionally.

Note: Speaking of pumping, this was, despite the work and time involved, an extremely lucky break. Attempting to mimic my baby’s feeding pattern, I pumped for 15 minutes after every feeding of hers (so on top of at least a total of four hours of that a day, there was the associated cleaning of equipment and maintenance of the milk). I was blessed (though it’s a mixed blessing) with an oversupply, and by the time I went to see Jennifer, my freezer was overflowing and I was producing enough milk for three babies. Fortunately, she had a few clients who needed donor milk, so I was able to make use of my oversupply and help other moms and babies – this felt really good. I’m grateful beyond words for this, as it meant that despite our extreme challenges, Lily has only ever had my milk. This is not something to take for granted - as I learned through Jenn’s weekly support group, there were plenty of moms struggling with very similar situations who also had to deal with low supply on top of everything else. I continued to donate for months after Lily began nursing normally.

5. As I was saying, that new method of finger feeding was totally nonfunctional, she just was not strong enough to do this yet, and we dropped it after less than a week. Finger feeding really is not meant to be anything more than a temporary means, anyway, and at 6 weeks it was getting ridiculous. So at that point it became appropriate to switch to a very specific bottle-feeding technique, sometimes known as “paced” feeding. It’s true that introducing bottles carelessly can result in nipple confusion, but Jenn explained that nipple confusion is really more accurately described as flow confusion. If you hold a baby at a reclined angle and basically dump the bottle into his mouth, the difference in flow between that and breastfeeding is the difference between drawing liquid out of a straw and doing a 'beer bong' (which is why so many bottlefed babies can be overfed, but I digress). In paced feeding, the baby is held upright in a seated position, and the bottle is at a 90 degree angle, so the baby really has to actively draw milk out. I also used a type of bottle called Breastflow to do this, which is designed to encourage babies to use similar action to that of breastfeeding.

6. But as you can imagine, just doing this alone wasn’t going to get her back on the breast. I did this for several weeks just to try and get her strength and weight up (she was doing okay, but just felt she needed the extra safety net), but knew Jenn would have me trying something different soon. So, we tried using the SNS with a nipple shield. The Supplemental Nursing System uses the same kind of tube used for finger feeding, connected to a tube of milk you attach to your clothes, and you tape the tube next to your nipple (lots of adoptive moms use this to induce lactation, training their babies to nurse without having to pump). Because of my flat-ish nipples, we also had to thread the tub through a nipple shield, since she was nowhere near able to latch on to my naked nipple.

This was an utter nightmare, honestly. Every feeding became a wretched ordeal, trying to thread the tube and get the shield on while she cried, then either one turn of her head knocked the shield out of place or one flail of her hand yanked the tube out, and we had to start it all over again. After a few days of this bullshit, I decided that we HAD to try something else or I would soon be giving up & EPing for her with bottles.

7. So I basically went back to paced bottlefeeding for a while, and then we decided to try and work with the nipple shield before and after each feeding, getting her to latch on before switching over to the bottle. Because it was a big interruption to her to sit her back up each time, I figured out a way to hold the bottle so she could lay on her side, like in a cradle hold, while still keeping the bottle horizontal & at a right angle to her. She got better and better at this switcheroo, especially as her mouth and tongue were getting bigger (Jenn and her craniosacral therapist both agreed that a lot of this was just a matter of time, letting her grow, and finding a way to keep her active at the breast in the meantime, until she was able to get entire feedings that way). She started to induce letdowns and would actually nurse off the shield for a few minutes before I switched her over to the bottle.

This actually led to one of my sort of premature breakthroughs (which happened about three times – I’d get my hopes up and think we were further along than we were, and then have to take a step back a few days later). At about three months, she was doing so well with the shield that I tried, for about 2 days, to go off the bottles entirely – hoping to just nurse with the shield until she can latch on without it – but it was too much too soon.

Digression: There was a point at about 3 ½ months when I was so close to giving up. SO close. I was so wrung out and demoralized and tired of struggling through every single moment. I felt like an absolute failure, and had never wanted anything so badly in my life, or worked as hard for anything. It was all I did all day long. Even her baths were geared towards helping her nurse - Jennifer had recommended co-bathing as a practice that would support Lily's process. I was savagely envious of other mothers who could nurse. I bargained, I begged, I prayed (and I’m not usually the praying kind), I sobbed – it’s no exaggeration to say that I cried more than she did. I thought I could keep working at this as long as needed - IF I could somehow know that she was going to make it eventually, and there was just no guarantee of this. At that crucial point I really feared that it was just not going to happen. This didn’t just make me feel like a bad mother, it made me feel like I was simply not really her mother at all. It’s hard to describe this kind of hell to someone who hasn’t been there. Not being able to feed your own baby, it is utter despair.

The real breakthrough moment was a sign of hope for the future that came about almost impulsively. I had been working with the shield, sometimes on the tip of my finger just to get her used to it and to encourage her to open her mouth wider, as well as at the beginning and end of each feeding, as described in step 8. In between feeds I also tried to occasionally offer the breast, with shield, for comfort, to try and get her associating the breast with comfort as well as food (she couldn’t physically take a pacifier, which was fine by me in principle anyway).

One night in about mid-June, we were lying in bed and she was almost out for the night, but started to fuss a bit. I had been in the habit of offering her my pinky occasionally when this happened, but I wanted to try comfort nursing her. Alas, the shield was all the way n the other room, and I didn’t want to get out of bed if I could help it. So almost impulsively, I positioned her and moved my breast in the direction of her mouth. It wasn’t even all that precise, as I was doing it in the dark – but she latched on. SHE LATCHED ON. And “nursed” (not really swallowing, just comfort-sucking) herself to sleep. I lay there in shock, my mouth wide open, afraid to move or even breathe, wanting this moment to go on forever, with tears of joy streaming down my face. It felt like nothing short of a miracle.

So that proved it – there was hope. The next day things we were right where we had been, technically, but still, there was proof that it was possible. That was the difference. I had to continue, but it was still a brutal struggle. I started to wonder how I could try to find some peace with it – I knew of a few mothers who had exclusively pumped for their babies for a year or more. That way, even though she would be “bottle-fed” technically, she would still be getting breast milk (as far as I’m concerned, as long as I was able to lactate, this was the absolute minimum I could do; formula would never be an option as long as I had the ability to produce milk). And that would be the most important thing, of course. But by that point she had given me a glimmer of hope in her occasional bareback comfort nursing. She was nowhere near efficient enough in her latch to get a full feeding that way, but she WAS getting on to the breast in her own way.

So I was torn – should I just pump and bottle-feed - known as EPing (exclusively pumping) - for nourishment, and also get the bonding of the comfort nursing? Could we be satisfied with that? It “wouldn’t be the end of the word”, as some pointed out, trying to be supportive. And they were right. But the thing that nagged at me, as I tried to see if I could accept this, was that she had come so far JUST to get onto the breast for moments at a time. How could I give up now? It would be unfair to her – it wouldn’t just be giving up, it would be giving up ON her. Her progress had been slow, agonizingly so, but she was progressing. Baby steps, two forward, 1.5 back, true, but it was still progress.

I decided that if I was going to give up, I had to make absolutely sure that I had done absolutely everything that I possibly could. And there was one more thing, the thing that I had been so reluctant to try because my first experience with a similar device (the SNS) was such a nightmare. The Lact-Aid.

Jennifer insisted that this really would improve her latch and train her to be at the breast for entire feedings, and that it wouldn’t be as bad as the SNS, since the device itself is more user-friendly (utilizing a bag that is worn around the neck instead of a tube clipped to the clothes, for example), and since I would not have to use a shield at the same time anymore. I was reluctant, and put it off for a few weeks, because my experience with that SNS was just so godawful.

But finally, after treading water for awhile with the shield-n-switch, I decided that if I wasn’t going to ‘make it” with Lily, if we truly were unable to nurse and I had to EP for her, I could live with and make peace that – but only if I had really tried everything. Including this. If I gave up before I tried the LactAid, I’d always wonder if that would have been what helped us finally succeed, and I’d never forgive myself for not being willing to try.

8. So, of course, this is what I eventually did. I went for the Lact-Aid. I had my doubts, but my last one evaporated when I was having trouble coming up with the $65 for the device –and we found out within a day that another mom in our nursing support group just happened to have an extra one (missing one minor part, hence the replacement that she got). It seemed like as clear a sign as any. So I threw myself into it.

This was a LOT of work, setting up the apparatus each time, cleaning after, plus I was still pumping 8-9 times a day right after each feeding, and the feeds could be grueling. So often she’d have a decent latch but the tube wasn’t all the way in her mouth, or the tube would be good but she’d barely have the tip of my nipple, so I’d have to start over. Then of course there were the times that she’d catch the tube with her hand or turn her head, and again I’d have to reconnect everything. I also had my doubts about how this would improve her latch mechanics. But I decided to just throw myself into it and trust the process and try not to overthink everything too much.

Well, it took over a full month of working with the LactAid, but slowly and surely it did the trick. We started out using the tube throughout each feeding, and after a while, it started to seem like she was getting overwhelmed with milk – because she was getting so much from my nipple AND the tube. At that point I would begin some feeds with the tube pinched off, and then release the supplemental milk only when she started to slow down. Long LONG story slightly shorter, this paved the way to start doing some feeds only at the breast, and after about 2 weeks of her only getting about 1 to 11/2 oz from the Lact-Aid each day, we decided it was time to go all out.

From there, I continued to pump for another month, even though it was no longer to create milk for supplementing, it was to make sure my supply didn’t drop too quickly. If you’re too abrupt, you can end up with plugged ducts, mastitis, or even risk your supply dropping TOO much despite having had an oversupply (if your breasts are suddenly never being emptied, this can happen). I gradually started to eliminate pumpings, dropping one about every 4 to 5 days. I continued to pump once a day until she was 8 months old to make sure I have reserves, and just to be on the safe side (though if you saw the motherload in the freezer you’d laugh at my concern about the reserves).

So there you have it. She did it. It took five months, but she did it. And frankly, as far as I'm concerned, she can go just as long as she likes – my goal is for a minimum of two years. If she really insists on weaning after that, I’ll follow her lead, but no way I’m kicking her off myself.

If you made it through all that, I’m impressed, and also grateful. It’s been good for me to write it out – I haven’t been able to get it all out before now, both because I literally didn’t have the time, and also because I didn’t want to start talking about it unless – or until - we ‘made it’. There are still times when I fear that it’s all going to fall apart, every time we have a crappy feed, especially since we only got started at an age when they’re extremely distractible (nursing in public is almost impossible). But I have a bit more faith every day. NEVER take it for granted if you are able to nurse, and thank your lucky stars even further if it comes relatively easy to you. There are women out there who would give anything – everything - to be able to do what you’re doing.

I give thanks every day for what we’ve been able to do, and for the many helpers we’ve had along the way, from the fundraiser some friends helped me organize to pay for Jen & her craniosacral therapist, to the woman who gave me her Lact-Aid, to the phone calls that came in when I needed to be talked off the ledge but was feeling too down to even ask for help. They are all answered prayers – and that’s also a surprising thing; this experience has (don’t laugh) restored my faith in some form of God. I’m not exactly sure what form this will take, but it’s there.

The end . . . though it's really just the beginning.

Erika

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:07:00 +0000

From Erika:

I was so happy to come upon your blog. I think it serves such an important purpose -- and one I didn't know existed before I had a baby of my own. I grew up in a very large family where breastfeeding was the norm. I was around babies being breastfed by aunts, cousins, my mom, etc. all through my childhood. So when I was expecting my first child, I didn't even think of formula as an option. Not only was it the feeding experience I was most familiar with, but as an engineer it seemed like the natural choice. Why do humans have breasts except to feed their young? Aren't we mammals, after all? Unfortunately, that thinking almost did me in!

My daughter was born about 9 months ago. I didn't do any preparation for breastfeeding prior to her birth. It seemed that if it was the natural choice, it should come naturally. Wow was I in for a surprise! Those first few days in the hospital, it hurt a lot when she latched on. Toe-curling pain. Several of the hospital's lactation consultants stopped by to help. With the pain I was experiencing, I was sure that we were doing something wrong. Every time an LC visited, however, I was assured that her latch looked great. I called my sister for advice, since she'd had a baby one year earlier. But she told me she hadn't had any pain. I shouldered on, unwilling to quit. As the days and weeks went by, the pain eased a bit and wasn't lasting quite so long. Success! Apparently I was one of those people with extra-sensitive nipples. Who knew? After about 5 weeks we were doing great. No pain, C. was gaining weight and nursing eagerly.

Then we hit the 6-week growth spurt. I had no idea why my daughter who used to eat so eagerly was pulling off my breast every minute or two and crying. Did I eat something and the milk tastes bad? Was she sick? Did I run out of milk? What was it? After struggling for 2 days, I remember it was a Sunday evening. I took the crying baby from my breast, walked to my husband and handed the baby to him. "She's yours," was all I said. I cried for a few minutes, feeling like a complete failure. I was thinking about where I should go to buy her some formula. And on a hunch I decided to call a local LC. On a Sunday evening. Thank goodness she answered. I explained my struggles and she told me about the 6-week growth spurt. So this was normal! She told me to grin and bear it and it would be over in a few days. She was right. We have never looked back.

I'm so happy I struggled through those first few months when breastfeeding was painful and lasted 45 minutes at each feeding. I used to be jealous of the formula-fed babies because Dad could take some nighttime feedings. At this stage though, breastfeeding is so easy! I can't imagine having to function enough at 3 am to prep a bottle. With breastfeeding, she is fed and I'm back in bed in less than 10 minutes.

I tell all of my new-mom friends my experience because I think it is important not to confuse natural with easy.

Michelle and J

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 May 2009 04:12:00 +0000

This post is from Michelle, who is also the second-prize winner of the launch contest. The comment contest and third prize are still open, so stick around and send your stories.

I knew from the moment I found out I was pregnant that I would breastfeed my son, J. I read all the books and even wore breast shells for months before delivery to correct my inverted nipples.

But after an unplanned C-section, I began my breastfeeding experience with the frustration of being numb from the ribs down. Because I was barely able to hold J, a nurse helped us with our first feeding, positioning my breast with one hand and cradling J's head with her other while I just stared in amazement.

I wish the hospital's other staff members had been so gentle and understanding. The postpartum room where I spent the next five days was a constant parade of doctors, nurses, cleaning people, food service workers, not to mention family and friends. Just as I would get J to my breast, someone else would come in to check my blood pressure, replace a dressing, take J's temperature, or just generally disturb our efforts with their presence. When my husband would post a "please do not disturb" note on the door, we'd get even more intruders -- well-meaning but oblivious nurses and family who came in with a cheerful but tear-inducing "Just making sure everything is OK."

If there is one thing I wish I'd known about breastfeeding ahead of time, it is the persistence and toughness needed to defend the learning space a mother and infant need to get used to each other's bodies. My greatest advice would be: Don't assume that your hospital and its staff, nor your family and friends, will be aware or tolerant of the special requirements of learning to nurse.

Even though we birthed at a hospital regionally known for its lactation support services and received plenty of technical information on nursing, I was surprised and frustrated at the lack of emotional support or at least understanding I was given. Family and friends just wanted to see and hold J, not realizing that sometimes it could take 45 minutes to get a feeding right, and that it would be much easier to get that feeding right without a set of impatient relatives huddled around the TV obviously waiting for us to finish.

Even the lactation consultants in the hospital drove me into utter frustration, giving me opposing advice from one shift to the next and criticizing improvements I felt we were making. One LC recommended that I rub J's jawline to keep him awake and sucking; the next day a different LC told me "babies don't like that" and pulled my fingers away from his face, even as the trick appeared to be working. After the third day I just began nodding at them and telling them we were fine -- even though we were far from adept and I was full of questions -- just so they would go away. And, although I made it clear in writing and verbally that J was not to be given a pacifier, the one night I allowed him to be taken to the nursery for a couple hours so I could sleep (I lay awake the entire time waiting desperately for them to bring him back to me), he came back with a pacifier in his mouth.

Once we were home, things improved as we fell into a more natural rhythm. I still faced guilt and pressure from family who I could tell were annoyed at the amount of time I spent huddled away with J learning how to nurse. We were probably practicing nursing 50 percent of the day and night. This was unpleasant for family members who had traveled to see us, but I kept at it through the guilt, unwilling to compromise anything related to J's needs.

At two weeks, J started screaming and turning away from me as I tried to nurse him. My confidence was completely shaken. Terrified he would be malnourished, I started pumping and giving him an occasional bottle each day. This was a mistake as he then came to expect the bottle. At my doctor's advice I stopped all bottles and just kept on trying to get him to eat. This was the most critical and frightening period of our nursing experience. But, with persistence, we made it through. Trial and error and a great deal of patience paid off in the end, and now at four months we run together like a finely-tuned machine.

Today, I work full time, pumping for J during my shifts and nursing him when we are together. I am fortunate to have a private office with a locking door, which makes pumping easier. I simply put a "do not disturb" note over the keyhole (in case the cleaning staff should think I am not in my office and enter with the master key) and pump while I work on the computer.

For working moms, breastfeeding is not at all convenient. I have to schedule pumping around meetings (or vice versa) and sometimes pump in my car or other awkward spaces. Despite this, I know that giving J my milk is the best thing for him. Pumping also allows me to continue to nurse him in the evenings and on weekends, which is time together I absolutely cherish.

Cara Mama

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:58:00 +0000

This post was contributed by Cara, of Cara Mama. She is also the winner of the launch contest, and a $50 gift certificate to Restaurant.com. Second and third prize are still available, and the comment contest is still open, so get your stories in!

My breastfeeding story actually begins with my sister's story. My sister had her daughter during the time I was having enough trouble trying to conceive that I thought I'd just be lucky to have a child and didn't worry about how I'd feed the child. My mom gave us frmula (which was what was recommended at that time), and we turned out fine so I didn't see the need to worrying about how my child was feed or the need to struggle if breastfeeding didn't happen easily. But after watching my sister, the first person I really knew who breastfed her child, my feelings changed.

My sister approached breastfeeding as she does everything else she sets her mind to--with a single-minded determinedness, backed up with research and finding support systems. Prior to giving birth, she and her husband went to the hospital's breastfeeding class, read countless books, and noted the times of the hospital's breastfeeding support group and the local La Leche League meetings. Once her daughter was born, they took advantage of all these supports, as well as finally having a lactation consultant come to their house to help figure out what was wrong.

After a very difficult first few weeks of breastfeeding, my sister learned that the latch which looked right wasn't really right. With help, she figured out how to get the latch completely correct, which allowed her cracked nipples to heal. Continuing to follow the LC's advice, she went to her doctor to get medication to truly treat the systemic thrush that had developed in her milk ducts. Finally, the breastfeeding improved dramatically, becoming a painless process in which they were able to share a very special relationship.

At one point, when my sister broke down (once again) in sobs about how hard and painful it was, I had suggested that it would be okay if she wanted to stop trying. I only made the suggestion lightly and otherwise supported her as best I could. And as I said, my sister is a determined person. She felt she could succeed--she knew she could succeed. And she found the right support and kept at it until she did. She also told me the importance of believing she could do it and having a husband who supported her completely. I quickly learned that other people who were urging her to stop only made it harder to overcome her troubles.

A year later when I had my own daughter, I realized my attitude had changed after watching my sister's struggles and successes, and simply watching her while she breastfed. I wanted that. I could make that happen. There was no reason to doubt that I could, so I was going to be determined do it like my sister had been. My husband and I read the books, went to the class, noted the times of support meetings. And I had my sister five minutes away and an even quicker phone call away.

After a long labor, an unplanned C-section and 1.5 hours in a recovery room alone, I was finally reunited with my daughter in the room where we'd stay for the next three days. I couldn't wait to get her in my arms. Within seconds of when my husband gave her to me, I didn't even think about what I was doing. I just opened my gown and put her to my breast. There was no conscious thought, no "oh, I better try breastfeeding," no gentle reminder from anyone. I did this purely on instinct. And she started suckling immediately, purely on instinct.

Later I would joke with friends and family that I was glad one of us knew what we were doing--my daughter who seemed to be a natural. We had no latch issues, no problem finding the right position, nothing that hindered our instant breastfeeding. I knew I was lucky and that it wasn't always this easy for others, especially since I'd seen my sister's troubles. Even though my nipples were sore from this new experience for the first 4 weeks (when I was told they would be sore only 1-2 weeks), it was still wonderful and pretty easy. When the discomfort went away, it was beautiful.

And then, less that 2 months into breastfeeding, I started having shooting pains each time my daughter would start nursing. Fortunately, I had my sister's experience to learn from, and with similar symptoms I quickly realized (and had the doctor confirm) I had thrush. After trying the medications my doctor first prescribed, it did not clear up for me. After a few weeks of dealing with thrush that wouldn't clear up, I was full of doubts and in a great deal of pain. I cried to my husband that I wasn't sure I could continue. Knowing how important it was to me, my husband suggested I use the support networks I had and keep trying to find the right treatment. Most importantly, he said I should give it one more day and see how I felt the next day. He told me that every day, for over a week. He told me that until things got better.

I went to my sister, who told me what her LC said to do. I spoke up at an LLL meeting and listended to the knowledgeable women there. I called my doctor back and insisted on the same, aggressive treatment my sister used. My doctor wasn't sure, until I confidently told him that LLL recommended this treatment, and I could hear the respect in his voice when said, "La Leche League recommended this? Well, let's give it a try." Within two weeks of being on the medication, it finally cleared up. Breastfeeding became a beautiful experience once again.

I also had a great deal of difficulty with pumping when I went back to work after 3 months of leave. But at this point, we had a well-established breastfeeding relationship and I knew I could keep trying ways to make the pumping better and take it one day at a time. The pump and my nipples never did get along, but I found ways to make it better. I was able to pump until my daughter was 12 months old. After that, we gave her cow's milk while I was at work. But when I was at home, I continued to breastfeed easily and painlessly until my daughter was about 18 months old.

I know not everyone is able to breastfeed at all or for that long. There are some problems that are simply insurmountable or too much for a person to handle. Some women even simply choose not to breastfeed because, for whatever reason, it's not right for them. Formula is a great invention that keeps babies and families healthy and happy. I would never look down on another mother for using formula. I know other mothers have had it much tougher than I have, and I'm not in their shoes. Each mother and family has to decide what is best for them and their family.

I learned from my sister's and my own experiences that breastfeeding isn't easy. But in many cases, the right attitude, the right support and determination really can make it happen. I now believe that when deciding how to feed a baby, breastfeeding should be the natural starting point. It is what a mother's body is designed to do, even if it's not always a smooth path. I believe that everyone should realize that breastfeeding is the normal, natural way to feed a baby.

If we all start with that attitude, we are more likely to see it through and overcome the obstacles. We are more likely to watch other women and learn from them. We are more likely to seek out help and networks of support to help us through. We are more likely to succeed with breastfeeding overall. We are more likely to take it one day at a time until we've seen it through.

The Launch Contest

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:56:00 +0000

This site isn’t about me; it’s about you. The amazing things you have to say, and the lessons you’ve learned. I think we can do something amazing here. Our first ten stories came from women I reached out to and asked to share their experiences. But I can’t keep this site rolling if I have to research and personally request every story we publish (among other things, I have too much fun reading the parent blogs and I get distracted). I need your contributions.

It’s hard to write about breastfeeding. You’re writing an emotional story about your boobs during a time when you were severely sleep-deprived. Believe me, I know. I tried six or seven times to write my whole story about nursing, until I gave up and chose just one facet to share – pumping. But telling your story can help someone else. Just read the comments we’ve gotten already.

To help you get over your writer’s block, I’ve got a contest. The first person to send me their story after this post goes up will get a $50 gift certificate to restaurant.com. The second and third people will get a $25 certificates. (What do you do with 25 bucks? Maybe you can order some take-out?). I will also enter everyone who comments on the site between May 10 and May 17 into a contest for another $50 certificate.

Does that help with your shyness?

Here we go!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:43:00 +0000

Here we go! We’re out of beta, and The Breastfeeding Experience is ready to be your place to learn about breastfeeding and share your own stories. To get us started, we’ve got ten amazing stories from some amazing moms:

Our mother’s day entry, a beautiful tribute to breastfeeding and maternal love. Sometimes you don’t understand it until you’re a mother yourself.

Cloud went back to work quite early, and mastered the art of pumping. It comes down to scheduling and lots of spare parts.

Erin talks about how she helped other mothers and babies by donating her oversupply to a mothers milk bank.

Meg was allergic to lanolin, which nearly derailed her nursing until she figured out exactly her breasts were all red and swollen.

Redhead says, “Look mom, I’m Breastfeeding!”

Having a support system in place made all the difference for this mom.

Christy had two very different breastfeeding experiences with two very different babies. It’s a long entry, and a fascinating story of a very stubborn lady.

Christina wrote about being unable to breastfeed, and how that made her feel.

Amanda had a hard time getting started. A very hard time; her son lost weight and turned yellow. With a supportive doctor and timely assistance from her best friend, she was able to breastfeed anyway.

And, lastly, I shared my own story of pumping in weird places with skuzzy equipment.

Mothers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 10 May 2009 07:01:00 +0000

From Erin:

I’ve known that my mother breastfed me my whole life. At least, I don’t remember not knowing. But this information – like the natural, un-medicated births that brought my brother and me into the world - was a fact, neither celebrated nor elaborated upon. My grandmother, on the other hand, nursed none of her children; she later claimed that her milk was ‘no good’. She gave birth four times under the influence of twilight sleep; she neither experienced nor remember any of these births, even that of her stillborn child. Did her mother’s experience shape my mother’s choices? Did my mother’s inspire mine? It’s strange to say this, but I don’t know where these strands connect. We had a turbulent relationship, my mother and I, filled with that mixture of bewildered hurt and anger that many mothers and daughters experience. I strove to be her opposite, as woman and future-mother – warm, loving, nurturing, understanding, compassionate. I judged her mothering harshly, in terms of the love and acceptance I could not feel.

When I was in my 20s, I discovered a picture of my mother nursing me. There’s something in the expression of her face in that photo – the sweetness of her smile, the peace of the moment, us looking at each other so deeply connected. It filled me with a kind of longing – a longing to remember, I suppose, when we were that close.

When I found the photo, I was many years – just shy of a decade – from a baby of mine own. Even before I got pregnant I knew I wanted to breastfeed. My mother – true to style – never provided concrete information about the process; mostly when asked she would just laugh and say, “I just hooked you up and you ate!” So she didn’t teach me to breastfeed (she who had never herself been taught, but learned by instinct). But she gave me a profound gift nevertheless – confidence. Despite the growing strength of the pro-breastfeeding movement, everything I heard about it while pregnant was negative – he wouldn’t latch! It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do! It was terrible! It hurt! I hated it! It’s too hard! She wouldn’t latch! I didn’t have enough milk! In spite of my own commitment, the negativity rattled me. But every time I got shaken, I thought of my mother’s casual offhandedness. It was natural. You just hook them up, and they eat. While I know of course this isn’t everyone’s experience (anyone’s?), it was important for me to know this was possible, that breastfeeding was, in fact, natural and instinctual and that I could do it. What greater gift can a mother give her daughter?

It turns out my mother loved nursing her babies. I had no idea, until I started to nurse my son. We spend a lot of time together, and she loves to watch me nurse. “It’s the best thing ever,” I sometimes say to her. “I know,” she says back, quietly. We repeat this conversation, mantra-like, every month or two. I look over my baby’s damp curls and we smile at each other. Understanding, confident, loving.

Milk banks: Sharing the gift of breastmilk

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:55:00 +0000

From Erin:

I was very lucky to be a successful breastfeeding mom. There were several factors that made this possible - confidence, information, support, and luck. The confidence was a gift from my mother, who had breastfed two babies. She made it sound natural and easy. While I knew that for many mothers it *isn't* easy or natural, I needed to know this was possible, so I could have confidence in my body's ability to produce and provide milk to my baby boy, D. Information came from books - my mother's lovingly-kept '70s "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding" and "Breastfeeding Made Simple". These books taught me about supply-and-demand, colostrum, mastitis, and feeding on demand, not on schedule. Books can't teach about a latch, however, hard as they try. I learned about latching from the patient nurses at my birth center and from the lactation consultants that my loving husband insisted that I go to when little D. started screaming and turning away from my breasts at two weeks old.

The lactation consultant, watching me nurse D., suggested that perhaps I had an overabundant milk supply; the force of the let-down might be choking him. She recommended that I start pumping before feeding him. I followed her advice and it worked beautifully (except for the part where I was getting out of bed every two hours in the middle of the night to hook myself up to the electric pump before nursing!). My constant pumping meant that soon enough my freezer was overflowing with bags of milk, and soon I was going to have to start dumping it. At this point, my doula mentioned in passing that the mid-sized city where I lived had a Milk Bank, and suggested that I consider donating.

Most women don't know about Milk Banks. It sounds strange, like a Red Cross truck that comes around with pumps instead of needles, passing out juice and cookies to donating moms. It's not like that, of course, but the milk, like blood, goes to critical ill babies, most of whom are preemies in NICUs across the country. Any doctor can write a perscription for donated milk, so even a normally-breastfeeding mom can get milk for a time if she, for example, needs to be on a medication that isn't compatible with breastfeeding. She doesn't need to stop, if she can get to the milk (or it can get to her). But preemies are the prime candidates for donor milk. The benefits of breastmilk for NCIU babies are even higher than full-term, healthy babies because preemies have much more fragile immune systems. I've done a lot of reading on the internet, mostly stories of mothers whose babies were born too soon.

Their fears and hopes and stresses and sufferings are heartwrenching, especially when compounded by the fact that many mothers of preterm babies experience agonizing struggles getting their milk in. Some are able to make it work eventually, others can't, either for medical, physical, or personal reasons. Reading those stories moved me inexpressibly. Every mother, I thought, should be able to give her sick baby breast milk, if she wants to, even if she can't express it from her own body.

So I contacted the lovely women at my local milk bank who walked me through the donor program. Donors must go through screening, which monitors the physical health of the donor mother's own baby, as well as the donor's psychological health, and finally her physical health, through a blood test that's put through extensive screening to make sure the donor is free from any communicable disease. Donors are sent strict instructions about medications and other issues that require delays before pumping donated milk. The milk, once collected, is sent to the central site, where it is mixed together with other donor milk, in order to make sure that the milk has the proper balance of foremilk and creamy milk. It is also pasteurized, so it is completely safe for immunocompromised babies.

I was a milk donor for six months. In addition to feeding D., I could supply the Milk Bank with about 100 ounces per two weeks, with twice-daily pumpings. Pumping twice a day in addition to the full round of nursing D. was not easy. But I was a stay-at-home mom, which helped a great deal. Being a stay at home mom of a new baby can be isolating and lonely. It was both for me. But every time I pumped, I thought of babies in the NICU and their parents, about how lucky I was to have a healthy baby whom I could nurse, how proud and humbled I felt to be apart of the Milk Bank community. It connected me to a larger world of mothers; even though I would never meet any of them, I felt close to them. I felt like I was part of a larger world of mothers supporting and helping each other, which seemed like the most important thing in the world.

Breastfeeding mothers need support, but they can also give support - through warm words to other breastfeeding moms, by donating surplus milk, by refusing to judge mothers who don't breastfeed for whatever reason.

If you have surplus milk and a new baby, consider donation. It is a beautiful gift to give another family. It can even save a life. If your baby is born preterm, know that Milk Banks exist. Look into it and consider if it might work for you and your family.

For more information:

http://www.hmbana.org/

Welcome to The Breastfeeding Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 09 May 2009 07:09:00 +0000

This is the blog where women share their personal stories about breastfeeding. We hope to be a resource and an inspiration to parents everywhere. If you'd like to be part of this project, send your own story (and a picture if you'd like) to thebreastfeedingexperience@gmail.com.

Right now, this site is in beta as we gather and format women's stories. We'll launch on Mother's Day. If you want to be notified when the site goes live, sign up for our RSS feed, or send an email with "subscribe" in the subject line to thebreastfeedingexperienceATgmail.com

It Takes a Village to Breastfeed a Baby

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 09 May 2009 03:13:00 +0000

By Redhead of Minimeltdown.

It’s no secret, especially if you’ve ever been pregnant, that people love to offer unsolicited advice to pregnant women. Advice about whether or not to get an epidural or to let our kids watch television, or that we look muuuuch farther along than 32 weeks. So I wasn’t surprised, especially as I neared my due date and I was so big that I looked like I was nearing my due date from about 20 weeks onward, to hear people start asking “Are you going to breastfeed”? (Or rather, “You are going to breastfeed, aren’t you?") And every time someone asked (or admonished) I would smile and give the same response. I’d say solemnly “I’m going to try.”

I’m sure some people found my response odd, thinking I was being noncommittal and flaky. Or maybe they thought I really hadn’t made up my mind yet, but that assumption couldn’t be further from the truth. I felt that by saying I would try, give it my very best effort, I was paying homage to the complicated endeavor that breastfeeding is. I knew, from all the books I had read, and the women I had talked with, that breastfeeding was far from easy, so I wanted to be realistic about my own ability to control the situation, because no matter how badly I wanted breastfeeding to work out, I had to accept that it might not.

Thankfully, breastfeeding my baby was a success. In fact, I have fourteen months of used paper breast pads to prove it. And would you believe that those same people who asked me if I was going to breastfeed when I was pregnant, they began asking, about one day after her first birthday, whether or not I had weaned her yet. You can’t win when it comes to unsolicited advice, can you?

But let me tell you why breastfeeding was a success for me. It was a success because I did not do it alone. (Right…you mean you did it with your daughter, duh!). No, I mean, I didn’t allow myself to ever be without help. In the months before I gave birth, I enrolled in a breastfeeding and lactation class at the hospital. I lovingly encouraged (read: FORCED) my husband to accompany me to that class. I needed him to be there so that he would understand when I got frustrated, because I knew I would get frustrated. I needed him to not be the man that mistakenly asked “How hard can it be? You just put the baby up there, right?” That man deserved at least six months of cracked and bleeding nipples as punishment for his stupidity; and if that didn’t teach him, a raging case of mastitis probably would.

I carried the business card of the lactation specialist with me in my stack of important papers. I made sure that whenever someone mentioned a breastfeeding resource, whether it was a book, a local business, a speaker, or a support group, I had them in my hip pocket to be used as necessary. And when it was all said and done, I think I used almost every resource I had access to because that’s how hard breastfeeding is.

When it came time to bring the baby into the world, I felt prepared to face the challenge of breastfeeding her. I was armed with the suggestions of the professionals, but mostly I was armed with my own commitment and determination to make this process work.

I never would have made it without the breastfeeding support group at the hospital where I delivered. The women who run these groups deserve an immediate promotion to HEAD BREAST SAINT. I remember how I struggled to get out the door the first week (and how I had to firmly convince my father in law that he wouldn’t really want to accompany me to the 11:00 appointment that he insisted we all go to as a family!) dragging the Boppy, the stroller, the diaper bag, a snack, a bottle of water, the infant seat. It’s a wonder I didn’t forget the baby. But when I walked in, sat down, took out my breast and began feeding my daughter, it felt liberating to be in a room where everyone understood. No one was staring or judging. They were just chatting and offering support. And pretty soon, I found out that the woman sitting next to me had given birth the same night I did. Except that her pushing lasted about twenty five minutes while mine lasted four hours and she winced in horror when she found out that I was the woman in ROOM THREE! “You’re room three!” she cried and clasped her hand over her mouth in mock terror.

She and I would remain friends during those early weeks, meeting for coffee or a burger, always knowing we’d have a buddy to breastfeed in public with. A few weeks later when I was having some pain in my breast, I would learn to carry on a conversation, completely at ease, while a stranger’s gloved hand probed my nipple to check the baby’s latch. Meanwhile, away from the support group, I slowly began to feel like I was getting the hang of this new skill. I became even more confident about breastfeeding in public (and I’m not at all a modest gal so that was never even a concern) and pretty soon was so bold as to leave home without my Superhero Breastfeeding Cape (my absolute crutch in the early days of getting out of the house).

After a few months, most of the women who attended the support group had to return to work and stopped coming. Even though I would be staying at home and could have kept attending, a wonderful thing happened. I didn’t need the support group anymore. I made way for the new moms, who like I, came looking sleep deprived, haggard and terrified, desperate for the companionship and the wise words of a seasoned lactation specialist who had literally seen and heard it all. Like a toddler who has just ridden a bike without training wheels for the first time, I had figured out that I now had what it took to breastfeed on my own. And that confidence made me want to stand up and shout:

LOOK MOM, I’M BREASTFEEDING!

Cloud and Pumpkin

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:42:00 +0000

This post was written by Cloud, who blogs at Wandering Scientist.

I never doubted that I would breastfeed my baby. I'm not really sure why this was. I didn't think formula was some awful thing, although I had seen the research on the benefits of breastfeeding. Maybe it was because my mother had breastfed me until I was about two years old, and spoke of it as a wonderful experience. Maybe it was because I am trained as a biochemist, and considered breastfeeding to be a pretty amazing thing for my body to be able to do.

Regardless of the reasons for the decision, I never regretted it. Breastfeeding was sometimes hard, sometimes easy, sometimes painful, sometimes glorious, but always something I was glad I chose to do. Breastfeeding was one of my favorite parts of mothering an infant. I breastfed my daughter until she was 23 months old. We weaned because I was pregnant with baby #2 (due in September!) and breastfeeding was exacerbating my all day morning sickness. I decided to start moving more actively towards weaning when Pumpkin was 21 months old and nursing 2 or 3 times a day and Hubby and I were pretty sure we'd try to get pregnant again. We weaned slowly and gently, with not too much fuss. She never asks for "Boppy" anymore (she always heard me talk about a Boppy around nursing time, and that was the word that stuck with her). I still sometimes miss it.

The early days of breastfeeding seemed very hard at the time, but looking back, I think I had a fairly average experience. We had trouble establishing a latch. Pumpkin was not a patient baby. She wanted milk immediately, and that's not how the human breast works. She would give up sucking before my milk letdown and scream in frustration. For the first week, Hubby and I used a syringe of expressed milk and a little tube that we threaded into her mouth along with the nipple to give her the instant gratification she needed to keep sucking. For the next week or two, we used a tiny dropper and a little medicine cup of milk to dribble some onto the nipple and into her mouth and keep her from getting too frustrated. We needed that less and less as time went on, but even when she was 3 or 4 weeks old, she still sometimes needed a dropper or two of milk to calm her down so that she could actually nurse. I had to use a nipple shield for awhile, although I can no longer remember what prompted me to start with that. We broke that habit when she was between 4 and 6 weeks old, I think, but my memory of that, like so many other details of early motherhood, is fuzzy.

My family was very supportive of breastfeeding. However, even with family support, I was struggling more than I cared to admit during the first couple of weeks. The second week, Hubby convinced me to go to the breastfeeding support group at the hospital where I'd given birth. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to leave the house- it was too hard and I felt like a milk-soaked mess. Hubby gently insisted, and drove me to the meeting. I went back almost every week after that, even continuing to go after I went back to work. I worked half time for a month and had every other Friday off for many months after that. I chose Fridays for my day off so that I could keep going to support group. Hubby is a very involved father and was always very supportive of breastfeeding. He has done many wonderful things since Pumpkin was born, but convincing me to start going to that support group may well be the most wonderful thing he did. That group of women helped keep me sane as I adjusted to motherhood, which now seems like such an integral part of who I am but didn't come easily to me at first.

I went back to work when Pumpkin was 3 months old. I worked 3 days a week for a month, and then 35 hours a week until she was about 10 months old. My support group was wonderful, but no one there could tell me much about pumping at work. After all, women who pump are generally at work at 10 a.m. on Friday morning. The group leader had some general advice. I had experience pumping, since I had been doing it since the very beginning. Once we got Pumpkin to latch and wait for the letdown, I continued pumping so that Hubby could give Pumpkin one bottle a night. This allowed me to get a little more uninterrupted sleep, and also ensured that Pumpkin was comfortable taking the bottle. The support group leader had suggested that we introduce the bottle when Pumpkin was about 3 weeks old. I remember worrying about "nipple confusion" and prepared that first bottle with a certain amount of trepidation. We never had any problems switching between breast and bottle, and I went back to work confident that she would at least eat while I was gone.

Going back to work was an overall positive thing for me- I believe firmly that I am a better mother because I work (this is very much a statement about me, and not a general statement about whether other women should work or not). However, returning to work was definitely an adjustment. For the first week or two, I kept getting terrible headaches. I finally realized that I wasn't drinking enough water, and was getting dehydrated. I wasn't sure how to schedule my pumping sessions and how many times to pump during the day. I have an office job, and I was lucky enough to return to a private office, so I was able to just close my door, strap on the pump (I used a hands free bustier), and keep working. I eventually decided that since Pumpkin was eating roughly three times while I was gone, I would pump three times during the day. I kept this schedule until she was about 10 months old, and then dropped down to pumping twice during the day. Around this time, I also switched jobs and lost the private office. I continued pumping, though- my new employer had a lactation room. (I live in California. Lactation rooms are required by law.) When Pumpkin was about 15 months old, I dropped down to pumping once a day. I stopped pumping altogether when she was 17 months old. I certainly never thought I'd pump so long, but Pumpkin was not a good eater, and I worried less about her nutrition when I knew she was getting breastmilk during the day.

I had occasional problems with supply after I went back to work. There were many months when I had to pump before I went to bed in order to have enough milk to send with Pumpkin the next day. Sometimes, I had to take fenugreek to help increase my supply, and sometimes I found that just increasing my protein intake was sufficient. Anyway, it was an excellent excuse to go out and have a hamburger for lunch. I always had to watch my water intake and make sure I wasn't getting dehydrated.

I slowly figured out how to make the pumping routine easier. After a couple unexpected midmorning trips home to retrieve forgotten pump parts, I bought extra bottles and extra pump parts, so that I could repack my pumping bag at the same time as I unpacked it. I bought some bags that could be attached directly to the pump horns, so that I would always have something to pump into, even if I forgot the cooler bag with the bottles. I got a bit blase about pumping. I would pump while listening in on teleconferences, with my phone on mute. If I needed to talk, I would turn off my pump and unmute my phone. I even pumped on an airplane. I had to take a business trip when Pumpkin was 6 months old. On the way out, I tried pumping in the airplane bathroom- it was too cramped and I felt guilty for tying up such a precious resource for so long. I tried pumping in the airport bathroom, and discovered that I could not actually sit still enough to keep the automatic flushing toilet from flushing. So on the way back, I wrapped my big shawl around me, turned towards the window and pumped at my seat. This worked better that anything else I tried, and the man sitting next to me didn't notice anything was going on until he saw the little bottle of milk appearing from under my shawl.

I didn't love pumping, but I didn't mind it. I was glad to have the choice to continue breastfeeding while also returning to work. I also used the pump to have a couple nights away with my husband without Pumpkin. My parents came over and stayed with Pumpkin, and Hubby and I drove to a hotel about an hour and a half away. The first time we did this, when Pumpkin was about 9 months old, I mostly wanted to sleep. Pumpkin was not an easy sleeper, and Hubby and I were chronically sleep deprived. However, as she got older and started sleeping a little bit better, our nights away became less about sleep and more about a chance to reconnect as a couple. I'm incredibly glad I didn't have to wean to make this possible.

I have learned from the stories of others that there is a lot of luck in having the sort of breastfeeding relationship I had with Pumpkin, and there is certainly a lot of work. I am very grateful for the luck I had, and glad I stuck with it through the times when it was really hard work. Now, as I look ahead to the next baby, the logistics of managing two kids is a little intimidating. But if I look back at all of the logistics we've already figured out, I know we'll be OK. And I'm sure that as long as my luck holds, I'll be breastfeeding this baby, too.

Meg and Elias

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 06 May 2009 04:10:00 +0000

Things had been a little rocky right before Elias arrived. I'd been in and out of the hospital and on bedrest because of impending pre-eclampsia the loss of vision it was causing. Ultimately we went from a doctor's appointment at 39 weeks to the hospital, do not pass go, do not collect $200, hopefully your brain won't explode and your liver won't shut down on your way.

Except for the medieval torture that is an emergency induction, everything went fine and 26! hours later Elias was born and he was on the small side. And he was on the yellow side. And we were on the Over-the-moon-happy (and thank-god-I-don't-have-to-lie-on-my-left-side-anymore) side.

All that time I had spent trying to get pregnant and lying on my left side while pregnant was spent visiting Kellymom and reading The Breastfeeding Companion and visiting message boards and blogs and I felt like I knew what the deal was. I didn't actually KNOW anyone who had nursed a baby, but most of the things I have learned in life I learned from books. I went in thinking it would be REALLY HARD. I knew I would give it my best and if things went badly I'd give it a month and if they went well I'd give it a few years. I was going to be pretty hard core about not supplementing with formula because I knew how important it was to establish a supply in the beginning.

It was 6 pm on Friday when Eli was born. Lactation consultant gone for the weekend. We would be gone before she returned. I was at the mercy of the nurses. They were all over-joyed that I was nursing but less then helpful. As soon as he was born (after we were both pronounced healthy again) we were left alone in the delivery room and I began to nurse him. He seemed to know what he was supposed to do, but couldn't latch too well. And later downstairs with nurses help he also... couldn't latch. And one nurse suggested side lying, and one nurse suggested football, and another suggested cross-cradle. The pediatrician said he was small, we needed to keep him warm so he didn't expend calories keeping himself warm. He needed to eat because he was jaundiced. He was sleepy because he was jaundiced and all the warmth kept him asleep. It was all we could do to keep the child awake long enough to nurse for 3 minutes. Me managing placement, and my husband tickling his feet and Eli... Eli mostly slept or screamed. And occasionally he'd eat.

In the middle of the night, he screamed and screamed and we gave him a little frmula (half an ounce here and there) dripped from our fingers into his little open bird mouth, and I cried and wondered why I was torturing him thusly.

Eventually we went home and my milk came in (and boy did it pour out) and Eli gained weight and nursing hurt, but it was okay, no blood... we were doing well. I was slathering myself with lanolin every time he nursed. In those first weeks, my breasts and nipples and aeriolae were swollen and shiny and red and they ITCHED. And my nipples blanched and hurt all the time. I thought I had thrush. I emailed the lactation consultant. She said maybe you are ALLERGIC TO LANOLIN. I put that in caps because I didn't know that was possible. It's hypoallergenic, right, read the package. Hopefully if you stopped reading before and are skimming you'll see that. I stopped using the lanolin and in one day, I was CURED.

So then came our stumbling blocks. That beautiful skinny boy had serious, serious reflux. Starting when he was just a few weeks old, he would nurse for about 1 minute before he would start screaming hysterically. He would scream and scream for several minutes calm down, and I would nurse him some more and then he would scream and scream. This was how he ate. Constantly screaming. Of all the things that happened in the next year, having the one thing that most mothers can use to calm their crying child actually MAKE my child cry was hard to handle. He was also severely colicky and cried a lot (read "all day and night") for the first 4 months. We couldn't nurse discretely in public because he screamed and unlatched every couple of minutes, leaving me exposed. We finally got him medicine and he started nursing like a champ. Cutting his formerly 1.5 hour long feeding/screaming fests down to 15 minutes. Life was good.

Then that summer when he was about 7 months old, I got mastitis. First one side, then the next. Then twice on the same side. 8 times. My supply suffered, but we were starting solids (VERY slowly) and it was fine. It sucked and it hurt and boy I threw up a lot, but it was fine.

Then I got meningitis (not related to the mastitis). I went to the hospital and during this experience discovered how little doctors know about what medicines can be given to nursing mothers. I got a lumbar puncture without any medicine to make it more comfortable for me because the doctors didn't know that it was okay to give it to me and just assumed it wasn't safe. I got better from the meningitis but then had a spinal fluid leak. To fix the fluid leak, I underwent a procedure that I didn't need to have because I was told that they 8 day course of medicine that was the alternative would require that I stop nursing. I cried all the way home. I wasn't ready to stop nursing my 9 month old son. It was too soon, I wasn't prepared and MAN did my head hurt too badly to think about it. That doctor was also wrong.

Later I looked all these medicines up on a website called Lactmed and discovered that they are generally safe. My husband is a physician and in the odd instance he has a patient who is nursing he looks up medicines on lactmed and tries to find nursing compatible alternatives before telling his patient falsely that they have to stop nursing.

Eventually, I developed a rare sequela of meningitis and the wide spread pain disorder that it caused required a medicine that was TRULY not compatible with nursing. I was concerned for how an abrupt stoppage of nursing would go with my emotionally sensitive son. But I needed to start the medicine right away or I wasn't going to be able to be any one's mommy anymore. He was fifteen months old, and he asked to nurse twice one day and once the next. He didn't cry about it, was easily distracted from his goal and things ended peacefully.

I mostly wish that women who need medical interventions and are nursing, get proper care and that their doctors take that nursing relationship seriously, rather than assume you will either happily give up the right treatment or happily stop nursing. I know more than anyone how busy doctors are but asking them to take a minute to evaluate their course of treatment for the special needs of a nursing mother is worth it and not too much to ask.

Christina: Sometimes you can't

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:15:00 +0000

Christina is a freelance writer and mother of three. She blogs about her adventures and misadventures in motherhood at www.mamaneena.com

I suppose I could say my breasts are duds. I suppose that I could act bitter about the fact that they didn’t do their job. I could easily carry guilt that, in a time when anyone and everyone feels your breasts are their business, I didn’t breastfeed my children. Sure, I gave it a shot. But, I can honestly admit that I didn’t give it a commitment.

My first child was born in 2004. I entered motherhood with every intention of doing it naturally, with homemade baby food and breast milk for at least a year. I wanted to be an attachment parenting advocate and do what all the latest research said was best. I was new, confused, and overwhelmed. I spent the first three weeks of my baby’s life living in the bedroom trying to understand and establish a routine. I would breastfeed, pump, change the baby, play with the baby, put the baby to sleep, and start the whole process over. I kept wondering if breastfeeding meant that this would be my life for the next year. I didn’t realize there were resources available for nursing mothers and had no real knowledge to pull from. My breasts were enormous and I was afraid that, on top of everything else, I was suffocating my baby. So, I gave up.

My son was born 15 months later and just 11 months after I underwent a breast reduction. I had dealt with the chronic back pain for too long. Though the surgeon assured me that they would do their best to preserve the milk ducts, I knew there was a risk involved. But, I tried. I tried breastfeeding my new son while attempting to chase after my toddler, unpack our new house, and handle a husband that was traveling constantly. I tried to breastfeed through the colic, the reflux, the lack of sleep, and the lack of milk production. But, I couldn’t. So, I gave up again.

I figured by my third child in 2007 that I should just head straight to frmula. But, I wanted to give it one last shot. I contacted a lactation consultant and did a good bit of research on breastfeeding after a breast reduction. I pulled back out the top of the line breast pump and went in with realistic expectations. But, my expectations didn’t include nipples that were completely raw and bloody from pumping constantly and producing only drops. My expectations did not include the sad, heartbreaking cries of a hungry baby who wanted nothing more that to suckle and have her belly filled. My expectations didn’t include guilt this time around. So, for the last time, I gave up.

I don’t want to remember the first months of my children’s lives with a bunch of ‘If only I had…” statements. It has taken a lot of time, a bit of soul searching, and some genuine acceptance to come to terms with my breastfeeding experiences. I don’t feel my children are any less loved or nurtured or healthy because I chose a different route. While I certainly admire those that can and do breastfeed exclusively, I want to hug those that can’t or don’t. I want the stigma to be removed for those that don’t breastfeed and I want us all to just be glad that, through whatever circumstances, we are actually able to feed our children.

Luck & Planning: Have your support in place to create a no-fail environment

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 05:28:00 +0000

The author of this post blogs at One Tired Ema.

Unlike many women born in 1975, I was breastfed. “For 14 months,” my mom had said on many occasions. “You loved nursing.” I was colicky for my first three months on Earth, and nursing while my mother rocked in a rocking chair was the only thing that would soothe me.

But more than the idea of being able to placate a squalling newborn, what made me sit up and take notice was when my mom said, “Nursing was the best thing I ever did for you and your brother.” Really? That sounded so…preposterous. From my perspective she’s done many great things for us, from looking out for our education to supporting us in scores of afterschool activities; paying for camp, trips abroad, and birthday parties; going to every back-to-school night; laughing at our jokes, admiring our artwork, musical performances, and written compositions. So to call the pinnacle of her parenting as the 14 months she nursed me and the 9 months she nursed and pumped for my brother seemed out of proportion to what she had invested in us since.

But it certainly sounded worth doing, and when I was pregnant with my first baby, back in 2003, it was at the forefront of my mothering plans.

When I was pregnant, I did what geeky, overwrought parents-to-be do. I read an incredible amount of books. Books about pregnancy. Books about giving birth. Books about how the medical establishment was attempting to screw over American women vis a vis giving birth. Books about breastfeeding. Books about parenting. Some of these books were useful. Some were eye-opening. Some made me so crazy that my husband drove me to the library to watch me return them because he was not going to witness that puddle of hormonal goo grow bigger before his very eyes.

I amassed a pile of books about breastfeeding that ranged from the classic (The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding) to the pithy-and-practical (So That’s What They’re For!). I knew about colostrum. I knew what to do for mastitis. I knew how many times to expect my newborn to eat in a day. I knew how to decrease my chance of getting thrush. I knew about nipple confusion. I knew about poop. But most importantly: I understood that nursing was a skill set, requiring instruction, and not all magical goodness from the word “Go.”

I planned to toss the free frmula samples I received from my purchases at Motherhood Maternity and my visits to my OBs office. My husband demurred. “You never know,” he said, shrugging.

I agreed to keep them only if we could shove them into a corner of a closet. “I don’t want to remember they’re here,” I muttered darkly. What I wanted to do, really, was set myself up for success by not having a plan B. I had done so much reading and planning that I didn’t have any plan Bs. And while it didn’t work for my labor and birth, it did for my breastfeeding.

Having heard scores of women’s stories at La Leche League meetings, at the park, and on the internet, I now know that I was lucky. My baby was born at full-term-plus and at a good weight. She was healthy. Neither of us had any of the myriad small physical issues that can interfere with breastfeeding: tongue tie, inverted nipples, jaundice, cracked and bleeding nipples.

But before I can dismiss it all as first-timer’s luck, I give the credit to what I had intuited from my many months’ worth of research: Nursing is a skill set. And as good as the books were, I had real-live people in my corner, ready to teach me and support me from the time I was halfway through my pregnancy, but especially in the first two weeks after my daughter’s birth.

There was my doula (also a La Leche League Leader and breastfeeding educator), who taught me that the birth experience can and will influence the early breastfeeding experience. It was she who wheeled my daughter’s bassinet next to my bed in the recovery room, lifted her out and said, “Ok, time to nurse!” When I protested that I couldn’t feel my legs—the spinal from my C-section had left me paralyzed and shaking—she held my daughter to my breast and showed me how to properly latch her, then stayed through the next nursing. She stayed in touch over the phone, rushing to my defense when the hospital pediatrician wanted to give my daughter formula for (we thought) an unsubstantiated reason.

There was my friend who acted as another birth support person and, more vitally, elected to stay with me during the first night of my daughter’s life. She had nursed four of her own children and knew a lot about How Newborn Babies Are. She slept on the extra bed in my double room, cheerfully positioning us various ways (lying down, cradle, football hold) every two and a half hours through the night and most of the next day.

Help from my mom—who was with us from day eight through day 16—as as well as regular visits from my mother-in-law, who lived locally, allowed me to follow the advice of another friend, who told me that my only “assignment” for the first six weeks of my baby’s life was to park my ass in my recliner and nurse my baby and let everything else go. That was really excellent advice.

And there was my husband, who never once suggested that I do anything besides nurse my daughter. From the time she was about a month old, he happily gave her a bottle of expressed milk on Thursday evenings so I could cook for Shabbat uninterrupted, but he never worried, never indicated impatience or resentment or questioned my breastfeeding odyssey (independently of my own musings on it)—and it became a four-year adventure with her and, after a 26-month stint of tandem nursing, continues with my son.

Breastfeeding can be easy and natural, after the learning curve, after mom and baby have grown to know each other, after a month or two or three. The book learning was great, but it never would have been enough. I needed my support people; I had them, and I succeeded.

Alanna - Guerilla Pumper

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:51:00 +0000

I started out careful as can be with my pumping. In a private office, with a picture of the baby, spotlessly clean pumping horns, medela bottles at hand to receive the liquid gold. This lasted maybe two weeks.

First to go was the picture of the baby. In the beginning, I’d gaze at his photograph and remember nursing in vivid detail. I’d picture nursing him snuggled into a comfy chair, or in the morning in bed. But one stressful day I found myself focusing on a grant application that was due, and it didn’t affect my milk production in the slightest. After that, I used my pumping time to think about work problems I didn’t normally have time to work through.

Next were the clean pumping horns. My private office was not my own, and the bathroom was out three doors and down the hall. Packing everything into a bag, taking it to the bathroom, and washing all my gear took time. I somehow fell out of the habit of washing the equipment. Ever. I’d smell it from time to time, and while there was a faint sour smell, it never seemed all that bad. And the baby never seemed to have a problem with the flavor of the milk I pumped with my scummy equipment.

Then I lost my pumping space. We finally hired a director, and that director needed the office space. I was in an open plan office; we didn’t even have cubicles. I ended up in the windowless store room. The IT guy kindly cleared a space big enough for me to stand in, with a stack of boxes to put my pump on.

Finally, it was the bottles. One morning, I forgot my empty bottles to pump into. I realized I poured the milk into milk bags for storage anyhow. Why not pump straight into them? Over time, I also pumped into clean, empty soda bottles, Ziploc freezer bags, and Tupperware containers with a good seal.

My son always took his bottle with pleasure, and I always managed to pump enough milk to keep him exclusively breastfed. He was extremely healthy baby, and he was breastfed until age two. His milk might have been produced under ludicrous and unsanitary conditions, but it was good milk, and as much of it as he needed.

Not All Babies Are the Same - Christy Gunter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:20:00 +0000

This post was contributed by Christy Gunter, who blogs at My Super Kaduper Life.

This is the story of a very stubborn woman who doesn’t like to change things once she has made her mind up and the story of a little baby who was given razor sharp shark gums and grizzly bear jaws. This woman’s boobs and this baby’s mouth collided and brought forth one of the most harrowing tales ever played out in like, real life and stuff. (Continue reading at your own risk. Boobs are mentioned a bunch but not in the good sort of way.)

To start Keaton’s Breastfeeding saga we must go back in time and start with Rowan. Oh, sweet Rowan. Deceiver of mothers. Giver of false hopes. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to breastfeed Rowan- in fact I hadn’t given it much thought until later in my pregnancy when a bunch of Hens kept asking me what my feeding plan was. Derrrrr… Huh. I’m gonna have to feed this thing aren’t I? Crap. After doing a quick poll of my family members I decided I better give breastfeeding a shot. My mom and my 2 older sisters breastfed in some form for 3 months. In fact almost every woman I knew, young or old, had given me the same answer; they did a combination of breast and frmula feeding until the 3 month mark, then dropped the boob like a bad habit. Fine. Sounds good to me. I did a little research, all of which detailed the awesome power of boob milk and glossed over the rough start most women have with breastfeeding. I told everyone who asked that I was going to try to breastfeed but wasn’t going to hold myself to anything, should it prove too difficult.

Minutes after Rowan’s birth, the L&D nurse whipped open my hospital gown, puckered Rowan’s mouth over my nipple and smashed her face onto my boob. She was very “This is how ya do it, OK” instead of slowly walking me through the process, but Rowan just went with it and turned out to be a great latcher on-er (technical term!). The first 2 weeks were ungodly painful. Your nipples get chapped and hard and oh my god I did not think it was possible for them to get that big and red. My milk came down on the 3rd day and my boobs became so engorged Bill and I went out and bought a very expensive (and worth every damn penny!) breast pump. Although Rowan was a great nurser, she never took much at a time so my boobs were always in some form of pain in those early weeks. I remember crying every time she latched on because of the pain, but it never occurred to me that I should quit. Then it just got better. My body adjusted to being assaulted by a baby’s mouth every 2-4 hours, my supply regulated and I started to absolutely love nursing my daughter. I swear rainbows shot out of her butt and singing birds gathered around my head when it was nursing time. By the time she was a month old I had already forgotten how painful the first weeks had been and I went on to nurse her exclusively for 6 months. Because I worked, I had to pump 3 times a day which was great because the company provided a lactation room, but soon my milk supply started to wane because I was pumping more than I was actually nursing. Then I started to get questioned. Those same Hens who were so interested in my baby feeding habits while I was pregnant started asking me again- “You’re STILL breastfeeding?” they would reply. Like 6 months was way too old for a baby to still be given breast milk and oh my god yuck, they made little pinched faces. I was young and stupid so this made me feel really bad. I thought since my supply was dropping anyway, I should probably introduce frmula to Rowan. So for the next two months she was given a combination of frmula and breast milk in a bottle along with being nursed. At the 8 month mark my milk had completely dried up and I was sad, but proud that I had given what I did and happy for the experience of breastfeeding my daughter.

Now. The 27 months between Rowan and Keaton were largely spent researching baby crap. Oh god the hours I spent on Babycenter.com, Parents.com and reading parenting magazines. I was obsessed. I couldn’t wait to breastfeed my son and though I was not going to set any parameters- I wanted to do a minimum of 8 months and hoped to make it to the 1 year mark. Then, as his due date grew closer, I thought I ABSOLUTELY HAD to do 8 months because that was how long Rowan got breast milk. Then I started thinking that if he didn’t get it for the same amount of time, that would mean I loved her more and then he would grow up into some disgruntled asshole who blamed everything wrong in his life on my inability to give him breast milk for the EXACT same duration as his sister, who would no doubt be some sort of super space rocket genius because she got breast fed for the perfect amount of time and YOU RUINED MY LIFE MOM WAHHHHH!!! In conclusion he would give me some sort of drug that would make it look like I was dead but really I wasn’t and they would bury me alive and I would spend 2 weeks clawing at the coffin’s hood before I died and… See where this is going? Christy = CRAZY.

So poor Keaton was born to this crazy lady and his L&D nurse did much the same thing as Rowan’s. Only it was worse because nurses can get really over-worked and tired and they kind of assume if you already have a baby that you know what you are doing and they don’t offer a lot of support. Keaton latched on OK at first and went right to town with feedings. This time my milk let down even faster and harder. I knew that it would hurt and was somewhat prepared but pain is pain and when something really fucking hurts it doesn’t matter how prepared you are. The first two weeks were awful- so bad, that when it was time to feed him my body would involuntarily start shaking.

I went to see a lactation consultant in the hospital 3 weeks after his birth. At this point my nipples were not just chapped and sore, they had open wounds on them. Both boobs were rock hard and bright red, no matter how many times I fed him or pumped I wasn’t getting any relief. The lactation consultant, who clearly had been to maybe 2 classes 20 years ago for this title, told me Keaton’s latch was good, my boobs didn’t look that bad to her and it would get better soon if I soaked them in a pan of warm water 8 times a day. Yeah, lady- I’m gonna give my hooters a sitz bath 8 times a day-see this little bundle of screaminess over here? I’m kinda busy. Thank God a midwife walked in and caught a glimpse of the cherry red rocks, formerly known as my boobs, because she prescribed a cream that was specifically formulated for this kind of breast feeding damage.

I went home with the nipple goop and some hope that I would get relief. The cream helped between feedings but every time Keaton fed he ripped the scabs off the lacerations. I was shaking so badly before every feeding that I was scared I would drop him. I cried every time this kid ate for over three weeks. My husband told me to stop. My family members told me to stop. I couldn’t though- how could I explain to them that I would be buried alive if I did that? WithOUT sounding crazy. (Answer: I couldn’t.) Then the fever came and I got so sick. Bill had to physically drag me to Urgent Care where they diagnosed me with double mastitis (breast infection) and gave me antibiotics. Then my OB called me because he had heard I’d been treated for it and wanted to see me. He gave me a better antibiotic to clear up the infection, of which I had to take two rounds because the lacerations on my breasts were not letting the infection heal properly.

By the time Keaton was just over a month old my nipples looked like they’d been through a grinder. With the infection cleared up, my doctor came up with a regimen where I breast fed Keaton only on my left side and pumped only on my right side- hoping the worse laceration could heal if bandaged and not gnawed on by baby shark breath. This was exhausting because I had to breast feed for part of his feeding, then give him a bottle of breast milk and then pump my right side. By the time I was done with one feeding it was time to start the next and I had to take care of a two year old and a baby who didn’t consent to being put down very often (read: AT ALL), so many of those pumping sessions were accompanied by his screaming, which started Rowan in on HER own brand of screaming. After 2 weeks of this my doctor told me to seriously consider calling it quits. (Yep-keep scrolling, there is even MORE to this awesome story. Or don’t. Probably better to make up your own happy ending at this point.)

I couldn’t do it though. NOW it was getting really effing personal. I could not give up after going through 6 weeks of absolute hell. Then he will have WON, people. (Yes, I am now in a deadlocked battle of wills with a 6 week old child. WINNER!). All of my effort would have been for nothing if I gave up now. I worked so hard through the first tough weeks and then through the mastitis and now the lacerations which really can only be described as chunks missing from my nipple. (Point of reference: Mad-Eye Moody’s nose.) I couldn’t quit now. I knew I was being illogical but I had done this before and wanted so very much to have a good experience of nursing Keaton.

Somewhere around the 2 month mark, things started to get better. I still had pain from the lacerations but they were no longer open wounds. Keaton’s floppy head was getting stronger so I didn’t have to prop him up as much and he was getting better at life, too. I put my head down and pushed through and by the time he was 4 months we had reached the magical land of rainbow butts and tweeting birds. We learned the absolutely fantastic art of nursing while laying down and this was life-alteringly beautiful. When he woke up early in the morning this position bought me anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half of more sleep. Anyone with one or more kids will tell you how awesome sleep is. They’ll talk about it like sex. “Oh my god I had the most amazing nap today- it totally blew my mind” etc. etc. Even though things in the household were still pretty rough due to Keaton’s never ending screaminess, breast feeding was no longer another thing pulling us down. It was giving my son and I some much needed bonding time and PLUS! babies can’t scream when there is a boob in their mouth.

So there it is. I won. But not in the bratty I told you so kind of way. I won because I worked really damn hard and it thankfully worked into something beautiful in the end. I nursed Keaton exclusively until he started taking solid food at 4.5 months and between my boobs and the hundreds (literally) of bags of breast milk I expressed I never had a need for frmula. Last week, at 15 months, we shared our last nursing session. He has graduated to whole milk and no longer has the patience to feed from me, a cue my body took well and I, quite simply, quit producing milk. It was the right time for us to end it and I took away so much from our nursing time together.

So now all I have to worry about is Rowan trying to kill me because Keaton got 15 months and she only got a measly 8 and how on earth could I be such a terrible mother…

PS- One major lesson I took away from this, was to not judge anyone on how they choose to feed their baby. I don’t care if you choose to skip breastfeeding all together as long as you have your kid’s best interest at heart and I don’t care if you decide to breast feed your 3 year old as long as you have solid boundaries in place and it’s working for your family. It’s a personal choice that is specific to each mom and baby. My story wasn’t the ideal outcome I’d wished for but in the end it was the right choice for my family.

Amanda and Zane: A Rocky Start

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:08:00 +0000

My son was born three weeks early, for no particular reason. When he was born, all he wanted to do was sleep and sleep. He’d try to latch on, but he never seemed to nurse. I told the doctor, and she said maybe it was just an unfamiliar feeling for me. He was born on Friday, and we all went home on Monday. He still hadn’t really nursed. No one believed me. He’s put his mouth on my breast and look like he was eating, but I knew he wasn’t. I worried that he wasn’t eating right because he was a little premature.

He lost more than ten percent of his birth weight, and he turned yellow. The doctor brought me a hand pump and told me to start expressing milk and feeding it to him with a teaspoon. She told me to have him sleep in the sun. I did that, and my arms would get so tired pumping. No one knew why he wouldn’t latch on to me. He would nuzzle and nuzzle at my breast and never get any milk.

I started to really worry. I asked the doctor if we should start giving him formula, but she said we didn’t need to do that yet. I had a lactation consultant come, and she just yelled at me to keep trying to nurse. She squeezed him against my breast and he latched on for the first time. I was thrilled. I could tell milk was coming down. I was so happy. Then we noticed that he was turning a scary purple color, and realized the LC was pushing him so hard against my breast that he couldn’t breathe. I pulled her hands off me and the baby stopped nursing and began to wail.

On Tuesday my best friend came over and watched me try to nurse. She asked me if she could try him on her breast. I said yes. She held him to her breast and he opened his mouth wide and snapped on like a snapping turtle. My friend started to laugh and told me she could feel her milk let down, and she’d weaned her own baby a year ago.
So then we knew that the problem wasn’t with my son, but with me. My friend and I started my breasts, accusingly, and then we noticed – my nipples were much smaller than hers. Hers were the size of the top of her pinky finger. Mine were more like pencil erasers.

I reported that to my doctor, and she gave me a nipple shield. The first time I used it, my son grabbed right on and had a full feed. After that, everything was easy.