Breastfeeding Woes

Breastfeeding can be hard. Period. I knew going into it that it was going to be tough. I read everything on the internet I could get my hands on to get a good understanding of it. I went into it with no expectations, we would give it a fair shake and if it worked awesome, but if not I wasn't going to be all "I'm a terrible mom!"


I'll start with how frustrated I felt before the baby was even born by so many of the nurses, doctors, consultants, etc. that would ask if I planned to breastfeed or bottle feed. I'd answer with "we would like to breastfeed but we'll see how it goes." Babies are pretty unpredictable, I had no idea if he was going to take to the boob or not. I had no idea if my milk would come in or if it would be enough to feed him. I'm a pretty laid back person who tries to keep my expectations low in situations like this, it keeps my stress and anxiety down if it doesn't go exactly as planned. So anyway, when I would give them this answer they would go on this rant about how important breast milk can be to babies development and all these things I already knew about it. They made me feel like an idiot, like I couldn't possibly have had the intelligence level to have researched this and understood it already.


Fast forward to the night he was born, obviously we want to try to get him breastfeeding right away. I had a C-section, I had been in labor for 12 hours, I was pumped full of drugs. It is safe to say I was completely and utterly exhausted, but I was willing to try. The lactation consultant came in and tried to help us out and Ethan was not having it, he was not interested at all. We tried this way and that, with the nipple shield and without, he wasn't interested. I told the nurses thank you, we'll try again later. I didn't want to stress him out if he wasn't interested so I pumped and gave him that. I got the 3rd degree about how I shouldn't give him the bottle because that was easy for him and I should make him work at breastfeeding. Her exact works were "get him undressed, make him mad, get him awake." I'm sorry but this baby is not even a day old and you want me to purposely make him upset... No way. If he wants to chill and drink from the bottle, then that is what we are going to do.
I had to spend three days in the hospital with the nurses that kept pushing us to make him breastfeed, "it's so important to establish this early." Listen lady, we are going to do this at our own speed. We will practice and if he gets it then awesome, if not, I am not going to force him.


When we finally got home it was sooo much easier for me to relax when it was time to practice the boob. Don't get me wrong, it was still difficult as hell and got really frustrating at times. I knew he was hungry but he just did not want a boob. He'd latch for a minute or two and then throw his head back and freak out. After a couple minutes of this I'd stop and give him a bottle of pumped breast milk. There were a few times that I had almost given up, it just seemed so stressful on the both of us, but I am so glad I didn't.


It took us a good three weeks to finally get the hang of it and establish a good latch and a comfortable position. I had a great milk supply and was able to pump extra to store for later. The problem was that I wasn't comfortable feeding in public. Little man was a super slow eater so breastfeeding him in public just wasn't an option for me. This lead to more bottles and me waiting until I got home to pump or breastfeed. My boobs took this as less demand for the juice and so my supply suffered.


After he was about a month old we started supplementing with Similac for supplementing. I didn't plan on breastfeeding forever since I had to return to work and I wanted to make sure we could get him adjusted to formula before then. He took to the formula just fine and was getting about a 50/50 split throughout the day. Again my supply suffered.


So I have been trying to be more attentive to pumping on a schedule and trying to breastfeed him whenever possibly instead of giving a bottle to get my supply back up. Later this week I'm going to try to make some lactation cookies and see if that helps, I'll let you know how it goes.


I will say that I am glad we chose to do it the way we did, while it was stressful at times when he wouldn't latch and I KNEW he was hungry, I didn't feel like I HAD to breastfeed him and I was failing by giving him a bottle. Now when he does latch and eat I love looking in his little eyes and feeling like I am letting him know that I am there for him. I have read about how some mom's just gush over how incredible they feel while breastfeeding, I didn't think I would feel like that. But when I look down at him I feel tremendous love for this little man and my heart just wants to explode from him. It was so worth it to try and try at our own pace.