This picture will make sense in a minute...
I was not at all prepared to meet my son last summer after he spent a glorious 39 weeks blossoming in my womb. (Love that sentence, I should be a poet!)
I wasn’t at all prepared for his appetite, either. This little man was attached to my boobs every 75 minutes. He’d eat, get a diaper change, burp and be back at it. My poor boobs begged for mercy and I feared they would just collapse since he sucked the life out of them.
I kept getting engorged (which feels like someone packed your boobs with rocks) and he wouldn’t suck, he would just chomp, like a game of Hungry, Hungry Hippo. My poor, poor nipples would get caught up in the madness and be sore as you can imagine. I began to dread feeding him (a clear sign this wasn’t going well).
One day, exhausted, breasts incredibly full and heavy, I sat down to nurse. My son went to chomp and all of a sudden I felt a pain like never before.
I looked down. My nipple was bleeding.
I handed the baby off to my mom, who had come to visit, went in the bedroom, wiped off the blood and took a nap. She gave him formula for the rest of the day.
Then next day – I BREASTFED HIM AGAIN. No one can tell me I don’t love that boy.
Which is why I take offense when people actually questioned my breastfeeding efforts. I had in-laws who asked (and I QUOTE), “So you just let the baby suck on your titty?”
SERIOUSLY? Oh my.
Share your breastfeeding story with me – whether you were successful or not! We all need to hear what it’s REALLY like!
I didn’t have a good supply when I breastfed my first daughter. Or at least, I was told I didn’t, and the anxiety from that probably caused me to have less of a supply. No one told me that you make milk when you sleep, so I’d try to do stupid things like laundry when the baby was napping, instead of making milk. I did a lot better with my second child, but she was also a better sleeper.
Anyway, I tried everything to increase my supply – fenugreek, brewer’s yeast, oatmeal, dark beer, gallons of water… I took so much fenugreek that I smelled like maple syrup. People would pass me at the store and suddenly get cravings for pancakes. Unfortunately, though, I was so paranoid that these weren’t working, that I decided to ask my doctor for a prescription for Reglan.
Reglan can cause depression, and is not recommended for people with a history of depression (which I have). I didn’t care, I was desperate to nurse. My mom was a LLL leader, and there were no other options in my mind. My child was going to be exclusively breastfed. I took it. I got majorly depressed. I ended up having a nervous breakdown in my doctor’s office a couple months later, for which he wanted to hospitalize me (I talked him out of it). I’ve been on Zoloft ever since.
It makes me really angry that there’s another medication that’s every bit as effective as Reglan, called Domperidone, and doesn’t have the side effects, but it’s not approved by the FDA. You can get it, but you have to get a prescription from a very cooperative doctor, and you have to find a compounding pharmacy.
Now that I have a second child, I look back and realize that if I had just chilled the hell out, and if everyone (including the hospital “Lactation Consultant” who weighed the baby, had me feed her, then weighed her again and she’d lost an ounce – wtf??) had just left me alone, we would’ve been fine. I wonder how different her first year of life would’ve been, had I known…
I did end up nursing her for 28 months, including the 9 months I was pregnant with her sister, and I tandem nursed for another 9 months (which was HELL ON EARTH and NO ONE should EVER do it!). My second child nursed for about 21 months before I was D.O.N.E. I was pregnant, nursing, or both from November 2004 until November 2008, and I wanted my body back. But here we are negotiating about #3. I just never learn. I’ll probably have twins. LOL
But this time, I’m going to relax. I’m going to find a way to sleep more. And I’m going to be just fine, and so will the baby, and if she loses a bit of weight in the first week or two, I am not going to spaz. I guess the moral of this story is that breastfeeding, like everything, is a learned skill. You get better at it with practice. And you MUST sleep.
I got bit, too. It’s the closest I ever came to shaking her – because she had teeth at the time. She bit me, and I said, “NO BITE” through the tears, and she laughed. I put her in the crib and walked away. It was all I could do not to hurt her. But I didn’t, so I guess that really makes me a good mom, not a bad one.
Amy @ http://prettybabies.blogspot.com
Okay, so I breastfed all three of my lil munchkins, but my first one gave me hell. After the first week and getting through the initial pain of breast feeding, my nipples started to crack and bleed. It was soooo bad, my breast pads would stick to the scabs on my nipples. I know gross. Scabs on a nipple, yes its possible. I got through it though. Breast feeding is best way to go
@ Chanel – Thanks for sharing! I had NO IDEA how difficult breastfeeding would be. I thought, babies come out with the suck reflex, right? Put ’em up there and let’s go! But it’s much more difficult than that and people need to be aware of that before they attempt it. If you think it’s easy and then you struggle, it’s easier for you to blame yourself or think you’re not doing something right, when in reality you’re having the same experience as moms all over the world.
But, yeah, scabs on nipples. *shudder* That’s painful.
My mother breastfed me until I was 18 months old, so I just KNEW I was going to breastfeed for at least a year, however I think I only made it to 2 months. I had just about every problem in the book. All he wanted to do was sleep, not eat. He wouldn’t latch on so I tried a nipple guard, that helped somewhat. Had a lacation consultant come out and everything. I finally gave up because I just couldn’t produce enough milk. If I pumped all day long the most I could get was about 2.5 ounces
I shed many tears and was so disappointed. Even to this day with him being 9 months, it still bothers me that I was unable to breastfeed him
I loved, loved, loved breastfeeding my daughter and actually hated to see that relationship end between us when she was 10 months old. I was all dried up and she was ready to give it up, and I grieved.
But yes, it’s VERY hard work to get started and maintain. I remember crying when Savannah was a few days old as she nursed and it hurt to bad I was so tempted to go make a bottle down stairs with the formula the hospital had sent home to me. However, the thought of NOT breastfeeding her was more painful to me emotionally than the physical pain. So I stuck through and obviously so glad I did. After about 2-3 weeks my nipples toughened up and it was fantastic for both of us.
it was kinda rough for me with my daughter. she latched perfectly…but the PAIN!?!?! i had a few cracking/bleeding episodes but i held on. for me, the weird thing was that one breast produced more than the other. so i took a few supplements and we made it to 8 months when my body just said – ENOUGH!
@Mrs. W – My daughter latched on pretty well too. She definitely preferred one side over the other as well. When she was about 6 months old my boobs had had enough and said, “Eh, we’re done here now. Go warm up some Similac.” LOL.
@ Leah – You know what makes breastfeeding so hard? It’s that you go through nine (okay, 10) months of pregnancy, getting poked and prodded every other week, dealing with morning sickness, getting bigger and rounder every time you turn around, having back pain and swollen ankles. Then you go through labor. Worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. In my case, I followed that up with a C-section, which everyone says is MAJOR SURGERY, but isn’t really treated like it. So after all that, when you probably should be recovering somewhere, you’ve got to learn how to feed your baby and do it NOW or the nurses will give the baby a bottle and all hell will break loose. I cried because it was just so much pressure, I had just given birth and my stomach was so sore and all I could think was, “I’ll never be good at this. Why is this soo hard?” I wish people had told me!
@ Amy – You TANDEM NURSED?!?!?!
*getting off the computer, rummaging through a box in the closet, and pulling out an old #1 ribbon* Wow. I’m just…in awe. I barely made it with one baby but tandem nursing? You were either pregnant or nursing or both for FOUR YEARS. There’s a special place in heaven for you, my friend, and it involves lots of ice cream and pillows.