Breastfeeding Woes

Are you breastfeeding? One of the many questions pregnant moms get asked at their many prenatal appointments. This is also a repeated question (along with the flu shot *eye roll*). Once a woman goes into labor, every person that enters the room will ask if you are breastfeeding. Some first time moms will say ‘of course’ thinking, because breastfeeding is natural, that it’s easy. Well, it’s not. Here are some of the issues: flat nipples, inverted nipples, flat & inverted nipples, cracked nipples, mastitis, supply and demand issues, baby having a tongue tie/lip tie.

Personally, I pride myself with knowing and wanting to know all I can about something I plan on doing. With each pregnancy, I had an app to track my pregnancy. That app will have daily updates and community boards of other moms asking for help or input on certain situations. I hardly ever posted, I mostly read other peoples’ post and the comments to learn, and learn I did. With my first pregnancy, I chose not to breastfeed. I read that whatever mom eats, the baby eats. I didn’t want to restrict my diet. I was young and I wanted to indulge in McDonald's and all that. With my second pregnancy, I did a little more research. I came across an article of the benefits of breastfeeding: immune support, better digestion, & what was important for me, fights against asthma. Dad has asthma and so does his eldest son. So if I was able to prevent or help my child in anyway to make having asthma that much less, I was going to do it. I breastfed for a month and a half and gave up. I didn’t feel bad about it until later. I was more so upset with myself that I didn’t try harder. I promised myself, that I would put more effort into breastfeeding with my next child. Fast forward two years later, and I do NOT exclusively breastfeed. When my third child was born, I put him to the breast and he had a great latch, despite my issues. I was so excited. When it came time to check his vitals, he wasn’t reaching the desired body temp. He was taken to the nursery. Turned out that his sugar was low. They brought him back to me a few hours later and when it came to for a feeding, I put him to the breast. I had some pain so I went to check and I had a cracked nipple due to a bad latch. Thank goodness we have more than one boob. I switched sides and he didn’t latch correctly there either. So I was left with cracked nipples and a hungry baby. I cup fed him formula. I didn’t want to have a problem with nipple confusion. With that, he slept and I put on some nipple cream so I can try to breastfeed for the next feeding. When I went to breastfeed again, it went from cracked to cut and bleeding. I was out of commission for a week. I ended up formula feeding and straight from the bottle. When I was healed, I gave another go at breastfeeding and I proceeded with caution. Everything went surprisingly fine. We had no issues with nipple confusion. I was eating lactation bars and drinking lactation tea to increase my supply. I wasn’t really seeing any improvement but he was only a week old so I wasn’t stressing it. I just put him to the breast whenever I could. My milk came in and oh man! I had to pump just to relive myself. I looked forward to a feeding because it would relieve the pain that comes with full breast. I was only pain free for a few moments because he wasn’t emptying the breast fully. He was always falling asleep. That was my biggest issue. I ended up pumping and bottle feeding. I was pumping 20 minutes on each breast and I was only getting a total of 3 ounces which was fine because that how much he was drinking. Another issue I had was I was only pumping 3 ounces once a day. I would try to pump again and I was getting, maybe, an ounce. I tried to power pump with my electric pump, I ended up with cracked nipples again. I decided to stick to my manual pump. I ended up getting tired of pumping and giving a bottle. I thought to myself “if he can drink breastmilk from the bottle, he should be able to drink it straight from the breast.” So I decided not to pump and to just plain ol’ breastfeed. The thing is, it’s time consuming. Experts say 10 minutes each side and you should be good until the next feeding which should be in two hours. I would do five minutes on one side and he’s falling asleep. When he would wake (5 mins later) I’d put him back. After the second time of falling asleep and waking up again, I’d switch sides and by that time, he’s frustrated and fighting me. While I’m trying to put him to the breast, he’s yanking his body away from me (don’t underestimate newborns; they’re strong). So with all the frustration, I’d just give a bottle of formula. So I stuck to that. Breast then bottle. In the middle of the night, I’d be so tired that I would just make a bottle. The whole point to my story is that, don’t stress and beat yourself up over breastfeeding the baby. If you try and it doesn’t work out, then it doesn’t work out, as long as you tried. Forget the phrase “breast is best”. While breastmilk has multiple benefits, formula is filled with the vitamins and nutrition that’s needed for your baby to grow and thrive. So here’s the better phrase, a fed baby is a happy baby. I enjoy breastfeeding and at this point I do it to either top off an the bottle baby just had, or for comfort. I still will drink my lactation tea because I’d like to replace a bottle or two with breastmilk, and me drinking the tea is me trying. If this doesn’t work out, I’d still be happy that baby is fed. Happy feeding!