The struggle to breastfeed

When L was born, I wanted to allow him the time to see if he would root out the nipple and start breastfeeding on his own. The nurse on duty informed me this wasn’t going to happen and promptly connected my child to my breast before I could even protest. (This same nurse came into my room when my husband stepped out, took my baby from my arms and began wandering around the room with him. I got the creepy feeling she would have walked out the door with him if she could.)

The day after L was born, a Lactation Consultant came in, showed us a diagram of a breastfeeding baby, asked if we had questions and walked out.

The next day I was assigned a nurse with lactation training because my baby was only nursing for a few minutes every 5 hours or so. Putting him on the breast literally put him to sleep. She spent an hour with the baby’s head in one hand, my breast in the other and proceeded to connect and disconnect them repeatedly. My son and I were both frustrated by the time she had finished. She told me my milk wasn’t coming in, left the room, came back with a breast pump and a syringe of formula. I sobbed.

The third day another Lactation Consultant came in. She told me how many ounces of formula to feed L as if I weren’t giving him any milk and without taking his weight into consideration. She scheduled every other day visits with us where she would weigh my son, have him nurse and weigh him again. She thought he might nurse more efficiently from a bottle and repeatedly pushed me to try it.

I tried pumping, acupuncture, diet change, massage, chiropractic, tinctures, vitamins, naked napping, geranium oil – anything anyone suggested. I continued to feed my child formula and anything I could pump, via syringe. I refused to give him a bottle, wanting to avoid nipple confusion. At three weeks our pediatrician, a relatively new mother herself, asked me if I wasn’t going insane with all the pumping and syringe feeding. She suggested I just give it up. The Lactation Consultant, too, asked why didn’t I just give up.

I finally hired an independent Lactation Consultant at the recommendation of my birth doula. She spent three hours with me showing me the proper way to hold my child. She checked his latch and his suck, showed me the right way to use the supplementing tools the other LCs had given me and gave me a plan to gradually work him down off the formula. Finally! A professional who actually believed in my desire to feed my child naturally.

In the middle of all this I was having horrific pain from something called vasospasms. I had to put a hot pack on before and after every nursing and pumping session and keep as warm as I could to alleviate the spasms. Every time I put L to the breast I would cringe in anticipation of the pain. It got to the point where it was a huge battle to get him to latch on. I broke down and decided to take drugs to get rid of the vasospasms.

I had to go back to see the original Lactation Consultant who refused to treat the vasospasms until she had ruled out yeast infection. I took my mother-in-law, who had successfully breastfed 3 children, with me. The consultant rounded my son’s starting weight up and then rounded my sons after-nursing weight down and told me my milk still hadn’t come in. My mother-in-law called her on it and she tried to pass it off as unimportant. I had just finished telling her that I was not bottle feeding my son when she turned around, handed my mother-in-law a bottle of formula with a nipple and told her to go feed him out in the lobby while she took a milk culture. The test came back negative and 2 weeks of meds finally killed the spasms.

The damage, unfortunately, was done. My son screamed every time I held him to my breast. He figured out how to avoid my nipple while latching on to the rubber tube of formula. I gave up breastfeeding at 5 weeks and put my son on a bottle. I felt like I had failed him and wanted to give him back. I wasn’t a capable mother.

Then one day when L was 3 months old, he refused the bottle I was trying to feed him. Instead he turned in to my chest and started rooting. I lifted my shirt and he happily latched on. I gained confidence watching the nursing moms in my PEPS group. We skipped town and I spent weeks just sleeping, eating and nursing.

By five months we were down to 6 ounces from 18. I haven’t been able to get past that last little bit and some days I do have to feed him more but I know now that I am perfectly capable of feeding my child in spite of the professionals.