I felt crushed when I saw the scale and realized my
daughter had lost weight. Babies are supposed to stop losing weight by day 5
and definitely not after day ten of life. My daughter was losing weight at one
month. We measured her feeding in the office and found that she only ate 1.3 oz
and at that age she needed at least 2 oz per feed. The LC suggested we rent a
scale and weigh her feeds for an entire week and offer pumped milk or formula
to supplement if she was not eating 2 oz. At home I would offer both sides and
try to keep her on long enough by massaging my breasts to keep the milk
flowing. And she would average only 1.3 oz per feed. I would also get that much
when I would pump. The only time she would get 2 oz was if she slept a bit
longer and it was 3 or more hours in between feeding sessions. I was trying to
supplement her at the breast to increase my supply but if anyone has had to use
a supplemental nursing system with a nipple shield and a fussy/hungry baby it
is not easy. Gianna would frequently pull on the tubing or rip off my nipple
shield and I would have to set her down to fix it while she screamed. When Tim
was home he would help me but most of the time we were alone and we were
overwhelmed by the feeding challenges. After a week of trying my best to keep
Gianna feeding at the breast and supplementing when necessary we returned to
the LC. That is when I heard the words that would crush me. She said that since
Gianna was nursing well now the only problem seemed to be that I had low milk
supply. I had worked so hard to establish my milk supply the first month and
again I felt like a failure. She asked me so many questions but we could not
determine the cause of my low milk supply. It was determined that I would have
to continue to supplement long term and I would try taking a medication for the
off label use of increasing my milk supply. Tim and I weren’t completely
comfortable with me taking medication that I did not need but I was desperate
to be able to produce more milk. The medication did seem to help me produce
closer to 2 oz per feeding but as Gianna got older and needed more milk we will
had to supplement.
At some point I gave up
on the supplemental nursing system because it was too stressful and feedings
were taking too long. I regret this decision because Gianna started to develop
a bottle preference and would refuse the breast. Around two months getting her
to latch became incredibly difficult. She would pull off and cry and it would
be so hard to get her to stay latched and feeding. I discovered that I could
offer the bottle first then trick her into latching after she drank some
formula. Unfortunately this only worked for a short period of time and after
two months she would only latch during the night and I would have to pump
during the day. Around this time she stopped taking long enough naps for me to
pump and life got more challenging and stressful. I would spend a lot of time
getting her down for a nap and then I would start pumping only to have her wake
up halfway through my session. I would try to get her to be calm while I
finished pumping but I usually couldn’t do that. Sometimes I would be able to
fit in a manual pumping session but it became challenging to maintain pumping
every two hours. At this point I was seriously considering returning to work
full time so that I could at least be able to pump routinely and save my
supply. My supply started to drop even more. By the time I returned to work at
4 months I was only pumping about 6 oz from four pumping sessions. I tried
power pumping, I tried mother’s milk tea, lactation cookies, but nothing
helped. With my supply decreasing it was harder and harder to get Gianna to
latch in the evenings.
Another layer to my
challenges was dealing with anxiety and insomnia. When Gianna started having
trouble napping during the day, I started to get really stressed about her lack
of sleep. I was also stressed because I no longer had any time to pump. Every
time I would get her to sleep I would be so tense and worried that she would
wake up I wouldn’t even want to move. This eventually spread to nighttime as
well. A few weeks after returning to work Gianna began waking every two hours
or less at night. I would be so tense and worried that she would wake up that I
wouldn’t fall back asleep before she woke up again. I would go to sleep at
eight so that I could get a few hours of sleep and then most days I would go to
work having woke up at midnight and then not fall back asleep before getting up
for the day. It then got the to the point that I was so anxious about not being
able to sleep that I had a few nights where I literally never fell asleep.
Those days I would call in sick and thankfully Gianna’s godparents were able to
watch her so I could get a few hours of sleep at home. I went to my doctor
desperate for something to help me sleep and she screened me for postpartum
depression. Thankfully I did not seem to have full blown PPD but I did have
signs of anxiety/mild depression. I started medication for that and she
recommended I try melatonin. With the melatonin I was able to fall asleep in
the beginning of the night again but the rest of the night I usually did not
get much sleep. With the medication I was finally not feeling tense all of the
time and started to enjoy motherhood more. Unfortunately during the weeks I was
not sleeping much I was also not pumping during the night. When Gianna stopped
nursing at night I was too exhausted and desperate for sleep I didn’t want to risk
losing any more sleep to pump. And honestly I was so depressed over my low milk
supply and going through the effort to pump only one oz or less became really
difficult.
By 4.5 months I was
only getting 8 oz or less in 24 hours and it just kept dropped. My electric
pump wouldn’t get milk out so I had to use a manual pump
and my wrists started hurting from it! And then it got to the point where I
would only get milk out by hand expression. I would spend 15 minutes to get
less than an oz. I was exhausted, overwhelmed and dealing with losing my milk
supply was super depressing. I would cry every time I thought about it or
people asked me. At the end of May I started talking to Tim about how I was
ready to stop. It was a hard decision and I had my last pumping session a few
days before Gianna turned five months. If she had still been latching I would
have kept breastfeeding but I could not handle pumping and only getting less
than an oz. I am sure there are some mothers who would have kept going and
maybe even tried harder to increase their supply but I couldn’t at that time. I
still feel like it was the best decision for me. After I stopped pumping I was
able to grieve the loss of a breastfeeding relationship with my daughter and
move on. I was able to enjoy my time with her more fully without having to
stress about when I could pump. I stopped beating myself up about not
breastfeeding. It would be hard to think about how I wanted to breastfeed her
for two years and didn’t even make it to five months. I would have days where I
still feel like a failure. However, now that it has been two months since that
time I am mostly at peace. I did breastfeed my daughter. She did get quite a
bit of my breast milk and benefited from it. And I still cherish that one week
of exclusive breastfeeding we had in the beginning. I keep trying to figure out
what I could have done differently and I hope that breastfeeding will be
different with my next child but I am at peace. Breastfeeding is complex and it
is challenging. I hope that the next time you see a mother feeding her child
formula that you refrain from judging her. I love my daughter so much and the
fact that I do not breastfeed her anymore does not change a thing. I have
learned so much from my breastfeeding journey and I hope that it can help other
mothers. I have already been able to relate better to and support other mothers
struggling with breastfeeding and that has been a huge blessing to me!
