I am a Certified
Lactation Educator. I work for the WIC Program. Every day I teach women how to
breastfeed and help them through breastfeeding challenges. I thought
breastfeeding was simple as long as you knew what to do and that babies are
born knowing how to breastfeed. I judged women who “gave up” on breastfeeding.
I thought formula was awful. Everything changed when my daughter was born and
they placed her on my chest and when we tried to get her to latch she just
bobbed her head and cried not knowing what to do.
At
WIC we stress the importance of the “Golden Hour” after delivery where the baby
should be placed skin to skin and allowed to initiated the first breastfeed.
After my long delivery I was looking forward to that special moment. I tried to
help her follow her instincts and find the breast. She was in a good position
but just kept bobbing her head and she would not latch. Nothing I did would get
her to latch. No one was helping me. Once we got settled in my recovery room I
kept trying. The white board where we were supposed to keep track of how long
she fed just read attempted feeding and how long we would try to get her to
feed. My first nurse told me I had short nipples and that was the problem. My
nipples looked fine to me….why wouldn’t my daughter latch? I am trying to help
her but nothing is working! Occasionally we would get her to latch a tiny bit
and suck but nothing that would count as an actual feed. I was getting
desperate to be able to feed my daughter. Why was this so hard? I asked for a
Lactation Consultant to come to our room and was told that they don’t come in
the first 24 hours because moms and babies usually just need some practice. Are
you kidding me? I need to latch my baby NOW! After 12 hours of not being
successful the nurse suggested I start pumping. So I pumped the small amount of
colostrum and we used a syringe with a tube to finger feed it to her. It was
amazing how alert she would get after we fed her and sometimes that would help
her have the energy to try to latch.
The
first night was rough. Poor Gianna would scream and scream and we had a hard
time calming her down. I know that babies are born full and don’t need to eat
much the first 24 hours but my daughter sure seemed hungry and frustrated. At
the 24 hour mark our nurse told us the hospital policy was to start
supplementing with formula if babies were not successfully feeding. I always
tell people not to start formula in the hospital. Now that I was facing the
decision I felt the frantic need to feed my daughter and since I wasn’t pumping
much colostrum I agreed. I felt like such a failure but at the same time it
made me feel better to know that my daughter wasn’t starving. We decided to go
to a baby care class the following morning and it happened to be taught by a CLE
. When she started talking about breastfeeding I cried. After the class I told
her my frustration in that no one was giving me the help I needed and how
discouraged I was. She was compassionate and gave me the hope I needed to
continue. I don’t remember what time the Lactation Consultant finally came to
my room but she came with another woman who was training to become an LC and
they were both great. She confirmed that my nipples were fine and that wasn’t
the problem. They suspected the problem was tongue tie and suggested a nipple
shield. With their help we were able to get Gianna latched with the nipple
shield and could hear her swallowing but they noticed she was still having some
trouble.
It
was such a relief to finally get her latched! I think she had a few decent
feedings after that but then we started having trouble again. I would ask for
help with latching her but would always be waiting so long that we would have
to give her formula to calm her down. We decided to stay in the hospital
another night to get help from the LC before going home. The second night is a
blur but I know that feeding was stressful and we were still struggling. The
second LC helped me to latch her again but agreed that I would have to keep
pumping and supplementing her if she was not feeding well at the breast.
Once
we got home things got worse. I was so exhausted and overwhelmed with feeding
her. I would need Tim to help me calm her down and also supplement her with the
finger syringe while I pumped. Breastfeeding was horrible. She would cry and I
would cry. It took us two weeks to work out insurance problems to finally get
her tongue tie corrected. I thought that would instantly fix things. After the
procedure I tried to latch her but again she would bob her head even with the
nipple shield. I felt so discouraged. I knew that I needed to get help but I
was so exhausted and couldn’t make it to a breastfeeding support group. I was
also struggling with my pride in thinking that I should know what to do and how
to help my daughter breastfeed but I couldn’t. Throughout that time I was
pumping every 2-3 hours and trying to latch her when she was calm. I started to
not latch her as much because it was so stressful for both of us and it was
seriously depressing me. Eventually we realized she was slurping more than
sucking with the finger syringe so we switched to a bottle which seemed to help
with her sucking. Finally at three weeks we were able to see an LC through our
insurance. She was really supportive and helped give me some tips on getting
Gianna to latch. Throughout the week we practiced more and started to improve.
After our four week appointment with the LC we decided to try a week of not
supplementing and only pumping and giving the bottle if she was too frustrated
to feed. For one week my daughter was almost exclusively feeding at the breast,
it was amazing! I never thought we would be able to get to this point after the
first few weeks of struggles. I was so happy and relieved. I only had to pump
and bottle feed her a few times. And no formula! I thought we were done with
formula forever! And then we found out she had lost 3 ounces that week. I had
thought breastfeeding was finally going well so this was really upsetting to me
and again I felt like a failure.
