My Breastfeeding Journey
I have never shared about this before in any public way, but after seeing a lot of breastfeeding related posts for world breastfeeding week, I thought now was the time. If you’ve followed me on instagram for any period of time, you know that one of my passions is normalizing things and taking the “perfect” view away and showing that it is normal to struggle, for things to be hard, etc.
When I was pregnant with my first, I took a super basic breastfeeding class and just thought that I would breastfeed and that would be that. Honestly, I didn’t have very many friends that I knew of who had struggled and it just seemed like thats what you did- baby comes out, baby latches on, you breastfeed. Ha…
My first was born at a birth center, after 44 hours of labor but with 0 interventions. And, even so, she couldn’t latch. There was no magical breast crawl resulting in her latching for the first time etc. No one at my birth could get her to latch. They assessed that she had lip and tongue ties and made us an appt with a local tongue tie specialist for the next day and sent us on our way. I continued to try to get her to latch for the next almost 18 hours until our appt, but no luck. When we went in that day, they said she needed her ties lasered, so we did so. They showed us the stretches to do and said she should be able to latch moving forward with some body work etc. Long story short- she didn’t, and then came 2-3 very emotional weeks full of lots of money spent, lots of tears shed and lots of appointments. She wouldn’t latch, so we had to feed her through a syringe while I pumped. When she was ready to move on from that, we moved to an SNS system. Try to latch, pump, feed through SNS. Everytime I tried and she wouldn’t latch I was really upset. Friends suggested maybe it was time to move to formula. I wouldn’t give up. FINALLY. Finally. About 3 weeks post birth- she latched. And we were able to breastfeed from that point on. But… not without more struggle. My supply was good until about that 3-4 month mark when hormones stop driving your supply and its more of a supply and demand situation (milk out= milk in etc.). At that point, my supply tanked. I had no idea why. Went to all the appts. My prolactin was low. No reason why. The only suggestion- take non fda approved drugs with lots of side effects. I couldn’t do it. So I continued on, attempting everything to increase my supply. It didn’t work. I had so many wonderfully giving friends who gave me their breastmilk. Some who pumped extra just for me. Eventually we had to add in formula too. By the time I finished my journey at 11 months, she was feeding for maybe 1-2 minutes at a time and probably getting close to nothing.
Baby 2- born at home, again with no interventions. And he latched right away, but his latch was SO strong and SO tight and the pain was immense. Again, an appointment with a tongue tie specialist. He had all 4 ties (tongue, buccal x2, tip). We chose to go forward with lip and tongue ties when he was only 2 days old, even though body work was recommended first. But I was in so much pain and desperate for relief. Unfortunately, it didn’t provide relief. My nipples were sore, cracked, bleeding. I would dread the next time he had to feed. Pumping didn’t provide any relief. But I was also in a place where I knew I had struggled with low supply the first time and wanted to ensure I was removing milk regularly. We did body work, CFT. So many wonderful people helped in our journey this time around. And slowly… after about 4-5ish weeks? It got better. The pain went away. The feeds got quicker. His latch was deep. And now we’ve been successfully exclusively breastfeeding for almost 5 months and I LOVE it. I don’t have low supply, in fact I even have a bit of an oversupply. I have 100s of ounces frozen in my freezer (which I plan to donate to someone in need when the time is right!) I’m finally at a place where I can say how beautiful and joy-filled it is. I love feeding my baby. I’m actually sad thinking about when 6 months arrives and food is introduced. I love being the sole-provider for him.
Breastfeeding (or pumping) is a labor of love, it is hard work, and if you’ve done it even for a week, you should be proud. Here’s to normalizing whatever your journey may have looked like.