My Breastfeeding Journey So Far
Before becoming a mother I romanticized the experience of breastfeeding. I had the instagram feed worthy image of a beautiful and natural bond between a mother and their child. I was so excited to be able to experience that bond with my own child, to nourish my baby physically and nurture emotionally. I never realized how difficult of a journey that part of our relationship would be.
I delivered my baby girl three days after her due date. The first surprise was finding out her gender — we had waited the entire pregnancy to find out at the birth. The second unexpected surprise was that my baby girl weighed only 5 lb. 1 oz. As a nurse, my mind immediately swirled with questions about her size. Why was she so small? Is she healthy? Did I do something wrong? Did I exercise too much during my pregnancy? Did I not eat enough or gain enough weight? It was a lot to handle.
Soon after delivering, the nurses placed my baby girl on my chest and encouraged me to begin breastfeeding. It was not the experience that I had hoped for. She struggled and cried and never latched on my breast. While attempting to feed her, I started to feel intense pain in my chest that wrapped around my rib cage and back, then radiated up into my shoulders and neck. I thought to myself “maybe I am just sore from pushing. I am coming down from the adrenaline of labor.”
Across the room I looked to my husband, but when I tried to focus on him I noticed how my vision was blurry and I started to struggle to keep my eyes open. My eyes felt so heavy that my mind went from thinking “maybe this is just coming down from the intensity of labor” to “something is wrong and I need help”. I looked down and as I held my sweet baby girl, the pain got so bad I could no longer hold my arms up. I began to fear that I would drop her and asked the nurse to take her away because the pain was too intense to hold her in my arms. I told my nurse that this didn’t feel normal — I had less pain pushing my baby out than I was experiencing in that moment. She called to doctor and they decided to run some tests to further investigate, along with some medication for my pain.
When my labs came back they found that I was in HELLP ( hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes, low platelets ), a complication that more commonly happens to women diagnosed with preeclampsia. The lab work explained why I was having all the pain, but the strange part of all this is I was never diagnosed with preeclampsia during my pregnancy. For those of you who don’t know what preeclampsia is — its basically elevated blood pressure that is present during pregnancy. It can be very dangerous to both the mother and the baby, leading to preterm deliveries and low birth weight babies. Because of my labs I had to be monitored more closely for postpartum hemorrhaging and placed on a medication to prevent seizures for the first 12 hours after delivery. Thankfully I had no further complications and no elevated blood pressures after delivering my Harper girl. But the initial post delivery period was difficult, and the medication I had to be on while in postpartum made me feel weak and groggy.
What does all this have to do with breastfeeding? Really, it is the expectations I set in my mind for how “natural” it would come were very wrong. My expectations did not allow any room for the unexpected, like my post delivery complications and the fact that my baby was much smaller than average. Those first couple nights in the hospital were so difficult and tiring. I struggled to get her to latch and because of her small size felt enormous pressure to make sure she got enough to eat before her next glucose check. I remember how hopeless I felt, tangled up in my IV, groggy from the medication I was receiving, pillows all around me, and on the verge of tears feeling like I was failing to nourish the child I had just brought into the world.
We saw the lactation consultant in the hospital and after spending quite a bit of time working together to get my baby to latch, she recommended a nipple shield because of her small size. This definitely helped her with the latch, and although I really did not want to be dependent on using it, my biggest priority was that Harper started gaining some weight. The first weeks, breastfeeding was so painful because I had worked my nipples raw in the hospital trying to get her to latch. But we kept at it, visited our lactation consultant again a few days later, and by Harper’s first appointment at 5 days old, she was already back to her birthweight. I felt so relieved that she was gaining weight despite our difficult start!
As we have gotten more confident with breastfeeding, I have began to loathe the nipple shield that once helped us so much. If it isn’t the anxiety of losing the clear shield in the sheets during a late night feed, it’s the pain of her knocking it off as she’s gotten stronger and more active while nursing. I really wanted to be free from it and reclaim the breastfeeding experience I had hoped for.
Six weeks old and we have slowly begun weaning off the nipple shield. It has been rough and confusing for us both. Sometimes she latches on with no problem. Other times she completely refuses and screams when I bring my breast close. There has been a lot of tears and frustration. I have even contemplated if I want to continue to breastfeed in those moments of difficulty. I am sharing all this because it’s the raw part of the breastfeeding experience that I didn’t hear much about before I embarked on my own journey into motherhood. I know it is completely fine/normal that I am struggling — I am doing my best to be patient and give myself (and my babe) grace as we navigate this experience together.
I hope that one day it gets easier and we can have the freedom to breastfeed wherever and whenever we need to (without depending on the shield). It’s encouraging to see the progress we have made and I feel hopeful when she is able to finish a feeding without the shield. If we don’t reach the goal of being 100% off the shield, that’s ok too. My girl is still growing and being nourished, whether thats full time breastfeeding, pumping, or a combination of both. It’s our journey and we will write it as we go.
If you are a mama or mama-to-be, know that it’s totally normal to struggle. Let go of the expectations you have for yourself and allow your journey to evolve on its own. I think a lot of the reason I was so disappointed was that I had too rigid of a view on the feeding experience. I also tend to put undue pressure on myself to perform (hello, enneagram 3). However you choose to nourish your little one, know that you are doing amazing!