Wel­come to the Novem­ber Breast­feed­ing Carnival!

Dur­ing my first preg­nancy, I knew right away I wanted to breast­feed.  I don’t know why.  I just did.  It seemed nat­ural (and inex­pen­sive).  As my due date grew closer, I started to get ner­vous.  I started to ques­tion my deci­sion and think things like ‘maybe I’ll breast­feed if it works’ or ‘I’ll see how it goes.’  As I became more and more anx­ious about it, I decided to take con­trol of my anx­i­ety and instead of only fret­ting, I fret­ted and read.  I read books (which I would not rec­om­mend so I won’t link to them).  I read web­sites.  I sought out mes­sage boards.  I asked my mom about nurs­ing.  I had known she had nursed me to about 18 months and my brother until he was almost 3.  She encour­aged me to find a La Leche League group close to me, but I hes­i­tated.  That seemed like a lit­tle too much.  Why would I go when I didn’t even have a baby?  I also took my hospital’s breast­feed­ing class.

The class was a review of every­thing I already knew.

• Some women have a hard time get­ting started but it’s worth it.
• If some babies don’t latch in one posi­tion, try another.
• Be care­ful intro­duc­ing bot­tles.  They can cause nip­ple confusion.
• Buy some nurs­ing bras.
• If you have trou­ble, ask for a lac­ta­tion consultant.

K’s Hos­pi­tal Stay
My first sur­prise in breast­feed­ing came when K, my son, came 4 weeks early.  When he was born, he had no desire to suck, and he had a small mouth.  I did as I had read.  When I had trou­ble, I asked for a Lac­ta­tion Con­sul­tant (LC).  Unfor­tu­nately, in my hos­pi­tal, LCs are also NICU nurses.  Unfor­tu­nately, there was a mom preg­nant with twins in pre­ma­ture labor, and the LC was needed to help her keep from deliv­er­ing those pre­cious babies at 31 weeks.  This meant that I didn’t have a LC to help me.  What I had was a baby who was jaun­diced and didn’t want to eat.  He seemed to have no suck­ing reflex, and he was extremely sleepy.  After about a day of pump­ing my colostrum and get­ting very lit­tle, a nurse told me, “He’s gotta eat some­thing, and his suck is worse than pathetic.”  She took him and fed him his first bot­tle of for­mula as I cried about how I had just ruined my chances of suc­cess­ful breast­feed­ing.  My hus­band tried to com­fort me, but he was as upset as I was.  Nei­ther of us had dis­cussed a pas­sion­ate desire to breast­feed, but once I had my lit­tle guy in my arms, I knew I *had* to breast­feed him.  That night, Jason and I got up every 3 hours.  I attempted to nurse K for 15 min­utes.  K refused the breast.  I pumped and Jason fed K my colostrum with a med­i­cine drop­per and fol­lowed it up with an ounce of for­mula.  By the time we had fin­ished that and washed the pump parts, we had about an hour to sleep before it was time to start wak­ing K again.  To say we were feel­ing dis­cour­aged is a major understatement.

The next day, the lac­ta­tion con­sul­tant came to my room.  She watched K attempt to nurse, and she gave me a nip­ple shield.  Not know­ing any­thing about the con­tro­versy that sur­rounds their use, I popped it on.  It was almost instantly suc­cess­ful for me.  K latched and started nurs­ing and nurs­ing and nurs­ing and nurs­ing.  I was ecsta­tic think­ing that I had man­aged to find a way to con­tinue our nurs­ing rela­tion­ship!  We ended up stay­ing another day in the hos­pi­tal in pedi­atrics so his weight could be mon­i­tored, but we didn’t have any other issues there.  Peo­ple who have read my blog know that K just turned 4 and is still nurs­ing, so I would say that despite our rocky begin­ning, we have expe­ri­enced much suc­cess in our relationship!

A’s Hos­pi­tal Stay
Fast for­ward about 20 months, and I found myself back in the hos­pi­tal with a new baby.  I was pretty con­fi­dent that #2 was going to be a much bet­ter nurser than my first had been.  I was an expert!  I was still nurs­ing K, and we had been through quite a few dif­fi­cul­ties.  When A was born, I knew that I was going to nurse him on demand.  Even though K had been sleepy and nursed every 3 hours, I knew that it was likely that A would have a dif­fer­ent sched­ule.  And, I was right!  From the time A was born, he nursed often and very quickly.  He nursed about every hour to hour and fif­teen min­utes, but unlike K who nursed for 45 min­utes at a time, A was done in 5 min­utes.  I didn’t have any prob­lems or con­cerns about his sched­ule.  I fig­ured that as long as I was offer­ing fre­quently and he was nurs­ing, we were fine.  Unfor­tu­nately, I wasn’t pre­pared for a big (9 pounds 12 ounces), over­due (3 days past due date) baby who had trou­ble latch­ing!  Unlike K, A seemed to like to suck.  He seemed to be suck­ing on his own tongue, and he had a hard time chang­ing that suck in order to latch when it was time for nurs­ing.  When the LC came to visit me, I told her about my obser­va­tions and asked her for advice.  She said that I should just keep try­ing, and she was so excited I was an expe­ri­enced nurser.  Look­ing back, I think she was prob­a­bly very busy and pulled in sev­eral direc­tions with all of her respon­si­bil­ties.  At the time, I was so dis­mayed that I was hav­ing these dif­fi­cul­ties I had not antic­i­pated that I couldn’t even express my need for help.

Because of A’s fast labor and deliv­ery, he had some health prob­lems after birth.  He and I were sep­a­rated for hours at a time while he was in NICU for obser­va­tion both nights we were in the L&D room.  Dur­ing the days, he con­tin­ued to strug­gle with nurs­ing.  It took me at least 10 or 15 min­utes to get him to latch.  He often cried through the process.  He would then latch and nurse for 5 min­utes on one side only!

A and I con­tin­ued our nurs­ing rela­tion­ship.  I con­tin­ued work­ing with him through the strug­gles, and he and I have also been quite suc­cess­ful in our rela­tion­ship.  He is nurs­ing on demand dur­ing the day and occa­sion­ally at night.

Look­ing back, I real­ize that dur­ing those days in the hos­pi­tal, I was tired.  I was a new mom.  I was emo­tional.  I was upset and frus­trated that the beau­ti­ful rela­tion­ship hadn’t turned out as I had envi­sioned.  I do think that there are sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits to moms, babies, and hos­pi­tals if breast­feed­ing sup­port is avail­able for moms when they want and need it.  How­ever, I think that while hos­pi­tals *should* have good sup­port, the real­ity is that not all of them do.  There are doc­tors who don’t have an opin­ion one way or the other on nurs­ing.  There are nurses who pre­fer that a mom choose for­mula because it is eas­ier when the nurse already has so many patients to care for.  There are both doc­tors and nurses who have never nursed a child nor have they received any infor­ma­tion or train­ing in sup­port­ing a breast­feed­ing mom.  Those are the real­i­ties.  While we can con­tinue to work to change that sit­u­a­tion, until then I think it’s impor­tant that moms are aware of the sit­u­a­tions they might encounter in the hos­pi­tals.  If I could pass on one piece of advice to a mom-to-be, it would be to take the num­ber of a friend who has worked through nurs­ing trou­bles.  Call her.  Talk with her.  She might not know the answers to your ques­tions or your prob­lems, but she might know how to help you find them.  She might not know what you’re going through, but she might know how you’re feel­ing.  She might not be able to help you get your baby to nurse with­out trou­bles, but she can be the friend to come beside you and walk with you dur­ing a time that is already so full of new expe­ri­ences an old friend will be all the more important!

Here are the other par­tic­i­pants in the Novem­ber Breast­feed­ing Car­ni­val (list will be updated through­out the day):

Angela @ Breast­feed­ing 1–2-3

Christina @ The Milk Mama

Rebekah @ Mama’s Angel

Lau­ren @ Hobo Mama

Whozat @ Whozatshrike

Tanya @ Moth­er­wear Blog

Sinead @ Breast­feed­ing Mums