Anyone who has seen us or read our blog knows that we are breastfeeding. Anyone who has talked to me knows that we haven't had the easiest time of it. I went to a La Leche Legue meeting and we discussed how many times women downplay the difficulties of breastfeeding which can lead to the belief that it is easy. I remarked at the time that I certainly haven't done that :-P As Josh and I are finally on the better side of the breastfeeding tunnel I can truly say that it hasn't been an easy ride, but it has been worth it. I have appreciated all of the help and support from family and friends and wanted to share some of our journey incase it can help someone else.
At the hospital they ask if you are planning to breast feed. At Hopkins they were very respectful of making breastfeeding work and formula was not even offered, despite it being clear that Josh wasn't really eating. I had heard stories about babies being fed formula at the hospital and then having difficulty with breastfeeding, so I was glad that Hopkins was not like this.
Shortly after delivery, Josh tried breastfeeding for the first time. He was pretty tired, and too interested in his surroundings to really be particularly interested in eating, but he seemed to have the right idea. During my stay at the hospital, they have you either breastfeed or do skin to skin contact every 2-3 hours while you are there. The skin to skin contact is to encourage your milk to come in. For the first day, Josh would latch on and then just stare at me with big wide eyes and sit there not eating. I thought perhaps this was because I didn't have any milk yet, so I would just let him sleep on me and do skin to skin contact. By the second day in the hospital it was clear Josh hadn't really eaten much, so the lactation consultant on staff came to visit. Josh was sleepy and didn't want to eat while she was there, so she just told us we had to work harder to wake him up and left (not the most helpful consultation...). By that evening the night shift nurse made it her goal to help Josh figure things out and start eating. She was extremely helpful and determined. Josh clearly had a very strong suck reflex when you put a finger in his mouth, but he was not sucking when latched on. She brought us some tools to try and improve his suck reflex and things seemed to improve a bit. The next day the lactation consultant came back, and gave us a nipple shield which was very helpful. She also advised that if I pumped a bit before feeding it would help make it easier for Josh to get food.
The first few days at home were very rough. My milk finally started coming in , which was good (although painful!), but I couldn't really pump any milk out so I couldn't tell if Josh was getting anything or not. After consulting our new best friend, "the google", Julian suggested that my pump parts might be the wrong size. After an emergency target run to get the correct parts, things started getting better. I was clearly producing milk so we were hopeful that Josh was also getting some. At our one week appointment Josh had gained a few ounces so we thought the hard part was over!
Unfortunately by the 2 week appointment Josh had lost some of the weight he gained, so our doctor suggested we see a lactation consultant to make sure things were going ok. I was still using the nipple shield with Josh and she checked his latch both with and without it. She set us up with a pumping and supplementing routine to get Josh's weight back on track, and suggested a hospital grade pump for me to use. After more weight checks and visits from the lactation consultant (
Lactation Consultation). Josh's weight was finally consistently increasing.
My next challenge was to try and ween josh off the nipple shield. Dawn (our lactation consultant) suggested starting using it and then removing it halfway through. Unfortunately this just resulted in a very unhappy Josh because he wanted it back. I finally tried just starting a few feedings per day without the shield. Sometimes he would latch and sometimes he would just scream and scream. It was definitely a test of wills. I slowly increased the number of times each day that I would make him nurse without the shield until finally he started having trouble latching with the shield. This process was way more painful physically than I thought it would be since Josh basically had to re-learn how to latch. Fortunately he finally got it and it is no longer painful! As soon as Josh stopped using the shield he was able to get milk much faster and more effectively. Our nursing sessions went from 1hr to only 20 min!! I felt like a new person with all this free time :-)
We slowly changed our nighttime routine back to nursing from bottles and after nine weeks Josh and I finally reached exclusively breast feeding :-) It didn't take Josh long to get spoiled by this, and now when I need to go to work or out he has been difficult about taking bottle...
I'm still working on correcting the oversupply issues I have from having to pump early on, but I'm very proud of the progress we have made!
