Breastfeeding Monsters

My darling, wonderful baby boy came out rooting. He wanted to eat and he wanted to eat now. Somewhere between the hypothyroidism and the c-section, my milk was no where near coming in. He latched perfectly right out of the gate but was met with near nothing. I wasn’t worried at first. I was dead set on beastfeeding, period the end…then, he kept getting crankier and crankier

I broke down. I used a pacifier at first but, duh, it didn’t help. He was hungry, not wanting to suck on some plastic nipple. So, as you read, I was guilted into formula. I was convinced that my milk would never come in or, if it ever did, it would come in after he was already dying from starvation. I’m still a little peeved…okay, exceptionally pissed off at the nurse who said I was starving him. His pediatrician said his weight loss was fine, they’re expected to lose up to a pound in the first few days. He’d lost 9oz. It’s true. He cried, a lot. The starvation nurse said, “You’re just being a human pacifier now.” Thanks, lady. Way to make me feel even shittier.

I cried an awful lot that day. I felt like a complete failure. Not only was my body incapable of giving birth on it’s own, but I couldn’t even feed my baby. I felt entirely worthless and Eric was scared to death that this was the onset of PPD.

Then, in flew Paulina. The hospital’s lactation consultant. A 50ish woman with more energy than any human should have. “Okay, sweetie,” she’d say, “no crying. You’re baby will be fine. You’ll be fine. Do you have a pump?” I whined that I had a manual at home, “Oh, no, sweetie. A manual won’t do. You need an electric,” and off she ran. 10 seconds later, she flew back in with an electric pump in hand, “Here. This is yours. Pump every 2 hours. Give what you have to Ben and then follow up with formula. You’ll be fine.” She was amazing.

For the first 6 weeks my daytime routine was to nurse him 20 mins on each side (because he was a sleepy baby, this entailed nursing 5 minutes on the left, burping, nursing 5 on the right, burping, nursing 5 on the left, burping, etc), bottle feed him, burp him, and pump for 20 mins every 2 hours. This usually meant I had 30-45 minutes between each feeding session that didn’t involve feeding. This time, unfortunately, usually ended up being me trying to make Ben stop crying because the formula made his belly hurt, but we’ll get to that in a second. My night-time routine wasn’t much different except that I got to skip every other nursing/bottling session because he refused to wake up. I still had to get up every 2 hours to pump so that I could build my supply for the next day because I hated giving him formula.

At the hospital, he was on the Enfamil Lipil premade bottles. He did fine. But the moment we switched him to the powdered kind, he started getting horrible belly bubbles and gas. He’d scream and cry something awful. At his 2 week visit, I asked his Dr. about it. I thought maybe since I was lactose intolerant, he might be, too. She said it was probably just normal system growing up stuff but did want us to bring in a sample of his poo, just in case. Since it was green, it could mean blood in his stool, and therefore possibly a dairy allergy.We wenot home prepared to collect a poo-ey diaper.

Now, at this point he hadn’t pooed in about a day. This wasn’t abnormal for him. I’d gotten so worried the first time he hadn’t pooed for a day and a half that I called the ped. “Oh no, that’s normal. We don’t worry until they go more than 3 days…” Well, alrighty then. He didn’t poo for 3 days because he knew we were waiting on it. Since I’d built a nice supply of breastmilk in the fridge, his poo was no longer green. No test. No way of knowing what the issue was. It was never dark green again.

He would cry every single night for at least an hour or two. He’d either sleep or cry during the day. He was officially colicky. So, we switched to slightly kinder formula and the gas slowed down a tiny bit, though the colic did not. At the insistance of my parents, we tried soy…and he cried all.night.long. It was horrifying. I switched back to Good Start immediately. Then the doc suggested Mylicon, we tried that after every feeding. It cut down on some of the gas but not all of it. We tried changing to Avent bottles. The fight to get him to take that nipple was ridiculous. It didn’t help that I tried it for the first time at my parents house and they kept chanting, “He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t like it.” He took it 5 minutes later and was fine with it after that. I also tried Gripe Water for the first time there. My mom was convinced he’d have an allergic reaction so she didn’t let me use more than 1/8th of a teaspoon…he was supposed to have a full teaspoon. It didn’t work for obvious reasons. (We now use it regularly when he takes a bottle because it calms down the bubblies in his belly. We use it at full dosage.)

This whole time I’m pumping like a mad woman. My boobs feel like they’re going to fall off. They hurt like hell and I blamed it on Ben’s psycho suction - he could suck the hide off a cow from 40 feet away. As it turns out, it was the pump. It ws making me horribly sore. No matter how low I’d put the suction, I’d end up with slightly swollen, very painful boobs afterwards. I decided to give up pumping.

It was about week 6 when I figured out the pump was killing me. I couldn’t get up every two hours to pump 1/2 oz total. It was depressing. I decided that if my milk dried up, it dried up. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was sick of the pump. I’d nurse him whenever he was hungry and supplement with formula afterwards. Period.

The rest of that week sucked. He would nurse and down 4oz of formula afterwards as if he was starving. I felt like I was less and less full everyday. I wanted to cry but I kept trying. I was going to nurse him until my last drop was out of me. Period the damn end.

Then came week 8…and he decided he didn’t want the bottle anymore. It was a fight to get him to take it. He was nursing so much that week that he’d decided the bottle just wasn’t for him. This would normally not have bothered me but for the fact that I was *not* making enough milk for him. So we spent two or three days with him crying a lot and me sneakily sticking bottles into his mouth when he thought he was on the boob when something amazing happened…he didn’t drink anything from the bottle anymore. It wasn’t that he didn’t want the bottle, it was that he was actually full from nursing. It was the most wonderful thing in the world.

By his 2 month appointment, he was 80% boob, 20% bottle. His ped gave us samples of Nutramigen because she thinks he’s both lactose and soy intolerant. He only takes about 2-4 oz of that a day (without gas!), the rest is all me. It’s flippin’ awesome.

I still worry that he’s not getting enough. I make Eric weigh him every couple of days to be sure he’s still gaining weight. I’m worried when I think he’s hitting a growth spurt because I just don’t think I can keep up. He cries because he’s hungry and my first thought is, “mommy’s starving you, isn’t she?” I’m trying to get over it but it’s really hard. I keep wondering, if that nurse hadn’t have talked me into formula, would my supply be fine now? Would we be happily nursing without any supply issues?

Either way, I’m thankful for where we are. Even if we don’t make it the entire time I’d like to, everyday that we do I’m grateful.

Filed under breastfeeding, rant |