As I've spent the last week helping locally with Breastfeeding Awareness Week I thought I'd share my breastfeeding journey with you.
When we started trying to
build a family I had just turned 29, we’d thought about it for years and were
very ‘active’ in trying to conceive. Unfortunately this wasn’t to be and before
long we were at the hospital receiving various cycles of IVF. I was 35 when a
cycle finally worked and we were expecting our first baby. I felt that we’d
tried so hard to have a baby that we owed it to ourselves to be the very best
parents we could so I read a great number of books on pregnancy and early
baby-hood. When I learnt that breastfeeding could potentially reduce the
chances of developing food allergies I knew I had to breastfeed. I have a
number of food allergies myself and felt that anything I could do to spare my
child from these was well worth doing.
We went to NCT antenatal
classes and while ‘breast is best’ was constantly repeated the actual focus of
‘how to breastfeed’ was probably only one hour of the course. I expressed
concern to my sister (who already had children) who told me not to worry and
that mum would ‘sort me out’ as she had done for her.
When my baby was born, I had
a difficult time in getting her to latch on. I’d had an induction and an
epidural as well as some gas and air and had eventually delivered my baby by ventouse. No-one had
explained to me that anyone of these procedures might make the early stages of
breastfeeding difficult and added to this I have very flat nipples (everyone
was calling them ‘inverted’ but I now know they were just flat) and even my mum
couldn’t get me breastfeeding.
My problems were exacerbated
by a migraine at 24hours post delivery where I could barely lift my own head
never-mind concentrate on feeding my baby. I was heartbroken when the
nursery-nurse took Rosa for a blood glucose test, told me her glucose was
dangerously low because I was starving her and immediately ‘administered’ 40ml
of formula.
I decided to go for a shower
at this point. Once in the flow of water I let the tears run, I was still
blubbing when I stepped out and cursed myself for crying so much my feet were
getting wet. When I finally dried my eyes of course I found that it wasn’t my
tears making my feet wet it was my milk. I remember just then I heard a baby
cry out side and my milk stopped dripping and started pouring, I could have
filled a teacup a metre away. I put my clothes on as quickly as I could and
went out and told the nurse that there was no way I was starving my child and
demanded she get me a breast-pump.
In no time at all I had
produced 40ml of breastmilk and came to a deal with the nurse, I would pump for
each feed, I would show her or a colleague that I had produced at least 40mls.
They would then test her blood sugar and then I would feed her my milk from the
bottle (no one ever mentioned cup feeding and I certainly didn’t know about
it). If we passed 36 hours without
going under a particular level of blood glucose I would be allowed home, where
I already had a breast pump, bottles and a can of formula (which I’d bought
just in case). I gave up on direct breastfeeding at that point I just wanted to
get home. Once at home my mum and a number of good friends tried to help me get
her to latch on instead of bottle-feeding expressed milk.
My mum suggested stripping
baby down to her nappy as she’d been told to do with me. We mistakenly thought
this was because warmth was making her sleepy, we didn’t realise it was skin-to-skin
contact that was needed so I kept my nursing vest on. It was a very hot summer
so I was even feeding in the direct line of a fan, just to try to keep her
awake to feed. It sort of helped but the breakthrough came when a friend who’d
had similar problems told us where we could get some nipple shields from. My husband and mum (who had suggested shields from the start) were duly
dispatched to the shop and came back with some silicon ones. I have to
say that at that point those shields saved my breastfeeding relationship. Baby
liked the shields and I found I could control the mess they made (they filled
up and dribbled in no time) with a well-placed towel.
I always intended to come
off of the shields but again I was let down by poor advice as everyone,
midwife, health visitor, my mum and many others suggested ‘cutting the shield
down’ with a pair of scissors slowly making the hole bigger. Baby out rightly
refused to let them back into her mouth once she realised they had been cut as
try as I might the cutting always left sharp edges. The friend who’d originally told me about them admitted she’d never come off of them either in her 6 months of
breastfeeding and so at about six weeks I resigned myself to using them for the
rest of our breastfeeding. That was when I went to my first La Leche meeting.
Another girl from my NCT
antenatal group had had problems with her baby too and had already sort out their
help. Problems largely solved she had been invited to the meeting and wanted a
bit of moral support going in so I said we’d go too. I have to say that first
meeting was a bit of a shock, I’d rarely seen a sling before, and I’d certainly
never seen a child over six months being breastfed, seeing a 3 year old do it
blew my mind! However I was willing to admit the children all seemed very happy
and healthy and the welcoming friendship of the other mums encouraged us to go
back for the next meeting.
It was on my third meeting
that I discovered ‘The Breastfeeding Answer Book’ had a section on shields. I
learnt then that the ‘cutting down advice’ applied only to rubber shields and
not silicon and that if I wanted to wean off shields then what I needed to do
was essentially put a piece of sterilized cloth in the shield to make it more
difficult for her to get the milk and then show her how easy it was to take it
straight from the breast. I gave it a go and got into a terrible mess, milk
everywhere, a rather sore nipple and a screaming daughter. Subsequently I gave
up on the whole idea and decided I would continue using the shields.
La Leche changed how I felt
about long-term breastfeeding. When I went back to work I carried on feeding baby
when I was with her and I had wanted to carry on feeding until she was 2
however I also wanted a larger family and we had a time limit (at that time
they would only keep frozen gametes for IVF for 5 years and we were already 2
and a half years in). My IVF consultant was not particularly understanding about
my wish to continue to breastfeed but I thought we’d come to an arrangement
where we would try implanting during a ‘natural cycle’ without medication.
However that message didn’t get communicated to the staff and in the hospital
on the day of the transfer I was suddenly given an injection and my
breastfeeding abruptly stopped.
I was in pieces (well I just
been given a syringe full of hormones!) and I called several LLL leaders who
did a brilliant job in counselling and encouraged me with the thought that a
sudden stop in breastfeeding can lead to an element of ‘super fertility’.
Whether it was that, luck, brilliant fertility treatment or a mixture of all
three I don’t know but 2 weeks later the pregnancy test said positive and it
all seemed worth it.
When my second baby girl was
born I thought I would be able to crack the breastfeeding quickly and settle
down to two years of feeding. How wrong I was. She just wasn’t the same child
as my first and clearly hadn’t read the books I had, on top of this I had
terrible SPD and many health professionals were telling me that to continue
breastfeeding would just continue the SPD. Thank goodness I didn’t listen to
that advice. However after less than a week of trying to feed both with and
without nipple shields my nipples were exceptionally painful and I made the
decision to just feed with shields. Quickly the pain dissipated and I resigned
myself to never doing ‘normal breastfeeding’, except that once again she had
different ideas.
When she was about 6 weeks
old I settled down to feed her when her big sister wanting help with a book,
interrupted me. As I leaned over her she very gently helped herself to my
uncovered nipple, I didn’t even realised she’d latched on until I leaned back.
She looked happy so I pulled her a little closer and let her continue. At the
next feed she just pushed the shield away and we’ve never looked back.
I had intended to feed her
for just the NHS recommended 2 years but as ever she felt differently and I
realised that I could just let her ‘self wean’, so that’s what we did.
On the eve of her third
birthday she decided she was a big girl and wouldn’t have ‘num-nums’ any more.
By the evening of her birthday my breasts were nearly bursting so I decided to
hand express into the sink, she quickly realised this was a waste and said she
would help me by feeding! Shortly after this however I decided I’d just had
enough of the constant night feeding and negotiated a deal with her that she
would have extra playdoh time with mummy in return for not feeding at night.
(It wasn’t exactly a reward system, I explained I just couldn’t cope with the
lack of sleep and that everyone needed a ‘happy mummy’.)
When she was about 3years 8
months I developed ‘nursing aversion’ but after working through my feelings
decided that if I could drop the evening ‘going to sleep’ feed (which by now
was actually hurting as she had a tendency to chew as she went to sleep) I
could carry on. However this
really was the beginning of the end.
Daytime feeds quickly disappeared
and in the early mornings she would complain ‘there’s not really much there any
more mum’. Again as she approached her birthday she told me that once she was 4
she would be a big girl and wouldn’t need it any more.
Just before her birthday we went
on holiday. In the evening we let the girls stay up late and consequently
mornings got later and later. In addition to this the gite had a satellite dish
and the girls found a kids channel they loved. In the end it seemed
breastfeeding just couldn’t compete with ‘The Winx Club’ and she stopped
climbing into my bed for a morning feed. When we came back to the UK she did
climb in on a few mornings, even on her 4th birthday she wanted
‘num-nums’ first then presents, but I think I’ve only fed her two times since
and on both times she told me there was no milk coming out. Recently she told
me she thought it had stopped because it knew she was a big girl.
Looking back on the early
days of my breastfeeding I clearly had an over active milk ejection reflex which
was pumping out such a large amount of milk it was making my babies gag. The
nipple shields didn’t sort out my perceived flat nipple problem, they slowed
the milk down to a flow my babies could cope with. Biological nurturing would
have been a great alternative (the ‘up-hill’ position slowing the milk down) and
that together with skin to skin that would have helped to stimulate my baby to
feed. Looking back at pictures of my first girl I can see how her head was so
pulled out of shape by the suction, I bet it really hurt her to move her head
at all. If the me now met the me then I would have had me expressing small
amounts of colostrum before the birth to cup feed baby when she arrived. (It
was a planned induction and epidural, it could have been anticipated that these
would cause problems). I’d also have
suggested biological nurturing or cup-feeding when I had the migraine and I
think that showing me how to feed lying down would also have helped a lot. Finally
I’d have thrown away the Gina Ford and Claire Byam-Cook books and introduced Dr
Sears and the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding a lot earlier. Of course hindsight
is a wonderful thing.
