Ever since I emerged from the delirious wondrous joyous hellish madness of the first 2 weeks of W I've been meaning to write about Breastfeeding. I feel like I owe it to all the women out there who may one day attempt this insane task, although they probably won't hear me so it's probably pointless, but I'm going to try anyway.
They say Breastfeeding is hard at first.
They need to learn to use their words better.
Breastfeeding is not hard at first. Breastfeeding is hell at first. It is a crazed obsessive compulsion. It would be hard if, say, you'd had a decent amount of sleep and could move about without cringing and wincing. Or if the baby, instead of screaming like the world is ending and will end very soon if he does not get fed immediately, simply asked politely for some more food please mummy (seriously - can we teach babies to talk already, like, in the womb??). It would be hard if the world around you was cool and relaxed about the whole thing and wasn't weighing the baby every 5 seconds to see if he's lost weight and wasn't telling you about all the benefits of breastfeeding, from lower likelihood of allergies to bonding to decreased tendency towards psychopathy (I made that last one up). Nope, Breastfeeding isn't hard at first. Hard is not the word.
Here are the bullet pointed 'high'lights of my breastfeeding journey. If you've already done this particular path, I'm sure it's entirely different to yours and exactly the same.
Here is what I remember:
- After approximately 48 hours of no sleep, of which 24 hours had been spent connected to machines and at least 12 in labor with 1 hour of pushing, a couple friendly neighbourhood lactation consultants stopped by to help me help him latch. They showed me how to hold his body with one hand, his head with another, my boob with my third hand and to help open his mouth with my fourth while also squeezing things a little to encourage the milk to flow. Instead of reminding them that I was one of those defective humans with only two hands, I smiled and nodded and fell apart when they left the room.
- We brought W home and embarked on figuring out feeding him without all the tips and advice and chance drop ins of lactation consultants. It started to work. Sometimes. And on the times when it did work I felt like the cleverest most highly developed human being on the planet.
- Our pediatrician made her standard house call and told us he was jaundiced and we needed to supplement with formula until my milk came in.
- We did as we were told and then my milk took forever to come in.
- W then decided bottle feeding was way easier than feeding from the crying woman with only two hands.
- Sleep deprivation and hormones and goodness knows what else made me feel like if I couldn't breastfeed then all hope was lost for ever more. He was crying for food every 2 hours or more and every time I tried to feed him he just cried more. Then I cried. More.
- I said the words 'lactation consultant' about 20,000 times a day. My buddy Henny sent me fenugreek tea by the busload. I drank all the tea.
- I had to remind myself every five seconds that we were oh so lucky that he was healthy. That after all our fears with the genetic stuff he was fine. I had to remind myself that it was only day three, day four, day five. And that for flip sake there are other ways to feed the child and he was still gonna be OK. Get it to-flipping-gether woman. Etc etc
- The world almost ended
- My mum arrived
- We summoned the bravery to quit formula and went cold turkey for two days. I sat on the couch, more or less shirtless, and people waited on me while I breastfed for approximately 48 hours. By the end of it he wasn't screaming quite as much and was latching more than he wasn't. And my flipping milk showed up.
It didn't all come together completely then, but that was the turning point I think. I wish I could tell me in those early days to take a breath. That there are benefits to bottle feeding too - the primary one being that Jeremy could get up in the night with him. I wish I'd known that this experience was so common to so many women. That 'breastfeeding is hard at first' is the world's biggest understatement.
i have no wisdom to impart. However this would have been a helpful article for me ahead of time: http://jezebel.com/5885739/what-type-of-nipple-are-you
