My Breastfeeding Story Part 2

(Scroll down if you missed part 1!)


So we go home the next day after delivering her. She's still wouldn't latch on, but she had discovered how to suck! I was following all the rules that the LLL had given me, so I wasn't giving her a pacifier, and instead she was sucking on the closest finger. Whoever was holding her had to keep a finger in her mouth at all times! It was getting ridiculous how much she wanted to suck, but still would not latch on. I tried using a nipple shield so she could really feel something in her mouth and suck on it, but it didn't work. She would either cry at the breast or fall asleep. I started pumping my colostrum with a manual pump and feeding that to her with a syringe. I was trying to pump every 2 hours.
The next day my milk came in and I became painfully engorged. I was still trying to pump every 2 hours with my manual breast pump and it was starting to really hurt. I called all 3 LLL leaders until I got someone on the phone. I was almost in tears 1. It really hurt and 2. I was afraid my milk would dry up. The leader I talked to told me I needed to get an electric pump. Also I could put cabbage leaves in my bra to help bring out some milk...but you have to be careful when doing this, because it can cause you to dry up. The Fantasy Man ran out to buy me some cabbage, and then at 11pm he drove me to my friends house to get her electric pump. It was a Medela Pump in Style. Ah the relief!! So began my days of pumping every 2 hours with an electric pump. It's very hard to do anything when you have to pump every 2 hours. If I went to the store, which was 15 minutes away, I had to make sure to get things quickly and be back in time for the next pumping session. I was beginning to hate pumping! I was still feeding theBeast with the syringe.
Apparently I hadn't been feeding her enough milk each time because when I took her in for her 1 week checkup, she had lost 15 ounces! Almost a whole pound! I know they lose some ounces at first, but 15 was just too much. She went from a birth weight of 7 pounds 14 ounces to 6 pounds 15 ounces. I bawled at the pediatricians office. I felt like a horrible mother who was starving her baby. Gone were the fat cheeks that made her look like an Eskimo baby. She was dwindling away right in front of us.
I went home and decided I wasn't listening to anyone else anymore! I broke cardinal rule #1 and gave her a pacifier. We seriously could not get anything done when we had to constantly have one of our fingers in her mouth at all times. Then I went right into breaking rule #2 and gave her my breast milk in a bottle. The lactation consultant I had been working with suggested that I try using a bottle, and maybe then she'd associate the nipple shield with eating. She said never in her life had she suggested anything like that to anyone else, but like I said, she had never seen a case like mine. Then my friend who is a LLL leader found some information on a new way to get babies from a bottle to breast. I needed a slow flow nipple on the bottle and was to hold her in a semi-upright position, so she had to work at getting the milk, like she would have to work at the breast. This was great info, but did not help us any.
Finally one day with the nipple shield she took 2 good sucks and got milk!! I was so happy. Those are the 2 sucks that I hold onto in my memory. The only time she ever latched on. But since she wasn't used to eating in a nursing position, since it's so hard to bottle feed in a nursing position, she didn't know how to suck and swallow, and the milk went down her neck and onto my shirt. She didn't latch on anymore after that.
Now I had been pumping every 2 hours throughout the night even, and was extremely tired. Every time my mom told me I was doing a good job I would cry. Then I when I was at a friends house I started feeling the chills. Then my left breast started having this weird pain in it. The pain worsened when I pumped, so I went home. Then the pain felt like fire and my temp went to 102.9. I had mastitis. A very painful breast infection. The doctor called me in a prescription, and I was told to pump every hour on the infected side. For 2 days I lay in bed useless. Freezing, shaking, good for nothing. TheFM took care of theBeast, but this time I had a freezer stocked with breast milk. The only time I woke up was to pump and then would go right back to sleep. After a couple days I started feeling better, but my supply on the infected breast was cut in half. I knew I should have continued pumping on that side every hour, but frankly I was so sick of pumping. Christmas morning at 5am, I woke up to pump and had that same fiery feeling in the same infected breast. Only a week had passed and I was still on my antibiotic. I woke up theFM and told him I knew I had mastitis again and immediately started bawling. I couldn't handle another round of high fevers. I called the Dr on Christmas morning and she called me in a different prescription. My brother drove with theFM to pick it up. I was sick with high fevers and chills all Christmas day. I decided that day that I was done pumping. My last pumping session was at 3 pm. It was so sad.
My friend called to see how breastfeeding was going. I bawled on the phone when I told her I was done. Another friend called to see how things were going. More bawling. The next day was Monday so I called the lactation consultant and cried on the phone while I told her I was giving up. She told me she completely understood and that I shouldn't feel bad because I really did all that I could. I still cried.
I had enough milk in the freezer that I was able to give her breast milk until she was about 6 weeks old. When I started running low on breast milk, I would start to cry thinking that I was soon going to be giving her formula. Also, theFM was a little disappointed that I was giving up so soon, and I knew I was the one disappointing him, so I would cry more.
I decided to go cold turkey instead of weaning from the pump. I was only engorged on one side, since the infected side wasn't producing much milk anyway. I made it through with low fevers, and was finally all dried up. It wasn't until this point that I started feeling normal again. No more depression, no more crying. I was still sad about the formula, but emotionally I was so much better.

I now know that I didn't have the correct pump for exclusive pumping. A Medela Pump in Style is a wonderful pump and very expensive, but it's not made for exclusive pumping. What I needed was a hospital grade pump. I also didn't need to be pumping so often. Dr. Sears' book The Breastfeeding Book said that pumping every 3 hours and only twice in the night is sufficient when exclusively pumping. I was pumping 12 times in 24 hours when 8 or 9 times would have been ideal. I look back now and am sad that I didn't know those 2 things then. But you live and you learn. Hopefully this next baby will latch on. And just in case, I will be renting a hospital grade pump. I still have more that I could write about. The fact that we took her to a chiropractor at the age of 2 weeks. (I will be taking this baby to one right after birth!) and the fact that even though she sucked like a mad woman on her paci, she still never sucked fully on a bottle. She mostly would just gum it until the milk fell into her mouth. But I'll end my story here.

So my dear friends...I ask that you pray pray pray for me that this next baby is already sucking it's fingers in my womb, and will start routing right after birth!

Btw, we heard the heartbeat today!! Very exciting! My ob/gyn said that the heart rate was 164, and according to the "nannies" (old superstitious women) it's a girl. I still think it's a boy though. The Beasts heart rate was 150 in the womb so everyone thought she was a boy!!!