My Breastfeeding Story

My Breastfeeding Journey

This is my honest story about my complicated breastfeeding journey

I live by a personal code that whatever vulnerability I ask of other mothers or clients that I be open to doing the same with my own story. If you’ve been following a long recently you’ll see the “Our stories of breastfeeding 2020” where I’m sharing the raw and beautiful stories of all different mothers from all over the world in honor of #worldbreastfeedingweek. I am retelling the highs and lows of baby feeding in each mom’s own words. It’s been incredibly revealing of the different types of hurdles moms have to go through just to create a lasting breastfeeding bond, what choices have to be made to maintain the health of both baby and mom and how each relationship is so different. And it brings me to tears often because I know so well the highs and lows of a starting and maintaining a breastfeeding relationship.

You see I am 10 months into my first breastfeeding relationship myself…

But our journey did not start smooth, easy or how I expected or hoped. I am a new mom and I am a freshly healing mother of birth trauma. It’s something I’ve recalled to close friends, birth worker confidants and those who care enough to ask but not something I’ve put out there publicly quite yet. My goal is to have Jude’s birth story in all it’s darkness and lightness shared by his first birthday but healing really can’t be held to a time table, so we will see. But I was feeling brave enough this week to share the one small part that has had a brightness to it 10 months in and that is the journey of our breastfeeding bond. So here is my story with Jude.

My breastfeeding story | Hanna Hill Photography | about me the photographer

The photos above are Jude’s first experience with breastmilk and they bring me to tears just looking at them even 10 months in. We didn’t get skin to skin right after birth or a first latch until many days later.

Our journey began after an emergency C-section after a 48 hour induction due to an unexpected IUGR diagnosis

We were 39 weeks and 3 days and excitedly planning a Natural Home birth

So yeah we were all exhausted, sad and deeply affected by the events that took over our birth experience. We lost almost all of the hopes we had for our story other than having a sweet baby that in the end was healthy enough to bring home from the NICU within a week. Jude had struggled in the OR with breathing for a few minutes and they decided it best to take him to the NICU before I really got a chance to meet him. I have one photo of our faces touching before they whisked him out of the room and Chris followed close behind. I also ended up needing to have the serious drugs in my C-section due to a spinal not working fully. So I was so loopy within those first hours after I left the OR. But my incredible doula and midwife were there in those first hours and heard from the nurses that I needed to get my colostrum (the high nutrient substance in the breast before breastmilk comes in) hand expressed and down to the NICU asap. So they literally taught me how to hand express and suck it up with a syringe while I was literally on what I felt was LSD drugs. It was a crazy surreal moment. I remember Chris coming up to see me after I got out of the OR and to grab the syringe filled with colostrum, so he could take it down to Jude. But unfortunately, it wasn’t enough for his levels so they started feeding him donor breast milk (upon my request). When that didn’t get his levels up fast enough they considered him Hypoglycemic and moved on to giving him an injection of dextrose. At that point, Jude was put on a 24-48 hour watch in the NICU because a big part of using dextrose can cause baby to crash and then need monitoring to help balance them out once more. For me, this meant not having baby in my postpartum room and pushing myself to the physical limit to get down to the NICU every 2 hours. It was a very tough couple of days for us.

women pumps milk in hospital room with eyes closed

While Jude spent his first days in the NICU being tested and monitored, I would go down every 1-2 hours to try and latch or bottle-feed donor milk when things didn’t work.

I would go down to his little NICU bed place him on my chest skin to skin and PUMP. Not that milk was coming out and barely any colostrum was dripping but I was so anxious to be doing something that would jumpstart my milk. Every day in the hospital I pumped every 2 hours on the dot either down in the NICU with Jude skin to skin or crying in my hospital bed on the maternity floor.

I saw probably 3 different Lactation consultants and each one gave me a different way I could attempt to feed Jude. The most complicated was the SNS or the Supplement Nursing System. [You can check out this video if you are still confused on what the Hell SNS is] It’s basically a very complicated way to simulate breastmilk or formula to the baby by sticking a little tube beside the nipple so baby is close to the breast but the milk is coming from the tube rather than the breast.

Basically, it’s fucking complicated and to all the moms who have been able to sustain a long term feeding relationship this way I SALUTE YOU!

They also got me on a nipple shield after diagnosing my nipples as “very flat” So imagine suctioning a plastic cone to your nipple and then trying to thread a tiny tube under the cone without breaking the suction… yeah it was impossible and it felt impossible. I was able to do it maybe 2 times? and I felt really fucking proud of myself!

When we finally were released from the hospital, one of the awesome lactation consultants gave me ALL the things, my own SNS set, 10ish oz of donor milk, a little milk cooler bag, nipple shields in an assortment of sizes, pump parts and the name of several out of hospital lactation consultants to call the next morning. I also had a best friend and sister in law who gave me some fo their stored breastmilk waiting for me at my home freezer.

I was depressed, hormonal, exhausted but SO determined.

Chris did everything he could to support me but it felt like I was in a glass box and no one could hear me. My mother tried to guide me, my doula tried to teach me a hold and Chris even tried to say it was ok to just rest for a bit and try again later. But my brain was not hearing it! You see I had a big dream about my birth and postpartum and I felt like I was living a tortured nightmare that I could only get out of if I could breastfeed like a normal easygoing mom (like I perceived EVERY other mom to be)

The next day after we got home I called a lactation consultant who gave me guidance over the phone but wasn’t available to come see me. So when I couldn’t find someone to come to my house I sought the next best thing which for me was going to the Women’s Birth and Wellness Birth Center where I got an appointment for the following day AND rented myself a hospital grade pump which I picked up that day.

That day I met with my doula and continued attempting a latch with and without the nipple shield.

There are so many things you just don’t know until you learn, like a combination of tiny baby (4.15lbs), large boobs (DD before even pregnancy who even knows what size they were in those first days) and flat nipples are pretty impossible to navigate alone.

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BUT my milk had come in and I was starting to feel a little hope because I was able to latch Jude with the nipple shield alone that night. We got to the birth center the next morning and they showed me the beauty of side-lying and gave me the mental freedom to just use the shield and do what I could to survive. They explained how having such a preemie size baby can leave them with a weaker jaw that will take time to get stronger for a good latch and lifted a lot of my insecurities about not being “naturally gifted at breastfeeding” at least for those first weeks. That meeting really gave me some peace to just move forward using the nipple shield and allow Jude to grow stronger with time.

We used all the pillows, co-slept so he could nurse on demand, I pumped too but a lot less often but enough to keep the engorgement calm and to start a pretty full freezer, and overtime he was consistently nursing. I absolutely loved/hated the nipple shield but was thankful we could find something less complicated than the SNS because I’m not sure I could have survived long with that.

The nipple shield offered the bonus of not having too bad of blistering or chaffing directly on the nipple but was very annoying to keep clean and to put on.

I also had always wanted to feel brave and confident breastfeeding WHEREVER and that really added a level of complication that made it tough to “whip it out.” So I always hoped I could gradually move him off the shield and onto the bare nipple. I did the google thing and read the myth that any transition needed to be done before 2ism months or baby would never take to the breast so around 1-2 months I tried going back and forth a lot more.

Jude would scream and I would feel so flustered and end up back with the shield.

To the point that I was pretty stubborn about trying in front of my husband or mom because I just couldn’t balance it all. I felt pressure from so many sides but mostly from myself. I was ashamed of using the shield and not being able to transition off of it, I was embarrassed that other people would see me and think I was “taking the easy way out” by using a nipple shield. I constantly felt the need to explain away any judgment someone might have before they even said it.

It was an internal battle that I created for myself against myself.

Finally around 3+ months we had had it. Jude was struggling badly with acid reflux and gas that could be related to all the air he was getting through the shield. Jude was also becoming a lot more wiggly so keeping the shield in place was really frustrating. So we decided to cold turkey it and see if we could make the transition happen. I had sought guidance from the lactation consultant again but they had way more grace for me then I had for myself. They told me it was ok to keep using it and it was ok to keep trying back and forth slowly. And looking back that’s exactly what I would have told myself, because just like the pressure to get my milk to come in because Jude would never breastfeed, I was placing the pressure on myself that using a nipple shield wasn’t real nursing and that if I couldn’t transition then I was insufficient in some way.

But you know in those early months you are still living on the edge or at least I felt that way. I still felt so many feelings, trauma and lingering guilt that putting extra pressure on myself became second nature and truthfully the only way I had learned how to mother myself.

photos by : Melissa Ware Photography

So we started one day when Chris was off from work so he could help. We would bring Jude to the breast with no shield and use that “sandwich” hold on the breast and shove that thing in his mouth. He would scream, I would cry and then hand him back to Chris. It was an emotional day for all of us but by the 4th or 5th attempt with a bottle or so in between and maybe a little gripe water on the nipple. Jude latched! I think I was so emotionally joyful and spent that I broke down right there. I didn’t believe it was real but it was the first time I was proud of myself as a mom.

And that pains me to say because if I could hold my own hand in those first months now, I would have constantly repeated to me “how proud I should feel and how good of a mom I already was.” This month marks 10 months breastfeeding Jude which feels really awesome but the pride of switching off that damn shield still tops it all.

I’ve never really told this story in its fullness to anyone. Right after we transitioned I shared the news to my close friend that I had gotten him off the shield and remember her very nonchalant, “that’s awesome” and that was all. I realized I had not expressed the deep feelings I had about my journey, my shame or how completely unfair I had been to myself. Those were all apart of my internal war.

She wasn’t judging me or counting the days that I was unable to breastfeed without a shield, that was ME.

Those internal battles still go on, I’m not some cured always gracious to myself mom now and it probably will take many years to get there, if ever. But what I am now that I was not even 6 months ago is ready to be open with my story. Ready to share how much I struggled and how completely siloed I felt even with all the support and love. Breastfeeding was a hard-fought journey that I was constantly afraid of losing and yet now see on such a fuller spectrum. I see now the fault in myself and our culture that spreads some serious shame on moms who need support breastfeeding, can’t breastfeed or choose not to. I see the shame in so many mom’s eyes as they feel the need to explain away their reasoning for supplementing with formula, pumping exclusively or choosing after a certain time to just switch to formula altogether. I see the way breastfeeding is glorified to be some very natural activity. Like if your child doesn’t just instinctively latch like a pro or your milk doesn’t stay consistently supplied then you must not have what it takes to be a good mom who wants what’s most nutritious for your child. But I also see the lack of education around breastfeeding. The fact that so many moms feel like they have to quit because they are too ashamed to seek enough support or return to a lactation consultant over and over until they figure it out. I see the way OBs preach formula rather than spending the time to identify breastfeeding problem areas and helping their patients to achieve their goals of breastfeeding. So I truly believe it’s a double-sided issue, frot with all the historical and systemic problems that surround women’s health in general. It is not easily solved by saying breastfeeding is easy with support or formula is exactly the same. It’s always far more complex than that. But what I do believe is that healing comes from stories and truths. Healing comes from being gracious to our bodies and babies. Healing comes from listening to other mothers tell their experience and intentionally speaking the words, “you are a GREAT mother” to them over and over no matter what baby feeding choices they make.

Thanks for hearing my story and thanks to sharing your stories with me. Let us all weave together the tapestry of motherhood and baby feeding in a way that leaves no woman out unsupportive. Let our out loud stories become the healing history passed down from generation to generation so that our daughters and their daughters have a different experience, one of pride and the freedom to experience motherhood in all it’s complexity openly!

Hannahill photography | Raleigh Durham, NC birth and family photographer

Hanna Hill

Award-winning Durham, England, UK Birth and Family Photographer capturing lifestyle images of parenthood and documentary birth photojournalism.

https://www.hannahillphotography.com
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