feeding challenges

I've always wanted to breastfeed my babies.  It's natural, miraculous, healthy, beneficial and free.  It just sounds like the best way to take care of a baby, so that's what I had planned. 

Within a few hours of giving birth to Aria we tried it for the first time.  A bit awkward, but that's to be expected.  Every few hours we'd try again, with the help of the nurses, and hope that things would improve.  But because I pushed Aria out so quickly, she had quite a bit of mucus in her making it a little hard to breathe and be interested in eating.  She just wanted to sleep.  They took a routine blood sugar test and it was too low for their liking, so we had to supplement with a bottle.  I kept offering the breast every few hours, and would occasionally get a latch, but her blood sugars went up throughout the night so I figured I was doing alright.

Every three hours, I'd try and wake her up to eat.  After being discharged Tuesday afternoon, it got spaced out closer to every four hours, because it was just too difficult to keep her awake.  But I kept trying.  I knew there wasn't much getting to her, since my milk hadn't come in, but that's completely normal.  As long as we established the routine and got the latching down.

Wednesday morning we were visited at home by a postpartum nurse.  She does a quick examination of me and the baby, and answers any questions I may have.  I'm doing just fine, as to be expected, but Aria is looking a bit jaundiced.  Her levels aren't extremely high, but they do need to do some blood tests to see what's going on.  (Which turned out fine.)  She has also lost 10 ounces, which again isn't extremely high, but needs to be looked after before it gets worse.  With no milk supply, and my policystic ovarian syndrome possibly reeking havoc on my hormone levels, we aren't sure when it's going to come in.  So we're told to rent a pump to help stimulate, and supplement with formula and bottles in the meantime, so Aria can stay healthy.  The nurse books an appointment for the next day with a lactation consultant, and Aaron goes out to get supplies.

As before, every three hours I offer the breast, and then afterwards give her a bottle.  She takes forever to eat, because she's still sleepy all the time, but we force that formula down her to make sure she'll gain that weight back.  We're even pleased to see her poop turn from black to yellowy green.

Thursday afternoon we go and see the lactation consultant.  She looks at me, watches me feed, hears our issues, and examines Aria.  At our birthing class we were told that although it is difficult,  "everyone can breastfeed" and how "all issues are just from a poor latch."  I really want to go back and punch our teacher in the face.  I know they try and focus on everything from the positive side, but there are so many more factors that go into breastfeeding besides latch.  And I was so happy to be able to talk to someone who really knew what was going on, why it was, and had some answers to fix it.  Even Aaron said he felt so much more confident after that one hour visit than after the six weeks of birthing class. 

So we were to continue pumping, to help with my milk supply, but we should also get a prescription to help that milk come in faster.  Formula feed while we wait, but get different bottles because the one we had wasn't going to help her very much, and was the reason it was taking an hour for her to drink an ounce.  I had talked with a close friend of mine about her breastfeeding issues, so I asked if Aria could possibly be tongue-tied.  And she was!  No wonder she couldn't get a decent latch, because she couldn't stick her tongue out past her gums.  At least all our efforts from the day before were going well, and she had gained back some of the weight and her jaundice leveled out.

With the long weekend coming up, and my doctor appointment not until next Wednesday, the consultant did some calling around to see if we could squeeze in that day or the next to get a few things taken care of instead of waiting.  Hooray for her, because we went straight from there to get a prescription and to get Aria's tongue clipped.  Aaron was terrified, and I still feel a little queasy thinking about it, even though she only cried for two minutes and didn't feel any pain.  (There are no nerves in the extra skin under the tongue, and it's actually quite a common situation.)  I'm very happy to report that her latching skills having improved immensely since then.

I've now been on the pill for two days, and still no milk, but Aria actually swallows sometimes while at the breast (she never had before, just sucked).  And when I pump, I get a small amount (a teaspoon?) of milk, which is more than the nothing from a few days ago.  Things aren't completely smooth yet, but at least there have been some improvements.  I'd like to get more than four hours of sleep each night, but between nursing, feeding with the bottle, pumping, and then trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in, it's difficult to rest at all.  But somehow, as long as I get at least those four hours, I make it through each day.

However long it takes, no matter how much sleep I do or do not get, I love my little girl and think she is absolutely wonderful.  And no matter how long she cries and how much I hurt, she is worth it.