The Natural Way?! Part Two

Tina Fey on the subject of her failed attempt at breastfeeding:

I was defensive and grouchy whenever the topic came up. At a party with a friend who was successfully nursing her little boy, I watched her husband produce a bottle of pumped breast milk that was the size of a Big Gulp. It was more milk than I had produced in my whole seven weeks – I blame Entourage. As my friend's husband fed the baby, he said offhandedly, "This stuff is liquid gold. You know it actually makes them smarter?" "Let's set a date!" I screamed. "IQ test. Five years from today. My formula baby will crush your baby!" Thankfully, my mouth was so full of cake they could not understand me.

We get it. "Breast is best." But are there really people out there who are saying, "No way! Keep those away from my baby!"  It seems to me that everyone I know who doesn't breastfeed their baby came to that decision after days or weeks of literal blood, sweat, and many many tears.

You may be familiar with my experience of breastfeeding Lila.  I think the best word to describe it would be "miserable" or perhaps "guilt-ridden" or even "Why did God invent this way of feeding children and why am I so bad at it and why does everyone make me feel guilty about it?"  One of those.  With Lila, long story short, we were starving her for days before we realized that I had absolutely no milk supply.  We started supplementing with formula using various apparatuses, anything but the dreaded, horrible, nipple-confusing, Nazi-worshiping bottle.  Everyone kept telling me my milk would come in, so I waited and pumped and waited and cried.  At the point of that post I wrote on breastfeeding, Lila was one month old and I think she was getting somewhere around an ounce from me for each feeding (she needed three or four).  By the time I stopped nursing her at six months old, she never got more than two ounces from me at a single feeding.  Go me.

This time around, I told myself it would be different.  "I know what problems to look for this time," I said.  "I have a lot more experience." So you can imagine my joy when the nurse came in to my hospital room and said apologetically that we needed to start supplementing because Olive had a bad case of jaundice and my supply was too low to combat it.  "Oh fabulous," I thought.

We started the old song and dance of nursing and then formula feeding and then pumping.  I got out of the hospital only to come home to three other children who enjoyed pulling the pump apart as I was using it or who waited just until I was all hooked up and couldn't move to get stuck underneath something and scream bloody murder until I untangled myself and came and got them out.  I'm starting to think that my body hemorrhaged on purpose so that I could go back to the hospital where life was easier.

Fast forward to an ambulance ride, a DNC, and two blood transfusions.  I decided to pump while I was back in the hospital, and I was actually able to get a decent amount even though I couldn't sit up and had to lie hanging off the hospital bed to do it. (Yes, I do realize as I'm writing this that I am crazy, but at least I got to watch that TLC trailer park show while I was doing it.)

Since then our home has gotten a little quieter, and with nursing and pumping combined, Olive has been able to get significantly more breast milk than Lila ever got.  But Olive's been a very finicky eater.  She'll want to nurse and nurse but be wearing herself out because she's not getting very much, so then she'll fall asleep, and then she'll want a bottle, but then she'll want to nurse, and by the time the feeding session is over, I have maybe thirty minutes before the next one starts.  So we're pulling the plug.  I've got her on an all bottle diet now.  I pump a few times a day because I figure if I have a little bit, I might as well give it to her, but the craziness is done.

Why bother writing about this? Well, my first breastfeeding post is one of my most popular posts in the life of my blog.  It seems that misery loves company, and if you're trolling the internet looking for support on bad breastfeeding situations (honestly most people seem to have it worse than I) all you're going to find is "Eat lots of oatmeal!" "Pump every thirty minutes!" "Overdose on Fenugreek!" "Your baby will never get to Harvard without breast milk!" and so on and so on.  I thought it was time that there was a different perspective available.

So take heart, failed breast feeder!  To quote my lactation consultant, "Formula will not kill your baby." You are not a bad mom and you are in good company.

The Natural Way?!

I can't believe that it's been a month since Lila was born.  Clearly from my lack of posts, we've been a little busy.  Everyone talks about how hard childbirth is, but the real difficulty, to me, is the actual raising of the child part.  Lila has been great; she's not a very fussy baby, and she sleeps a lot.  Yes, lack of sleep for me has been difficult as well as learning how to do everything one-handed while holding her, but the most difficult thing has been something I did not expect. 

I went into having Lila planning to breastfeed.  I didn't think much about it.  We did a class just to learn what to do, and I figured that everything would be hunky dory.  Once Lila was born, I fed her in the hospital.  We talked to a couple of lactation consultants, and everything seemed to be going well except for the fact that she had to have her foot pricked and her blood sugar tested every time she ate since she was so big.  When Lila was discharged from the hospital, her weight had gone down from 9lb 6oz to 8 lb 12oz.  It's apparently normal for a baby's weight to go down, so no one said anything to us, and we went home.

Once we got home, Lila had a really hard time staying awake when I would feed her because of her jaundice and her broken collar bone.  It seemed to me like nothing was coming out, but everything that I had read and heard in class was that it would seem this way, but the baby only needs a little bit so everything will be fine.

The next day, we had to take Lila to the pediatrician from the hospital because of her jaundice and collar bone issues.  Her weight had gone down even more to I think 8lb 4oz.  At this point, her weight loss was way past normal.  The doctor was concerned and told me that he thought I should supplement every once in awhile with a little bit of formula in a syringe until my milk came in.  We followed up the next day with our pediatrician, and Lila hit her all time low of 8lbs.  At this point, Johnny and I were extremely worried about her and wondering what was going on.  The lactation consultants at the pediatrician worked with me for two hours to help her get a better latch and had me give her an ounce of formula with every feeding.  

The next two weeks were a blur of doctor's appointments.  Every time we substituted with formula, Lila gained weight.  When we stopped, she lost weight.  She would want to nurse for 2 or 3 hours at a time when there was no formula involved.  After using two different syringes, a tube, and two different cups, we started feeding the formula to Lila with a bottle, making life much easier.  Our worry with using a bottle was that she wouldn't nurse anymore since the bottle is so much easier, but she has yet to have trouble.  At this point, I was nursing her for about 30 minutes, feeding her with the bottle for about 25 minutes, and then pumping for 20 to try to get more milk to come in.  After all this, she would want to eat again about an hour later (I think that's why I don't remember these first weeks very well!).

Eventually, I called my friend Jane's mom, Sandy, who is a lactation consultant.  She told me to take Fenugreek and had me come in to her breastfeeding support group and do a weight before nursing Lila and after.  We realized that Lila was only getting a third of an ounce from me when she needs more like 2 or 3.  For some reason my milk just never totally came in (normally it comes in four days after giving birth).  Under the advice of Sandy and the consultant at Lila's pediatrician, I decided to stop pumping because I was exhausting myself, and ironically, some of the things that keep your milk from coming in are stress and not sleeping.

Fast forward two weeks, I'm still going once a week to Sandy's support group.  My supply has gone up to an ounce and a half.  I nurse every 2-3 hours for 30 minutes and then give Lila three ounces of formula in a bottle.  This works for us, and Lila is now a whopping 10lbs 6oz!  The reason I'm writing about this is because I really thought that breastfeeding would be the natural and easy way to feed Lila, but the more people that I talk to, the more I'm realizing that a lot of women have problems with it.  I also wanted to write this down because I'm pretty sure in about one year I'm not going to remember any of it.  Anyway, we've survived the first of many difficult situations, and our family is closer because of it (even though one of us can only see 12 inches and in black and white).