When Breastfeeding Doesn’t Work…Part 1

This is the begin­ning of a series of posts about breast­feed­ing and my very per­sonal expe­ri­ence with it. It’s a sen­si­tive topic for me, but one that has been on my heart to share…
 
The sum­mer of 2006 for­ever changed our lives as we dis­cov­ered I was preg­nant with our first child! Of the myr­iad of ques­tions, opin­ions, and advice that swirled around, many  cen­tered around feed­ing. It was never a ques­tion for me–of course I would nurse! The health ben­e­fits, the bond­ing, the money-savings–a no brainer! 
The preg­nancy pro­gressed with no com­pli­ca­tions (for which I am extremely grate­ful). It was very much like how “the books” describe. All except for one thing…my breasts. In the begin­ning, they weren’t overly ten­der. In fact, not really at all. As time went one, they weren’t get­ting any bigger–like NOT.AT.ALL. In fact, I wore my same bra the entire time. Ini­tially, I didn’t think any­thing of it. But, as time went on and we neared the end, I kept hav­ing that gut feel­ing like some­thing wasn’t right. 
At the ripe ‘ole age of 26, the major­ity of my friends hadn’t expe­ri­enced preg­nancy yet and talk­ing about your breasts isn’t exactly some­thing that just “comes up” in con­ver­sa­tion. So, I didn’t have a lot of peo­ple to talk to about it. I asked my mom, but her expe­ri­ence was noth­ing like what I was describ­ing. She was “nor­mal”. I men­tioned it to my doc­tor, but she didn’t seem con­cerned. Her response (to many of my ques­tions) was “everyone’s body is dif­fer­ent”. A very true state­ment indeed, but one that irked me just a bit. 
I tried to squelch that gut feel­ing and con­tin­ued with my breast­feed­ing plans–creams, pads, & pump pur­chased and all reg­is­tered for our breast feed­ing class about a month before my due date! As I sat in the class, I couldn’t help but notice what all the moms’ breasts in the video looked like–NOT mine. That gut feel­ing was there. After all the other par­ents left, I approached the nurse/lactation con­sul­tant who taught the class. I explained my con­cerns. She asked about leak­ing. I almost laughed at loud–“um…no!” She was the first to share my con­cern and admit­ted those weren’t good signs. But, did also assure me that “everyone’s body is dif­fer­ent” and we wouldn’t know for sure until after the baby was born. 
So, Big Brother’s birth­day came–an induc­tion at almost 41 weeks. My beau­ti­ful baby boy was finally here!

 

 

We were dis­charged 40 hours after his birth and his weight was down 13 ounces. The next day was one of the hard­est days in my mem­ory. Every time he latched, I cried, tears of immense pain & frus­tra­tion stream­ing down my face. It hurt. A LOT. I’d read that it would be hard, but this didn’t seem right. This seemed TOO hard. But, I kept latch­ing him…and crying…and then, within min­utes, he was scream­ing. He screamed…and screamed…and screamed some more. My par­ents who were vis­it­ing kept telling me he was hun­gry. But, I JUST “fed” him!!! This con­tin­ued through Fri­day night, when he wouldn’t stay latched for long at all and then screamed for hours straight. I was hav­ing a full-fledged panic attack and he would NOT stop screaming…in fact, there were talks of going to the ER. The rest of the night is a blur, I don’t know what hap­pened, but I do know that we called the pedi­a­tri­cians’ office first thing in the morning… 

Stay tuned for Part 2 tomor­row!…
Whole series: 
Part 1
Part 2  
Part 3 
Part 4 
Part 5