Breasfeeding Trials

Before Amelia was born, I knew that I would breastfeed without a single doubt in my mind. Babies in my family are breastfed, that's all there is to it. But somehow things just didn't work out that way. In the hospital, I breastfed without any trouble except for the usual trouble with keeping a newborn baby awake long enough to get a substantial feed in. It was once I got home that trouble started...

About three or four days after Amelia was born I began to wait not so patiently for my milk to come in and anticipated the much discussed horrific pain of engorgement. It never happened. My milk, what little there was, came in sometime between 5 and 6 days postpartum and by then Amelia had lost quite a bit of weight. At birth she was 6 lb. 6 oz. and at her one week check up, which actually happened when she was 6 days old, she was down to 5 lbs. 11 oz., slightly more than 10% of her body weight was lost.

Starting around 5 days PP I had what I can only define as a hormonal meltdown because it was obvious that she wasn't getting enough to eat. I whipped out the evil formula company samples that are so kindly handed out right and left to mothers who plan to breastfeed and Amelia had formula and seemed full for the first time since leaving the hospital. I had my husband rush out to BRU to buy the last Lansinoh breastpump they had on the shelves in an effort to up my supply as outlined by The Nursing Mother's Companion and had my mom run out to by fenugreek pills. When I pumped I would get no more than 1 oz. total until about 2 weeks PP when I threw in the towel on BFing and started FF almost exclusively. After that I would pump 4-5 times daily and would get at most 6-7 oz. a day. Gradually I decreased pumping sessions until I quit entirely at 6 wks because my nipples cracked and started bleeding while I was pumping. I decided that was all the sign I needed to stop.

Looking back, I wonder if the switch to formula was necessary. I was exhausted and hormonal and while my mother tried her best, to paraphrase my father, she was "a cow" when it came to producing milk for her own children (and in fact with my oldest brother had so much excess that dad made some fudge from her BM, which he claims he had to throw away because it was too sweet). She helped the best she could but didn't seem to understand why I wasn't spraying milk like a firehouse on command.

One of the major reasons I switched to formula was because she seemed so content and full (read: she slept well) after eating a formula bottle, but when I would breastfeed she would nurse for 15-20 minutes and fall asleep. I would take her off the boob and she would wake, scream and cry, and I would nurse her again until she fell asleep again. This cycle would repeat itself a lot. One day she was attached to my boobs with maybe 10-15 minutes breaks for 5 hours. I thought that a fully satisfied baby would just sleep and that if she cried that meant she was still hungry. Of course I realize now that she was probably just crying because she had a sleep association with my nipples. I was a giant pacifier and she would wake up when the pacifier went away.

I guess I'll never know if the switch was necessary, but I do know that she is a happy, healthy baby and I try to not have any regrets. Maybe with the next baby (which ain't happening for at least 3 years) I'll have better luck.