Breast Feeding the All Natural Nightmare

OK so who ever says that breastfeeding is natural is crazy or is one of the few who lucked out!

I know I'm not alone when I say that breastfeeding has been the biggest challenge yet along the road to motherhood.

First there's the latch.
You have to wait patiently, with a screaming newborn in your clumsy hands, for the exact moment that their mouth is as wide as a yawn. Then you stuff them onto your breast, by which time they have likely closed their mouth. So you try again, and again, again. Until you get it right because if you don't- then you'll pay for it later with sore nipples.

Then there's the milk.
At first you have something called colostrum. It's like super milk. There's not a lot of it, but it is full of nutrients for the baby. That's what they live on for the first few days, until your milk comes in. When your milk comes, many experience pain in engorgement. I never suffered from this because I have never had a lot milk. But I have heard that it is very painful.

Here's where I'll get personal. Not too personal don't worry, I won't be showing any pictures of my scabbed nipples or anything.

So I've never been one of abundant milk supply for my babies. My babies have always been light weights, and slow gainers. This time around though, it was really slow, sometimes none, and one week Martha even lost weight. So I was prescribed, Domperidone- NOT champagne although that would have been nice! It seemed to help with the milk supply, but it was hard to remember to take it consistently at first.

Even with the Domperidone, the mama's milk tincture, the Fenugreek, the Blessed Thistle and the pumping I have a really slow gainer. So the Midwives refer us to a pediatrician and the pediatrcian orders some blood tests to see if there is something fundamentally wrong with her make up. Needless to say it was a horrible experience watching my then 2 month old being held down by the nurses and poked while she screamed in objection. Thankfully, the tests came back clear. Or am I thankful? Perhaps if there was something wrong with her, they could fix it- then it wouldn't be my fault.

So we were told to top up with formula. Martha though, was not too interested in formula, nor was she interested in bottles with my pumped breast milk. Have you ever met a hungry baby who wouldn't take a bottle? I was perplexed. I really wanted to exclusively breast feed, but at the same time I didn't want my daughter to have week brain development because she wasn't getting the proper nutrients to grow.

We persevered with the bottles. My mother who is a very determined woman, went out and bought every different kind of bottle that exists, and tried each one on Martha until she took one. We learned that she was not interested in bottles after having just nursed, so we had to try bottles when she was hungry. Sometimes with success, sometimes without. This meant that instead of nursing her, I would pump.

Pumping... this where I learned of my sad, sad, milk. When I would pump I would have about 5 streams of milk flowing at first for the fore milk (the watery stuff that quenches thirst). This would last for about 3-4 minutes. Then all of a sudden 4 streams would disappear and there would be this one measly little stream of milk with hind milk. This would last for about 3 minutes and then that would be it. I would have a totally of about 3 ounces and that was after both breasts. "They say" that the baby can get at least an ounce more out of you then the pump, but for Martha I don't believe that was true. She would fall asleep, or cry at the breast a lot. My friends with normal milk supply can get 5 ounces of milk from one side. And doesn't look like skim milk like mine, it looks like homo milk.

As Martha got acquainted with the bottle she became less patient at the breast. And sadly, this has gradually meant that my milk supply has dwindled.

I think it was a combination of a Martha being a really week sucker (therefore not sending strong enough signals to my body to make more milk) and my low milk supply. Martha was my last kick at the can. I really really wanted to succeed this time. The first two were not very successful, but I thought by the third I should have this breastfeeding thing figured out.

On some levels, I feel like a major failure. How can a mother not provide what her baby needs? What would have happened to her if I didn't have access to formula or pumps etc.? Why Lord, doesn't my body work properly? I try not to beat myself up about it. But when I'm out in public with a screaming baby trying to get the formula at just the right temperature it sure is hard not to be bitter about the whole thing.