Breast Feeding: Not As Easy As I Thought

Before I even got pregnant I knew that once I had a baby that I was going to breast feed. There are just so many benefits for both the baby and the mom, plus it comes with a great price, free! Towards the end of my pregnancy I took a 2 hour long breast feeding class that went over the basics. After the class I felt like I knew everything I needed to know, I mean breast feeding is a natural thing so it can't be hard, right? Well I was wrong! 

Right after Hailyn was born my midwife laid her on my chest so that we could have skin to skin which was recommended in my breast feeding class. Within an hour after she was born I nursed her for the first time, which was what was recommended in the breast feeding class. She did fairly well, one of the nurses helped me get her to latch on and she nursed for about 15 minutes. For the first 24 hours after she was born she did pretty good with nursing, I would sometimes have to call in one of the nurses to help me get her to latch but other than that we had no problems. But then day 2 rolled around and  every time I would try to nurse Hailyn she would latch on but then unlatch after 30 seconds and start crying. I would then get her to latch back on and the same thing would happen. After doing this a few times Hailyn went from crying to screaming and pushing me away. At first I thought maybe she just wasn't hungry so I stopped and tried an hour later. Same thing happened. This continued to happen and she ended up crying the whole second night. I felt like I was failing as a mom. It was one of the worst feelings ever I had ever felt. 

The next morning a lactation nurse came and tried to help us. Hailyn continued to refuse to nurse. After the lactation nurse tried getting her to latch a few times she told us that we needed to discus another option. The nurse was worried that if we continued to try getting her to latch while she was crying and pushing away that she would associated nursing as a bad thing, which we obviously didn't want. She was also about an ounce away from losing 10% of her birth weight. After my husband and I discussed it we decided to supplement her with a little bit of formula. This was something I did not want to do but at this point I felt like I was starving my baby and just wanted her to eat. We did not want her to have nipple confusion so instead of giving her the forumula through a bottle the nurse showed us how to put it in a syringe that had a tiny tube connected to it. We would get Hailyn to latch on and then we would insert the tube into her mouth and then my  husband would slowly press on the syringe to add the formula. Boy was this a long process but she was finally happy after getting some formula in her belly. We continued to do this until my milk came in which was about 4 days after I gave birth. Now you would think once my milk came in it was smooth sailing from there, right? Nope! 

So after about 24 hours of being extremely engorged (OUCH! No one warned me about this!) my milk came in. Shortly after my milk came in I realized I had a new issue. Hailyn would latch on and nurse for about 30 seconds and then she would unlatch and start crying and choking. I finally realized it was because I had a fast let down and oversupply. She wasn't able to swallow as fast as the milk was coming out. I would get super frustrated while nursing her because I didn't know what to do and I hated seeing her so upset. Not to mention it took over an hour to nurse her because she was only staying latched on for about 30 seconds. After a few days I started to do some research online and read that I could decrease my supply by nursing off of one breast and then the next feed nursing her on the other side (up until this point I was starting on one side and then half way through the feeding switching to the other breast). Within two days or so I noticed a HUGE difference. Now I felt like both Hailyn and I had the hang of breast feeding and there was nothing else possible that could get it our way. Well you guessed it I was wrong, AGAIN!

Tomorrow I'll post about the next bump in our road. I will have to say this next one has been by far the hardest! But I am doing this all for her and she is SO worth it!