Wow. What a natural and yet so unnatural thing breastfeeding is.
I’ve met women who haven’t experienced any problems like thrush, mastitis, cracked nipples and who still say it’s one of the hardest things they’ve ever done. This may be a naive thing to say, (in the way that saying we wanted twins pre-baby was naive), but at this point I wish that I had had cracked nipples, or thrush, or mastitis. Anything but low supply. Heck, maybe even all three. The thing is, four months on, the mums in my mothers group who battled these issues have come out the other side and are now breastfeeding comfortably and happily. I, on the other hand, have come out the other side with a baby completely formula fed and unable to shake the deep feeling of failure.
I feel like a failure. My body has failed me, and Zac and I have failed Zac. I know logically that I shouldn’t feel this. Zac is very healthy and happy and I really did do the best I could do, but this sense goes beyond logic. Feeding your baby is a primal thing. Not being able to is a primal failure.
By the time we came out of hospital, I was comfortable enough with the process of breastfeeding to feed on the loo, feed whilst walking around, feed standing up – which is what I did the moment we arrived home with a crying, starving baby. I was comfortable with the idea of feeding in public (well, until my first attempt resulted in me retreating to the car). I never lacked confidence about being able to breastfeed. Even when we found out that my previous surgery may result in never having adequate supply, I didn’t question that I would be able to feed Zac breastmilk, one way or another, for his first 6 months, possibly 12. Rafe and I even discussed the merits of hiring vs. purchasing a Medela Symphony pump. If I was going to breastfeed two babies for 12 months, it would have been more economical to buy our own pump. Fortunately we decided to see how things went for the first three months, so we could determine how feasible my dream of supplying breastmilk for 12 months would be. After two months I had decided that perhaps just aiming for the minimum 6 months was the way to go. At the same point however, Zac decided that he was working too hard and not getting enough reward to continue feeding from the breast.
I even know the day he started seriously refusing the breast: June 10, the day after his 8 week immunisations. For the first few days I thought it was due to the immunisations; he was also grizzly and out-of-sorts so I thought that once he was feeling more himself again, he would accept the breast again. as the week drew to a close I called my LC to ask what I should be doing, unfortunately we played phone tag for a week or more, and then when it was up to me to call again, I just didn’t. I was also trying to finalise the last of Mum’s estate before the end of the financial year so my focus was split and my days involved solicitors and accountants and bank managers. Now, of course, I wish I’d tried harder to talk to her.
I madly expressed to keep up my supply, and my supply even increased for the first three weeks. I kept offering him the breast when we were at home, but stopped offering it when we were out. Most times he wouldn’t even latch on, he would just start crying and then screaming until I stopped. At first I would try for 20 minutes (putting him on, taking him off, putting him on), then 15, then 10, then 5, then 1 minute. It was devastating. I read books and suggestions of how to handle breast refusal. Of course some of the options would not work for us because Zac was already being fed formula – often the suggestion is to keep offering the breast and whatever you do, *don’t* offer a bottle. Eventually the baby will be hungry enough to take from the breast. The whole starvation method was never going to work for us because he already knew and needed the bottle and after our initial experience there was no way known that I was going to do anything that risked starving our baby even a few hours.
Other suggestions however I tried – feeding in the bath, offering some expressed milk first to take the edge off the hunger and so that he would associate the feeling of fullness with the breast, feeding in bed, not feeding in bed, squirting milk into his mouth. Sometimes he would feed from the breast but most times he wouldn’t.
After the initial week, I started to treasure every single feed that he did accept, even if it was only 5 minutes. I decided heck with all the ‘rules’ and let him sleep on the breast. I was happy for him to do whatever the heck he liked, however the heck he liked as long as he was feeding from the breast!
I finally bought a breastfeeding pillow, 4 weeks into the whole breast refusal nightmare and we had a weekend of Zac accepting the breast for Every. Single. Feed!!! It was awesome. I sat on the couch, staring at him, locking away the feeling and loving every second, every nanosecond. I let him fall alseep on me. I took iPhone photos. It felt like I was given a chance to ignore all the advice and do what felt natural and what I most wanted to do – which was to feed my lovely son to sleep and hold him in my arms while he slept, rest of the world be damned. So I did. We had a beautiful weekend, I thought that the pillow was the key, that maybe he’d just been uncomfortable the whole time …..but that was the last time he accepted the breast.
For the next week, I offered him the breast occasionally but was steadily losing the emotional stamina to deal with my breast causing my baby to cry and scream. Then I got sick, and illness combined with missed expressions accumulating (every time that I fed Zac whilst out and about, I missed expressing milk) resulted in the to-be-expected drop in supply. The drop was quick and suddenly I felt that it would just be mean to Zac to actively try and get him back on the breast when I was back to expressing tiny amounts of 20-30ml. I realised that I would either need to re-up my supply before getting my LC to come over and help us again, or I needed to give up on the breastfeeding.
It was a difficult choice to make, especially as I felt that I had to give Zac any and all breast milk that I had, no matter how small. I struggled with the decision, wanting to continue but knowing that to continue with breast milk would mean maintaining the initial routine I had undertaken to increase the supply the first time round, only this time without the stimulation provided by a baby suckling. The routine was difficult enough for two weeks, let alone 3 months.
Finally Rafe pointed out that at this stage the benefit of the breast milk would be negated by the lack of attention Zac would receive; he would benefit far more from me spending the time with him and taking him places like the park instead of being tied at home, concentrating on expressing milk every couple of hours. We pulled apart the Symphony and said goodbye to breast milk.
Only it wasn’t that easy. Next evening I put it back together again and expressed – never thought I would be “sneak-expressing”!!! I continued to express once every day, then every 2 days, every 3 days for a few weeks.
NOTE: I started this post a couple of weeks ago but didn’t finish it. I was feeling pretty down on myself and sad and angsty about the whole breast feeding thing. A(nother) long cry on Rafe’s shoulder about it and a conversation with my LC the next day really helped me though. When I explained to Sue (my LC) what had happened, she was just amazed that I managed to continue for so long. she really hadn’t expected me to manage 15 weeks of breastfeeding and told me not to second guess anything that I had or hadn’t done; that I had done a brilliant job and many mums with my issues just don’t ever manage to breastfeed. I’ve had people telling me what an amazing job I had done, but I just couldn’t believe it. Even my new MCH nurse had responded with praise for Zac for “not wanting his mummy to work so hard to feed him” rather than the “I told you so” that I expected to get from my old MCH nurse.
I am feeling a lot more peaceful about it now; though I still envy the mothers that I see breastfeeding. I have an action plan for next bubba and a great LC who I will see before I even give birth again.
In the meantime I just take note of the advantages of bottle-feeding for me: others can feed Zac, making them feel really included; Rafe can do a night shift while I get some uninterrupted sleep; I am able to curb my eating and start taking weight off earlier than expected; I can go back on my normal pill and hopefully have some balance return to hormone-land; we can feed Zac in the car without having to stop for half an hour. Nothing replaces the sense of breastfeeding but there are a number of advantages which I am enjoying and it is not remotely affecting my bonding with Zac – no oxytocin required there!!!
