My best friend, Stacy, just gave birth to a baby girl, and up until that point, she was asking me about breastfeeding. With her son, she had just pumped until he was about four months, when she "dried up." This time she wanted to do it the old fashioned way because pumping and bottle feeding is the worst of both worlds. This propelled me back to when I first started breastfeeding Jackson, and what a nightmare that was. He's now six months, and I swear if I were not so cheap, that baby would have been a formula baby, but I am so thankful I persisted.
It all started when Jax latched right on with an Dyson-rivaled suction that even impressed his pediatricians.
"OH, he's not tongue tied! He's quite the little sucker!" they would say.
"Tell me about it," I would respond as my nipple would ache just thinking about his torment. By the second day, I had a deep gash going across my nipple. The lactation consultant was even impressed. I guess there's a demographic for everything. "Breastfeeding is not supposed to hurt!" they would tell me. All the websites touted the same motto, spiraling me into a depression about not being fulfill the most basic of my child's needs correctly. Let me just put this out there; that is bullshit. Yeah in a perfect world, a first time mother and a newborn would know exactly how to latch without it being painful. But that's not how it works. It's new to the baby and it's new to you. That baby is only concerned with getting food; technique is secondary. So, until you have more experience with your baby, be patient, take your mind off of it, and load up on that sweet sweet percocet, because this is going to be a bumpy ride.
Secondly, no one explained to me the phenomenon of "Cluster Feeding." Though it's not really a phenomenon because we know the how and the why, I had never heard of it, and had no clue what I was in for. You see, as your milk is coming in, the baby's demand facilitates the production. Since you're producing so little at first, the baby is constantly on your teat. By constantly, I mean twelve hours at a time, usually overnight. No one explained this to me. My sweet little lactation consultant helped me position the baby and told me to feed him 15 minutes each side. So I did that, he went to sleep for a few hours. I set an alarm in my phone to feed him again in two hours and reclined serenely dozing while reflecting on what an awesome parent I was. Then our first night rolled around. That child screamed and screamed and screamed. I would feed him for a few minutes, he would fall asleep, I'd put him in the bassinet, and he would wake up and scream. He couldn't be hungry; I had fed him the prescribed 15 minutes per side. At one point my husband was holding him in front of his torso like a sacrificial lamb, and looked at me with a face full of horror and said, "What have we done?" The next few nights went by like that--an endless cycle of 30 minute feedings, him dozing off, only to awake screaming as I try to put him in his bed. Yes, what have we done?
Finally, a few days into my nightmare, a petite, sweet-as-sugar nurse comes to check on me because they can hear my screaming baby from the nurse's station. I tell her my problem and she says, "Oh, I remember those days! Cluster feeding is awful!" Right. Cluster feeding. As soon as she leaves I grab my phone and google "cluster feeding." Seriously? Feeding for hours? I already felt like my nipples were going to fall off. They were already cracked and bloody. They want me to expose them to the enemy for HOURS at a time? As Jax started crying again, I hit the button for the nurse, popped a nipple in his mouth, and asked for more pain pills. The things you'll do to get your child to stop crying.
Lastly I had read articles about babies dying and being injured from co-sleeping and swore I would never put my baby in that position. I could go without sleep for my child's well being. Ha. Right. Finding a way to nurse while sleeping was the best thing I did. Jackson got the food he needed, and I got the sleep I needed.Now, it helps that the nursing/sleeping position is pretty uncomfortable to me, so I wake up regularly to check on him, and I make sure his head is always elevated. The following website illustrates the position I use, but I keep my arm down to elevate his head.
http://naturalparentsnetwork.com/side-lying-nursing-a-breastfeeding-tutorial/
In conclusion, I'm pretty shocked I stuck with breastfeeding. I was so uneducated and naive going in. Between friends who had been there and googling everything along the way, I made it through. I promised myself I would commit to six weeks and reassess the situation at that point. By six weeks I had no nipple pain, my son was on a schedule, and breastfeeding was second nature.
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