In honor of National Breastfeeding Month, I want to get a little personal, and share my breastfeeding experience. I want to focus on my experience with Skyler, my daughter and 2nd child. Mostly because I'm
still breastfeeding her.
I'm so excited to share my breastfeeding experience here. I have so many thoughts and things that I would like to share, so I apologize if this gets a little long winded!
I've broken up my journey into 3 posts, and some topics I plan to cover are: breastfeeding in the hospital, getting mastitis, tongue tie, bottle refusal, going back to work and finally some of my tips and thoughts in general about breastfeeding.
Keep in mind, my daughter is 14 months old. I wish I would have started blogging back when she was first born so that I could document this all in real-time. I'm finding that as I think back some of the details are a little fuzzy. I blame lack of sleep! Ha!
I really hope this series of posts will be helpful to even just one person struggling with breastfeeding. It's not meant in any way whatsoever to shame anyone who chose not to breastfeed. This is just simply my story and my thoughts on why I am glad I stuck with it even when it was really tough!
Photo Credit: Jen Camacho Photography
hospital
I hope to write about Skyler's birth story some day. But until then, I will briefly say that our hospital experience was really pretty normal. She took right to nursing after she was born and latched beautifully! I had high hopes at that point of a beautiful nursing relationship.
Our pediatrician mentioned tongue tie while examining her, and a lactation consultant also mentioned the same. However, no one really talked to me about what that meant or what to look out for. I wish I had been better prepared, so that I could have tried to "fix" the problem sooner rather than later...that may have spared me 3 rounds of mastitis, a trip to the ER with a newborn, and a (totally unnecessary) breast ultrasound.
mastitis
I had mastitis 3 different times in the first two full months of Skyler's life. Not once, or twice, three times! UGH! I had never had mastitis before, so the first time it started I honestly had no idea what was happening. I took her in for her 1 week check up with the pediatrician on a Friday morning. We came home and nursed/napped together then I woke up with a fever and just feeling extremely run down. I had no idea what was wrong. Naturally, I started googling my symptoms and it appeared that I had mastitis.
(In case you are not familiar with mastitis, it is an infection of breast tissue. So basically, if the baby is not properly draining your milk, you can get a clogged duct and that can become infected. My doctor prescribed antibiotics, but it can be controversial whether or not antibiotics are always required for mastitis. )
I called my doctor's office, which was of course already closed! The nurse-on-call told me that she could not call in any pain medication, and that I could leave a message and have the doctor call me back Monday (what?! I had a fever, was in pain and was only 1 week postpartum!!!) cue the mom freak out! So, I called my hospital's lactation consultant. And to be honest, she kind of freaked me out even more! She suggested that I go to the ER. Hesitantly, I packed up the baby and went to the ER. It was determined that yes, in fact I had mastitis, and the doctor recommended an IV of antibiotic and then an oral antibiotic as well. I hate needles so the IV is always traumatic. Plus, I had mom-guilt for having my 1 week old baby in the ER and for not being home with my 2 year old son. So many feelings....
Anyways, we finally got sent home from the ER and went home. I rested and took my medicine and continued nursing Skyler....I finished the round of antibiotics only to have the exact same symptoms only a few days later. I was so embarrassed and frustrated! I felt like I was working so hard to feed Skyler on demand and to really try to get her to finish nursing before falling asleep. She was always ate very quickly and hardly ever fell asleep in the middle of a feeding. Because of all that I just couldn't figure out why my body kept "messing up" and getting mastitis.
This all continued a THIRD time and upon calling to ask for a prescription refill my doctor asked that I come in for an appointment. When I came in he noted that he had never heard of anyone having mastitis 3 times in such a short amount of time, and recommended that I have a breast ultrasound. I was totally freaked out at this point.
I ended up going in for the ultrasound and nothing was detected there. Thank goodness!!!
I also visited the lactation consultant at the hospital and she suggested trying to stay on top of taking my vitamins and drinking plenty of water, and really trying hard to take it easy. As a new mom of 2 kids, I will admit that I was having a hard time letting myself truly relax. Yes, I would sit and nurse the baby often, but I was almost always worked up in my mind about whether the baby was eating enough, and properly, or whether my toddler was getting enough from me. Finally, she showed me some other breastfeeding "holds" that we could use in order for Skyler to more effectively drain my milk.
tongue tie
In the hospital, our pediatrician checked Skyler and briefly mentioned that she might have a tongue tie. I honestly had no idea what that even meant at that point! And like I said before, she seemed to be latching great and eating very well. I had no real concerns about her nursing at first, so I basically dismissed his suggestion.
After our second pediatrician office visit, I mentioned that I had mastitis and was having some pretty intense pain when she latched, as well as cracking and bleeding. He again mentioned the thought of tongue tie, and suggested we look into a pediatric dentist that could determine whether it should be clipped. Of course after this appointment I went straight to google to figure out exactly what tongue tie even was. Tongue tie is a condition where the baby's tongue is "tied" to the floor of the mouth by a flap of skin. This skin can restrict the tongue's movement and then potentially cause difficulty with breastfeeding and possibly speaking or eating later in life. It can be corrected with a simple in-patient procedure that takes about five minutes.
After I developed mastitis for the 2nd time, I called and scheduled a visit with a local pediatric dentist. At that appointment, the dentist took one look and recommended a clip. It was really a simple procedure. Skyler screamed, and it broke my heart, but I knew it was the right thing to do.
Honestly, I can't say that I immediately noticed a difference. In fact, it almost seemed to trigger some colic-y symptoms in Skyler. Following the tongue tie reversal, we had some of the hardest days and weeks with Skyler. I remember walking in circles around the house for what felt like hours while she just screamed. I felt like such a failure as a mom and spent so much time doubting myself. I was so worried that she would never be happy and never grow out of this "phase". During this time, we were continuing nursing and that was going great. I wasn't having any more pain or mastitis! I remember during those times feeling that I was the only one who could truly calm her and that was because of breastfeeding.
Once we reached the end of month 3, it seemed like a switch just flipped and she became happy and consolable again. I truly don't know if it was all related to the tongue tie reversal, or just a personality thing, or a bout of colic. Maybe just a combination of all 3!?
to be continued....
Make sure to hit the subscribe button so you can come back next week! I'll be talking about Skyler refusing to take a bottle and how we dealt with that, along with me going back to work. I also plan to highlight some of my favorite things I use/used while nursing.
