My breastfeeding saga

I feel the need to warn the easily queasy that this post includes talk about breasts, nipples, breast milk, and the horrible things that can go along with breastfeeding. It’s not that bad, I promise. But you have been warned.

Before Eddie was born, I had every intention to breastfeed him. I was even looking forward to it. And even if you ignore the health benefits your child gets from breastfeeding, there are other great benefits as well. First and foremost, it’s a lot cheaper than formula. A LOT cheaper. Many stores lock up their formula because it is often stolen to be sold on the black market. Formula smells horrid, breast milk smells sweetly pleasant. And coming out the other end, breast milk poop is a lot less stinky than formula poop, something I was dubious about before smelling both. Plus breasts are a lot easier to carry around than either formula or pumped breast milk. Now I knew that it doesn’t always work out for everyone, but I was 100% convinced it would work out. What can I say, I was clueless. Everything I heard at my prenatal appointments was how the hospital would support breastfeeding by having baby stay in the room in with you, letting you have skin to skin contact right after birth, and there would be lots of nurses and support staff that could help.

Then reality stepped in and reared its ugly head.

You can read about my childbirth experience and post childbirth early breastfeeding attempts in detail in my posts from the past few weeks. Some of this is repeat information.

Eddie was taken to the NICU not because he was struggling to survive and not because he was pre-term (he was actually over 41 weeks!) but because they thought there was a small possibility he had an infection and it takes 48 hours to grow the bacteria culture to find out. The NICU staff had to allow me to attempt breastfeeding whenever I wanted, but they didn’t have to care if it was going well or not, and let me tell you, they really didn’t care.

It was a total turnaround when Eddie got out of the NICU. I was there one more night after that and the maternity ward looked at formula as a drug (I’m not kidding) that had to be signed out and was strongly discouraged. Any pacifier I had was strictly forbidden, never mind the NICU gave me a supply of both pacifiers and formula when they brought him to me. Eddie had been getting formula for two straight days (regardless of how often I came and breastfed him), as well as a constantly present pacifier. It was no wonder he couldn’t get the hang of latching on to my breast. When I got home, it wasn’t getting any better and my frustration only grew. It was so painful to feed Eddie because he was trying to suck only the nipple as he had practiced his entire short life. After a few days my nipples were bloody and sore, so I decided to pump for a day or two to see if they would heal. It still didn’t help. No amount of lanolin helped either. When I started pumping red milk (yuck!) I made the hard decision that I would pump and bottle feed him. By this time, I was making plenty of milk, I just couldn’t convince the little guy to take it from me directly. I cannot express how much dedication this took. It meant for the first months of his life I would spend about half my day pumping, feeding, and cleaning the pump and bottles. It took about 30 minutes to pump, 15 minutes on each breast. Looking back it may have been smarter to get a double pump, but we bought the pump when I was stubbornly sticking to the idea I would eventually breastfeed directly. The handling of pumped breast milk can also be a bit of a pain. You have to refrigerate any extra and keep track of how old it is and freeze any that you aren’t going to use. There has to be a system of how you get it back to room temperature whether it is refrigerated or frozen. If you are going out for any length of time you have to pack some as well as a pump (it’s amazing how quickly it can get painful), plus a way to get it up to room temp or know how long that will take and plan accordingly. I never really felt comfortable pumping in public. It’s a lot easier to get a baby on your breast and cover him than a pump you have to hold in place. I got really good at pumping in my car. When at home, I would strap Eddie in his rocking chair so he could watch what Mama was doing. That chair was the greatest gift I got. It gave me a place to set Eddie down where he could see me and I could entertain him by making faces at him. And he would entertain me by making faces back.

There is surprisingly little to no information or support for

moms that want to give their babies breast milk but have no luck feeding on the breast. When people asked if I was breastfeeding, what exactly is the answer? Well, I was feeding him nothing but breast milk, but I wasn’t feeding him from the breast. I have yet to encounter any useful vocabulary for this. It seems pumping is only for moms who breastfeed and have to be away from the baby at certain times. I always wonder how many moms have done what I did, exclusively pumping to bottle feed breast milk. It’s a lonely place to be, that’s for sure. For an interesting comparison, google images for “breastfeeding cartoons” vs. “breast pumping cartoons”. It’s a world of difference.

I learned early on about having to get the milk back to about body temperature, or at least room temperature. When Eddie was about a month old, I took him out to work a checkpoint at a car rally. I had to drive about one hour to get there, was there about 45 minutes, and then drove to the finish location and was there around a hour. All told I needed to feed Eddie two ounces of milk at least twice. I brought some frozen bottles with me. As I was driving there, it suddenly dawned on me that it was too cold to give him. Or too cold to even pour in the bottle. I panicked a little because I had never thought about this before. In fact, this was the first time I had brought pumped milk with me. It was one of the first times I had even left the house since bringing him home. So I proceeded to put the bottle of freezing cold milk in between my legs and under my arms to get it to warm up. Wow it was cold. Brr. It worked out, thank goodness Eddie has always been the most flexible kid and quite forgiving of his clueless mom. I learned the hard way that carrying pumped breast milk means always planning ahead.

One important lesson I would like to impart to anyone reading this: DO NOT CHANGE BIRTH CONTROL WHILE BREASTFEEDING OR PUMPING. I was taking the no estrogen pills and at my follow up appointment after giving birth mentioned that I had taken the other before and it was harder to remember to take these at the exact same time every day. It was kind of an offhand comment. It wasn’t like it was a hardship or anything. But, the doctor said that I could switch to the regular kind because my milk production was well established. I switched when my prescription ran out when Eddie was about 7 months old. Before this, I was making so much milk I was running out of room in the freezer to store it. About one month later my milk production took a nose dive and I wasn’t even pumping enough to feed him everyday. It continued going down and eventually I had used all the milk in the freezer and had to start supplementing with formula. By the time he was 10 months old he was only getting formula, it wasn’t even worth the time to get the pump out. This was even more painful than not being able to feed him directly from my breast. It was even more painful than the cracked, bloody nipples. I felt like a total failure.

I know I shouldn’t have felt that way. I gave him breast milk exclusively for a good amount of time and it has clearly had a good effect. He almost never gets sick and when he does, it’s barely noticeable. I don’t regret any of the time I spent in order to feed him breast milk. It was time well spent. And he is clearly a happy, healthy kid and that’s what is really important. I just pray that it will be easier with the next one.

Post Childbirth: Getting Out of the Hospital

The second 24 hours of Eddie’s life we in some ways worse and in some ways better than the first 24. Between the constant trips to the NICU and my own recovery from surgery, it was exhausting. Ending that first day in the NICU just holding Eddie for a while was exactly what I needed (see the post from 4/13 for the whole story). Little did I know the horror that awaited me as soon as I left the NICU. Speaking of horrors, while the gross stuff is getting less and less, there is still a bit of mention of it. Just so you are warned.

Up until this point, I was pretty happy with the staff, both nurses and doctors, at the hospital. There were one or two that I liked less than some of the others, but for the most part they were friendly, caring, and good at their jobs. However, the nurse I had overnight from midnight to about 7am on Friday was the worst nurse of my stay. And not just of my stay, but the worst nurse I have ever come into contact with ever. It was a different nurse that took me over to the NICU so my first meeting with her was when she came to take me back. My friend that helped me over there had gone home about 15 minutes before I let the NICU staff know I was ready to go back to my room. I guess my new nurse had never had to get a patient that was connected to the locked morphine pole before because she came by herself. I was a bit hesitant because I knew how hard it was going to be to get me back with only one person. I attempted to explain this and got a not so friendly response. And all the way back it was like she was mad at me personally for wanting to go hold my kid. Like I was ruining her day. It is really tiresome when people complain about things that are part of their jobs. And not an odd part of their job, but just the everyday job. I was glad that I was going to be asleep for most of her shift. But first I had to get safely back in my bed. When we finally got back to the room, she stopped the wheelchair twice as far from the bed as I normally was with nothing to hold onto  and then really did nothing to help me back to bed. Just stood there and watched. I was befuddled at this point because complaining is one thing, being seemingly purposely mean to a patient is another. If you’re going to make me work this hard to get into bed, at least be there to give me a hand. It’s only been 24 hours since I was strapped down to a bed with a bunch of hands in my insides. At least I was finally going to get a little rest, and my body was telling me that’s exactly what I needed.

Well, except for the fact that they were still taking my blood pressure a few times an hour. On a sidenote, I HATE having my blood pressure taken. The only thing you can do to me that is worse is stick me with a needle. I don’t know why I hate it so much. Something about the squeezing and then being able to feel your veins and arteries opening back up as the pressure is released. Makes me squirm. But, I had gotten used to the thing going off enough that it didn’t phase me that much. I could pretty much sleep right through it. So this nurse makes a much bigger production out of taking my blood pressure than she needs to. It was like she was trying to wake me up. I guess that didn’t work enough because about 2am, she comes in and wakes me up and announces they are taking out the catheter RIGHT NOW. Ok lady, I’m recovering from surgery and pushed myself to try and breastfeed all day and pushed a bit too hard. I need some rest so I can regroup and start again the next day. And you are not helping me get better at this point. It’s not that I was against having the catheter out, but the idea of trying to get some sleep when in the back of my mind I was afraid I was going to pee all over myself... it wasn’t going to work. Even though she was really pissing me off with her attitude toward me and hostility to the world, I gathered my thoughts and did my best to explain to her, as calmly and rationally as possible, that I just needed to get some sleep without and poking or prodding or worrying about anything for a few hours. Come back at 7 or 8 in the morning, take out the catheter, and let’s go from there. She didn’t seem to like that I was going against her expert opinion. She said I would have to explain it to a doctor. I invited that, as at least the doctor would probably have a better outlook on life and patients than her. It certainly couldn’t get any worse.

Somehow I managed to get some rest that night. They took the catheter out in the morning and now I had to worry about emptying my bladder on top of everything else. But you can’t get better if you don’t push yourself. And best of all, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to have that nurse ever again. And if I did, I would protest until I didn’t have her assigned to me. Friday to Saturday is a blur of seeing Eddie, a few visitors, and attempting to pump. I wasn’t getting a ton of milk, but every little bit was leaps and bounds ahead of nothing. At some point they took the morphine away and starting offering pain pills instead. I didn’t mind a bit as I wasn’t using the morphine anyway. Like I mentioned before, I have a high tolerance for pain, and the pills were more for management so the pain didn’t escalate beyond control. I was taking as little as possible. I remember one visitor coming while Eddie was still in the NICU, he took a five minute video of me holding Eddie and talking about him. My favorite was when I showed off the Baby Lo-Jack device attached to his umbilical cord. They put an alarm device so you can’t smuggle the baby out of the hospital. It’s not really a Lo-Jack, but that’s what it reminded me of. I love that video, it’s so precious.

First thing Saturday morning I starting asking over and over when Eddie was coming to the room with me.  It had been over 48 hours, after all. The culture should be done and I wanted to know the results, which I figured would be negative. Eddie was showing no signs of weakness or illness. He has been healthy as can be since he was born and still is to this day. Finally I got word that the culture was negative and they just had to do his hearing test before bringing him to me. I don’t think I have ever watched a clock like I did then, even more than when I was in terrible pain the first night and had to watch ten minutes tick off before pushing the morphine button, or as I jokingly started calling it “the magic green happy button”.

Finally, after what felt like forever, the NICU nurse brought Eddie to my room and handed him over to me. I could hold my son without all the wires and monitors attached. It was glorious. I could breastfeed as often and as long as I wanted. I didn’t have anyone hovering over me and could take my time. I wasn’t having a ton of luck and Eddie seemed to be hungry constantly. By evening I was wondering if this mother thing was for me. And that’s when the shift of the best nurse I had the entire time I was in the hospital started. She was amazing. Caring, outgoing, helpful, knowledgeable, funny, and generally awesome. She helped me try to get Eddie to latch on properly without being in my face and grabby. She didn’t get frustrated and kept calm, which helped Eddie and me both stay calm as well. After a while, she stood back and said, “You’re doing everything right, he’s just not getting it. Keep at it, it should come.” That’s the vote of confidence I needed. I pretty much held him until I was about to fall asleep. I wrapped him up and put him in his bed. He cried a lot and it was hard for me to keep getting up and down. Finally the nurses offered to put him in the bed with me so I could breastfeed while laying down, plus being nearer to me he would probably sleep as well. I wasn’t sure that would work, but sure enough, he was quiet and calm until morning. It was the best feeling ever, and such a change from Thursday night/Friday morning.

Sunday morning, with Eddie still cuddled up next to me, the doctor came in and said I was doing very well, how would I like to go home today? If I was physically able to jump up and down, I would have. Instead I sleepily smiled and said that sounded good. Late morning some good friends of ours came to visit. Their timing couldn’t have been better as they helped me get everything together and helped Eddie and me get dressed and out to the car. I don’t think that’s the visit they had in mind, but it was exactly what I needed. At some point the doctors came and took out the staples in my abdomen. I was quite surprised when the tool they used to do this looked like a bigger version of an office staple remover. I guess it makes sense though.

Eddie was on his way home. I was still clueless about how I was going to take care of him while recovering from the C-section. But at least now I was starting to become confident in myself that I would find a way.

Post Childbirth: The First 24 Hours

So to recap a bit from the last post, Eddie was born at 12:05am on Thursday, about 50 hours after I first got to the hospital for a planned labor induction that ended in a C-Section. This was the exact opposite way I had envisioned this going and it turns out it was only going to get worse. And here is my usual warning, if you get queasy when it comes to women’s parts and fluids coming out of bodies, I recommend you read with caution.

As I lay there strapped to the table still drugged up from the surgery, I barely got to look at the little life they had just taken out of me. I didn’t get to hold him or touch him since I couldn’t really feel my arms. They told me they were going to take him to the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). Wait, what? You’re doing what? What for? What’s wrong with him? I had heard them say he got a 9 out of 10 on the Apgar test, so he couldn’t be that bad off. Turns out they wanted to keep him there for 48 hours to do a bacteria culture test to make sure he didn’t have an infection because I had spiked a fever near the end of the labor. TWO. DAYS. HIS FIRST TWO DAYS. My heart absolutely sank. All of the happy, rosy images of my baby being set on me after birth and starting to breastfeed and having that cuddly special time were quickly disappearing. Gone, they were gone. GONE. Eddie’s first food wouldn’t come from me, it would come from a smelly bottle of formula. To add insult to injury, the NICU nurse came to talk to me and ask me a few questions. The main one was about pacifiers. I explained to her that my goal was to exclusively breastfeed and therefore wanted to limit the number of nipples he was given. I also explained I would go over there as often as I could to breastfeed, recovery from surgery permitting. In the most snarky tone she could muster she asked me, “Well, what I am supposed to do when he cries???” I don’t know lady, you’re the professional FIGURE IT OUT. Now my hopes of successfully breastfeeding were going out the window as well. I was alone and pissed and scared. At some point I asked the anesthesiologist if I could close my eyes as I felt really tired. He was really great, talked to me a lot and comforted me. At some point I woke back up and felt like I was going to puke. He had told me to start making a lot of noise if that was a possibility, so through the oxygen mask I started yelling “PUKE PUKE PUKE PUKE!” He ran over with something for me to puke in and I did. And back to sleep.

I woke up in the recovery area, and they asked me if I wanted morphine. Well, what they really asked was to rate my pain on a scale from 1-10. You quickly learn what answers get you drugs. She warned me that right now I would want to take the drugs before the pain started getting bad, so as soon as I felt the anesthetic wearing off to ask for the morphine. I asked about seeing Eddie and was basically told not until I was more mobile. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see him. After a little while and two doses of morphine they took me over to the maternity ward. At this point, the pain was creeping up on me but they had to wait for the morphine drip to get there from Fort Knox... I mean, the pharmacy. My husband and a friend of mine were sitting with me and I kept telling them to go tell the nurse that the pain was starting to get really bad. They didn’t seem impressed. At some point it hurt so bad I started screaming and didn’t stop. If nothing else I figured it might get the night shift nurses to call the pharmacy and tell them to get off their ass and hurry the hell up. I have a pretty high tolerance for pain but this was the worst pain I have ever felt. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they came with the morphine. But first they had to lock it into a box on the IV pole. It seems they really have to keep an eye on the narcotics. I kind of wonder if the reason it took so long is that they needed to find an armed security guard to walk it up to the maternity ward and couldn’t find one. Then they handed me a button and said it would give me a dose whenever I pushed it, but not more than one per ten minutes. I could see the clock on the wall without my glasses (I’m near blind so it had to be a big clock) and pushed it every ten minutes until the pain had been reduced enough for me to sleep.

When I woke up, the first thing I wanted to do was go to the NICU. Remember, I haven’t held Eddie yet. Ever. It takes two people to push me over there. First off, the doors at the hospital are just big enough for a wheelchair (I couldn’t walk yet) and someone had to push me. Also, they don’t stay open. Dumb. Second, I am basically chained to the pole with the morphine. It’s going to be a day before I can switch to regular pain killers. The other IV fluids they have going into me (drip and antibiotics) could have been taken off the pole and carried on the chair. But the morphine is locked onto the pole. So there has to be another person to open doors and push the pole. It’s a big fat pain in the ass and of course, we have to go to the opposite side of the floor. Then I have to scrub up, not easy when I have trouble getting up and standing. They are really making me work to see my kid. A less determined person might have just said to forget it and go back to the room.

Every new parent thinks their kid is the most perfect thing they have ever seen, I’m no different. Most newborns to me look funny and not cute. Eddie didn’t have that newborn weirdness to him. I was relieved I wasn’t repulsed by him. I’ve never been much of a baby person and don’t like to hold other people’s babies, but this was different. I was worried about that all during my pregnancy. This felt right in a way in doesn’t when the baby isn’t yours. After holding him for a little bit I started to try and breastfeed. By this time he had been given several bottles of formula and pretty much had a pacifier in his mouth whenever there wasn’t a bottle in it. From everything I had read, I was in for an uphill battle. Added to that the fact that I have pretty large breasts to begin with, which can be hard for a baby to deal with. Men like getting a large breast stuck in their face, babies, not so much. I was also hampered by the many wires they had attached to him and the IV that was in my wrist. I was having difficulty getting him to latch on and not just take the nipple. Then the nurses descended on me, the supposed “breastfeeding experts”. The thing they weren’t experts in is how the mom is going to feel when suddenly everyone is grabbing her breast and trying to stick it in baby’s mouth. And as they got frustrated it wasn’t working, I got frustrated with them. I knew at this point he wasn’t going to starve, so I was trying to take it easy. I wasn’t too successful and feeding him this time around and I was getting tired from all the effort, so I went back to my room.

I did this several more times that day with differing levels of success. Of course, no matter how successful or how long I fed him, they stuck a bottle in him on their schedule anyway. It’s not too encouraging when whatever I did to feed him didn’t really matter to them. It was really exhausting to move that much with staples in my abdomen. It hurt to get up and take steps, but they really push you to do that. They want to know as soon as you poop, it’s a way of knowing your abdomen muscles are working properly. That wasn’t happening yet. I did have some gnarly gas though. And it really hurt to sneeze or cough. Ow.

That evening, I was planning to go attempt to feed Eddie again and the NICU called the maternity ward and said, “Don’t bother coming, we are just going to give him a bottle”. That was about the end of my patience. I lost it. I even threw my phone on the floor, it almost broke (it did damage it pretty good). I started to wonder why I was even going over there at all. And this was still only the first day of me being a mother. Later that night a friend of mine came to visit and cheered me up. I was really starting to feel sorry for myself. She convinced me I needed to go right now to the NICU even if I didn’t try and breastfeed, just go hold my son for a while. I had also mentioned to her I felt stupid because every time I went over there I forgot to take pictures. She helped the nurse get me over there and came with me into the NICU. As soon as we got there, I realized I once again forgot my phone. My friend, being ever the smart cookie, just smiled at me. And then pulled my phone out of her pocket. Some of those pictures of Eddie and I are still some of my all time favorites. I held Eddie until 12:05am Friday morning. Happy first day of life!

To be continued... Next time, a contrast of nursing styles: the nurse from hell and the most awesome nurse on the planet.