Laura's Breastfeeding Page
This is the story of my experiences breastfeeding. Amelia and I had a much harder
time of it than most people do, so please don't be discouraged if you are thinking of
breastfeeding. On the other hand, if you are having trouble breastfeeding, then you
might find it encouraging to know that even severe problems can be overcome.
Short version of the story
Amelia was born with a high palate, which kept her from being able to effectively
nurse. By the time we discovered this, she had lost 15% of her birthweight and was
getting dehydrated. With the help of the lactation consultants at Maternal
Connections, our local breastfeeding support center, we fed her expressed breastmilk
(through a finger feeder) to get her going the right direction.
The good news is that she rapidly put on weight, and started growing. The bad
news is, that this was lots of work: It took between 1 and 1.5 hours to get her to
nurse 10 minutes on each side (we'd let her go longer, on the rare occasions she wanted
to), and then I pumped while Arnold fed her. This was
also very frustrating for her, and she ended up refusing the breast entirely.
Once we realized we were in this for a long haul, we switched from the finger feeder to
bottle-feeding her expressed breast milk (from Munchkin bottles) for a month, while her
mouth grew into the high palate, and to give her time to recover from the trauma of
fighting for food from the breast. The Munchkin bottle gave us a chance to train her
into openning wide and putting her lips out. I'd offer her my breast 1-2 times a
day. The times when I set up, used proper positioning, and so on were the
least successful. The times I just popped a breast in Amelia's mouth worked best for
her, but usually left my nipples and/or back in pain.
My nipples were initially sore from feeding her, and remained sore for a very long
time, for a variety of reasons.
At about 5 weeks, she was getting good enough at breastfeeding that we started the
transition to the breast in earnest. We had rented a Medela scale. so we could track her
weight gain and how much milk she was getting from me each feeding.
I started by feeding her from the breast while my husband was at work, and
pumping/feeding bottles the rest of the time. There were 2 reasons for the slow
approach-- one is because my nipples were very sore as we learned how to breastfeed (the
hunger of a 5 week old, the skills of a newborn) and also, since she still had some
trouble with a high palate, we wanted to make sure she was getting sufficient breastmilk.
It took over a month to get her transitioned back to the breast. I first added
the bedtime feeding, as Amelia started relaxing enough to fall asleep at my breast when
she otherwise was struggling. The middle of the night feedings were the last to go--
I'd feed her a bottle every 2 hours (my husband would take one of them most nights) and
pump every 3 hours or so.
There is something ironic about sleeping with a baby and still having to get up out of
bed to deal with feeding her. Even when we switched to direct breastfeeding, I
couldn't get the hang of nursing in bed. We finally worked that out at about 6.5
months-- so much better.
We were able (just barely at times) to feed Amelia 100% breastmilk. Now, she gets
her breastmilk 100% from mommy-- she will no longer take a bottle. At 6 months old,
she still hadn't eaten anything but breastmilk (and some stray cat hairs and junk mail :-)
).
Short version of the resource list
These are the resources I found most useful at the time.
