My Breastfeeding Journey

WOW so I was completely naive to the challenges of breastfeeding. My sister told me it was tough, and it’s not that I didn’t believe her, it’s just I really didn’t realise how tough it could be. 

So there’s me thinking , iv just birthed this baby - no pain relief- I can handle breastfeeding. WRONG ! My boy had an undiagnosed tongue tie. So for 10 days I was feeding him, with a great latch I might add, and it was hurting. Like not badly at the beginning , but it got progressively worse. Now, at all the classes (well the one I went to) they say it can be a bit sore to begin with until your nipples get used to it. So I just pushed through but after the first week I knew something wasn’t right and it shouldn’t be hurting this much. But all the Midwife’s checked his latch and watched him feed and said everything looks perfect. So I just put up with the pain. Bad idea ! By day 10 I literally couldn’t go on. He came off after a few sucks with a mouthful of blood. Yes, you read that right. Turns out I had actual flesh wounds on both nipples from where the feeding wasn’t going right. Ouch. Apparently , according to NHS you can continue to feed even if he’s taking in blood too, but 1) it freaks me out and 2) the pain was overwhelming. I was literally shaking and crying every single suck. It was heartbreaking, I felt like a failure because I couldn’t feed my baby. I also would dread him waking for a feed because I knew it was going to really hurt. That’s when I decided to express and bottle feed him my milk until my nipples heeled and I had sought help to work out where I was going wrong. 

I used the Medela swing double pump and the Medela calma bottle because the teat has a slow release valve so he had to really suck and work for the milk. This was pretty important because I essentially wanted to end up breastfeeding again and I didn’t want to create a lazy feeder. 

So this is when I made mistake number two. I over pumped. Naivety and sleep deprivation led me to pump extra in the day to avoid pumping at night. Breasts make milk on a supply and demand basis. So basically I led my boobs to believe that I needed more milk than necessary. Mistake number 3 - As well as this, missing the night pumps meant I got a HUGE build up of milk that wasn’t being drained. This led to engorged boobs and eventually blocked milk ducts. Ouch. The more engorged my boobs became the more I pumped to try and drain them. Mistake number 4. Unfortunately pumps do not effectively drain the boobs as well as a baby. But because of my damaged nipples I couldn’t let bubba help me, so next best thing was to hand express. Unfortunately it was too late. My blocked milk ducts got infected, waaaaa. This is called mastitis. Not only is it extremely painful but it also comes with flu like symptoms. Brill. So I was literally bed bound with a temperature of 103 and an extremely achy body. To make things worse , every time baby cried I had a let down of milk , making me more engorged and making it more painful. 

Luckily 10 days of antibiotics cleared up the infection and I started to use nipple shields to feed baby and help drain my boobs. Now although still painful , the shields protected the nipples to avoid causing more damage

After help from breast feeding support workers, midwife’s and basically gate crashing a tongue tie specialist after her breastfeeding class, I got him diagnosed with a tongue tie. Skip forward a week and we finally got his tongue tie snipped. Luckily for me the effect was instant , some babies can take a while to relearn how to feed but I was lucky and baby latched on straight away with no pain

Hallelujah 

Now with all this being said , I want to give advice to any mums-to-be or new mums. 

• DON'T IGNORE PAIN- yes nipples can be sensitive for the first minute but after that you really should feel any discomfort. If you are SEEK HELP. More than likely the latch is wrong or baby may have a tongue tie. 
• Get more than one persons opinion - 4 midwife’s missed his tongue tie
• Don’t over pump. If your going to express for whatever reason. Only pump for the amount of time your baby usually feeds unless your trying to increase your milk flow 
• If you really don’t want to formula feed, have a pump and nipple shields at the ready incase your nipples get damaged. I’m soooo thankful for having my Medela swing ready so I didn’t have to formula feed my boy. It literally saved me 
• Follow the nose to nipple technique when latching baby on. 
• Try different positions to find your most comfortable 
• Unlatch and start again if there’s pain. Even if it’s 100 times per feed
•  Persevere. It gets better. Take it from someone that has near enough everything against her. It’s all worth it in the end