The start of my breastfeeding journey
I’m sitting in my driveway letting Rhett nap in his car seat and I figured this would be a good time to write a blog post. A couple weeks ago it was breastfeeding awareness week or something like that. I wanted to post something whenever I figured it out at the end of the week, and never had time. I'm just going to share my journey about breastfeeding while I was in the hospital!
After Rhett was born I did not have immediate skin to skin. I had a cesarean and was too out of it to advocate that I wanted that. But even when I could hold him I was too tired and too medicated to hold him well. I held him in recovery.
My Golden hour in the recovery room was magical, honestly. I loved every part of it. I tried to get a good latch myself. Rhett would crawl straight to my nipple then his head would flop around and I would try to help guide him. Honestly I think we both would’ve been able to if I did not have the medication and cesarean. Anyways after trying for what seemed like forever, I asked a nurse to help. She showed me how and helped support his little head. We got a good latch and he sucked for a minute or 2 and fell asleep.
We went to the Mother Baby room. The nurse tells me we need to try to wake up every 2 hours to nurse. Now this is after I have been laboring for 60 hours, had tons of pain medication and a major surgery. So I set an alarm every 2 hours to try to nurse because I needed sleep. Trent took care of Rhett’s dirty diaper and re swaddled him about 200 times. When we woke up Rhett to feed him or he would wake us up, we could never get a good latch. I called the nurse every time to ask for help and requested a lactation consultant.
The nurses tried to help, he would latch, suckle a little and fall asleep. They mentioned that it looked like he was “tongue thrusting”. They finally told me to just hand express. Except I couldn’t figure that out either. The nurses or Trent would do it for me then scrape the colostrum off my Nipple into a little cup and put it in a syringe. This hurt.
I finally saw a lactation consultant. I got to meet with them a few times, they were the sweetest ladies. They would help with positioning and honestly every position would hurt my incision site and my Iv was getting in the way. So we still did the hand expression.
My second day after he was born, I had a nurse that never went the extra mile to help with anything. I was scared to ask her for help. But I pressed the button anyways every time I needed to feed him. I could tell that I was annoying her, eventually she comes into the room and slams down some formula on the counter.
So Trent feeds Rhett formula so I can sleep. But then I started to worry about my supply, so I asked them how to teach me how to use the pump. A lactation consultant shows me how to pump and measures me for a flange. And I still get up every 2-3 hours to pump.
Rhett was sucking the formula down. We were worried he was eating too much. And I was trying to pump every time he ate and it was getting hard to keep up and my nipples were getting so sore.
I would still nurse him during the day and Trent would do the formula at night, I finally got some much needed sleep.
There was a moment at the hospital where I could not get a good latch. Rhett was crying, then I started crying. Then my incision felt like I was being stabbed, so I immediately stood up which made it way worse and I just screamed in pain. I was so embarrassed but that was one of the worst moments for me.
On the last day I requested to talk to a lactation consultant before we are discharged. This time we got a great latch that lasted maybe 10 minutes. So I was confident going home and breast feeding.
