~ Part 1 ~
My breastfeeding journey with Noah was anything but smooth. Due to the impacts of COVID, we didn’t have a chance to do any breastfeeding classes, but I’d worked with breastfeeding mums so I thought I’d be ok. Noah was breastfeeding on demand, and I will never forget the night he literally fed every hour to bring my milk in. I was hand expressing and giving him finger feed top ups, and as the amounts increased, we gave it to him via a bottle.
My milk came in on approximately day 4; I’d woken up to an overnight boob job! My nipples were becoming so incredibly sore and were lipstick shaped post feeds. The midwives thought his attachment looked ok while he was feeding; but the LC I saw in hospital said I had flat nipples so gave me a nipple shield and told me to keep going. I have large breasts, so I started to feed him using the ‘rubgy hold’ which gave him a slightly better attachment. We were discharged on day 5, my milk was in and I thought we were doing ok. I thought that the pain was just from my nipples getting use to breastfeeding and that it would get better.
However, I was wrong. Over the coming days, his attachment didn’t get better, despite using the nipple shield, and the damaged continued. It got to the point where my nipples were cracked and bleeding during a feed. Noah was subsequently ingesting some of the blood during his feed, there would be blood flecks in his vomit and stool. My nurse brain kicked in and I knew it was because of the trauma. I was using Lansinoh, Multi Mams and Hydrogel breast disks religiously. Luckily id managed to maintain my supply because I was pumping.
At our 2-week GP appointment I was beyond devastated to find out that he was still well off his birth weight. He had lost just over 10% in total. My GP ran some tests which showed that Noah had a nasty UTI and was started on antibiotics. I felt like such a failure. That same day, on the verge of tears, I called the LC who my OB had recommended. He was so calm and simply amazing. After speaking on the phone, we came up with a plan to get through the next few days and a home visit. I was terrified of Noah being labelled failure to thrive, and equally terrified of being admitted to hospital. The visit with my LC was amazing, we stopped using the nipple shield, and feeding was feeling better. I was hopeful things had started to turn around. We started a rigorous pumping and
top up regime to help him gain weight, and thankfully he did.
Noah finally reached his birth weight at 4 weeks of age. But his attachment remained poor; my nipples were still cracked and bleeding (but better than
before). I was getting less lipstick shaping post feeds. Then I got mastitis; I was so sick. With the antibiotics my GP prescribed, and a plan from my LC, the mastitis quickly started to get better. I had done everything I could to help with his attachment; multiple CAFHS appointments (including their LC), private LC and a significant amount of research into how to get a better latch.
I knew something wasn’t right. It was exhausting, I was exhausted. I was feeding Noah every 3 hours; he’d take approximately 40 minutes to complete a BF, then a bottle, then pumped. All up taking close to 1 ½ hours. And then I had to do it all over again. I was so close to giving up. I started to dread breastfeeding. I wrote multiple lists about the pros and cons of breastfeeding vs. expressing and bottling, vs. swapping to formula. My husband was incredible and stuck by me the entire time.
Everything seemed worse overnight. I vowed to myself that I would never make a major feeding decision at night. One day a friend was visiting (who is also a Speech Pathologist I might add), she asked me if anyone had assessed him for a tongue tie. I said that it had been mentioned but no one thought it was significant. She gave me some useful resources to read, which empowered me to speak about it with our pediatrician at his 6-week checkup. We ended up getting a referral to a surgeon and got an appointment the next day.
It turns out that Noah had a tongue tie, although minimal it was significantly impacting his ability to latch properly. We had it released that same day. I distinctly remember that next feed feeling so completely different, it was like night and day. Yes, it was uncomfortable, but it wasn’t toe curling,
tear jerking painful. From there, feeding got better. I gradually stopped pumping and topping him up (which was incredibly hard to do given the issues we had with his weight gain initially).
This whole time I had been getting the best attachment holding him in the rugby hold. But once his tongue tie was released, I gradually transitioned to a conventional hold. I found the rugby hold awkward to feed socially, but his attachment was better, so I persisted. I was so petrified of getting mastitis again that I did everything I could to prevent it. But in turn I
developed an oversupply. Which resulted in getting mastitis multiple times throughout our feeding journey. Thankfully I never got as sick as I did the first time. I knew the warning signs and got on to clearing it as soon as possible.
I returned to work, as a shift worker, when Noah was 10 months old. The transition to pumping to maintain my supply was challenging, but I managed ok. I stopped pumping just before he was 12 months, and Noah self-weaned from breastfeeding a month later.
Our journey was anything but smooth, but I am so glad and incredibly proud that I never gave up. I trusted my gut, despite a lot of people telling me everything was ok.